In opposition to Gatsby, Myrtle is only trying to please one person—herself. She feels stuck in her marriage to Wilson and desperately longs for an escape. When she stumbles into Tom on the train, she instantly knows he can help her attain her ideal life. Myrtle can be described as a gold digger. She showcases this through her actions: having an affair with a man who can give her a glamorous lifestyle. She becomes so absorbed in her life with Tom that she transforms herself into what she envisions as an upper class lady. During one of her trips to the city with Tom, she “let four taxi cabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-color with grey upholstery” (31). This quote shows how her personality changes around wealth by trying to get people to see how important she is. It also shows that as soon Myrtle steps away from her life with Wilson she becomes a completely new woman. She wants everyone to believe that she is wealthy and of high class, but in …show more content…
Overcome with relief, she rushes into the middle of the street, reaching out for her dream. The driver of the car however is not Tom. The car strikes Myrtle and she ends up paying the cost of her dream with her life. This scene in the book symbolizes how Myrtle was disillusioned. She was blinded physically, by the headlights, and mentally, “…Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick dark blood with the dust” (131). This quote illustrates that although Myrtle strived to achieve her dream of being rich, in the end, life and body belonged to the Valley of Ashes. Myrtle was a part of the lower class, so she died a lower social class individual. She had become so wrapped up in her alternative life with Tom that she was unable to distinguish between that fantasy and her true reality. Her dream had consumed her to the point where it was all that she was and all that she aspired to