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Theme Of Selfishness In The Great Gatsby

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Several people may assume that selfishness is both unhealthy and wrong. A selfish person usually puts his own needs before the needs of other people. Selfish people need to be able to draw the line between when they need to worry about themselves, or when they should be concerned about other people. In The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, in the view of Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby, it is evident that the nature of man is showing selfishness through cruelty, greed, and manipulation. Cruelty is just one way that the nature of man shows selfishness. When Nick describes Tom, it is showing a sign of cruelty. Nick describes Tom by saying, “Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward” (9). Here Nick is describing how Tom Buchanan changed from when they both attended college together. In college, Tom was very friendly and was wonderful to be around. Nick realized, when they met again, that Tom had changed from friendly to cruel in the years after Tom and Nick graduated from Yale. Tom shows his cruelty by abusing Daisy. Tom does not abuse Daisy by hitting her, but merely more by causing emotional abuse. He mistreats and uses Daisy without caring about her feelings. Tom does what he needs to do to get whatever he wants, thus proving …show more content…

These three traits are one of the several ways that the nature of man shows selfishness. Man can show cruelty by being cruel to others because they only care about themselves and not others. They show greed by using one’s money to get something that they intended to get. They also use manipulation to trick people into getting what they want even if it hurts that person. It takes a lot of effort to be selfish because of curel, greed, and

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