Tom Buchanan In The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby: Tom is not the Bomb One lesson The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald has taught is that money can not make you happy. Throughout the novel, Nick Carraway retells the story of eight peoples journey in the 1920’s, including his own. These people are all revealed to be morally corrupt and have no thought for anyone but themselves. This is most noticeable in Tom Buchanan. He does not care about his wife Daisy, George Wilson, or Myrtle. Not to mention he never speaks a word about his own daughter. Due to his actions in the book, I believe Tom Buchanan causes the most harm in the novel. Tom is a wealthy man who has lived all over the world with his wife, Daisy. He seems to be living the American dream with a nice house, wife, child, and all the money anyone could want. However, even with all this fortune, he is still unhappy with his life. To fix this, he goes and gets a lover, Myrtle Wilson, to be a second

Myrtle is confronted by George and asked who she is cheating with. She becomes hysterical and runs into the street where a car ran her over and killed her instantly (pg. 138). Though Tom did not kill Myrtle, nor did he make her run into the street, if he had not had an affair with her the entire situation could have been avoided. He unknowingly played a huge role in her death. The same happened to Gatsby and Wilson, all because Tom believed Gatsby was the one who hit daisy. Though Wilson killed Gatsby and himself, it was Tom’s actions that lead to all three deaths’ in the story. In this novel, Tom best represents the idea of the American dream. He has the nice house, cars, family, and money. Although he has everything he still decides that it is not enough for him and gets with Myrtle. This shows just how selfish Tom really is as he does not care about his wife’s feelings or his family dynamic. His version of the American dream is to make himself happy and anyone else’s feelings simply do not