Exploring the Theme of Love, Desire and Unity in The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby, by Scott F. Fitzgerald, is a novel centered around several themes, but one theme, and the one that seems to be the most unsettling, involves Fitzgerald’s portrayal of various relationships throughout the novel. Fitzgerald gives readers a darker side of love and compatibility. Through character actions and dialogue, often shallow yet revealing deeper values, the author gives his reader’s characters driven by the comforts of materialism rather than love and intimacy. Driven by materialism, physical desire and lack of romance, Tom and Myrtle’s romance is the first relationship that readers are introduced to. Tom is abusive, known as a “hulking bully,” and both …show more content…
Then she later proceeds to call Gatsby “cool” leading Tom to correctly conclude that there’s a connection between the two that he had previously been unaware of. After hearing his wife say this to another man several times, Tom becomes absolutely furious. He now wants to preserve what he thought he could never lose. As for Daisy, though she is beautiful on the outside, she is completely corrupt underneath. We know that the reason she chose to marry Tom years ago was to uphold her status and become even more wealthy. Her voice is said to sound like money - not her own, but the money of Tom. Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship quickly begins to fade at the end of the novel after Nick tells Tom that Daisy loves him and not Tom. We see Daisy shy away and begin to deny their relationship. We also learn that Daisy no longer has an interest for the man who has tried for so long to pursue her. On the car ride home from New York, Tom allows the two to ride back in the car together. He no longer feels threatened by Gatsby because he knows that Daisy has no interest for him. Through these two couples, Fitzgerald uses the theme of corrupt love and selfish desires in this American classic, to show that materialism can so easily get in the way of authentic connection with