Examples Of Love In The Great Gatsby

Love is a very powerful emotion. It is able to consume a person’s mind and control their every thought, every action and every dream. Scott Fitzgerald demonstrates how love can hold a man’s heart and mind hostage through the portrayal of Jay Gatsby’s pursuit of the love of his life. In Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, Gatsby’s heart and mind remain fixed on his past love of Daisy Buchanan as he creates a dream of once again returning to that moment in the past. Blinded by the illusion of Daisy as a tangible commodity, Gatsby is inspired by passion and love to redefine himself as he risks everything and consequently meets his own demise in his effort to reunite with Daisy and achieve his dreams.
After falling in love with Daisy Buchanan,
Daisy is a woman of inherited wealth; a member of the rich elite class in society. Nick mentions that Gatsby “[takes] her under false pretenses. [Nick] [doesn’t] mean that [Gatsby] [has] traded on his phantom millions, but he [has] deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he [lets] her believe that he [is] a person from much the same stratum as herself--- that he was fully able to take care of her,” (149). Gatsby understands that he is not qualified by the unwritten laws of society to be with Daisy. He knows that such a relationship will be shunned by the laws of social life during this time. However, the forbidden fruit is the sweetest. Even though a relationship with Daisy is essentially prohibited, Gatsby strives to be of her class and for the time being lies to her about his social status. He makes her believe that he can support her comfortably in order to give himself a chance at winning over her heart. He learns that Daisy is swayed by money just as much as she is swayed by the looks or charm of a man. Therefore he devotes his life, from the moment of his first kiss with Daisy to the present time, to accruing a vast amount of wealth and notoriety. He purchases a mansion across the bay from Daisy’s residence perhaps in the hopes that one day she may be interested in this grandiose house lit up like a
Gatsby’s vivid memory of Daisy and her beauty has him constantly dreaming of the past and fantasizing of an idea that is impossible. He desires to turn back time and erase Daisy’s relationship with Tom completely. Nick realizes that “[Gatsby wants] nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: ‘I never loved you.’ After she had obliterated four years with that sentence they could decide upon the more practical measures to be taken,” (109). Tom is the only obstacle in between Gatsby and the achievement of his dream. Gatsby desires nothing more than for Daisy to admit that she never loved Tom and had always loved Gatsby. He wants to know that she reciprocated his love during the years they had been distant from each other. However, Daisy is unable to admit this and Gatsby’s dream is shattered. As he tries to erase the past in her mind, she becomes further distant from him and all hopes of reuniting are failing. Gatsby desperately attempts to revive his dream, “[b]ut with every word [Daisy] was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room,” (134). Gatsby puts an immense amount of effort into