The Great Gatsby Symbolism

The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a novel filled with symbolism with different meanings. The Great Gatsby is written in Nick Carraway’s perspective, who was once Gatsby’s neighbor in West Egg. The story begins when Carraway moves into West Egg from the Midwest to seek out his fortune as a bond salesman. Nick then meets Gatsby on his dock long towards West Egg from East Egg. With the help of Nick, Gatsby finally reunites with his past love, Daisy Buchanan, who is married to Tom Buchanan. The twisted love story ends with a tragedy of Gatsby dying thinking Daisy chose him over Tom, which sadly was not the case. In the Great Gatsby, the character Daisy represents many of the symbolisms between all the men in the story. The
The child of the two represents Daisy’s regret of marrying Tom when Gatsby comes back. Pamela is a symbol of materialism and how she is just there for Daisy to show off to other people. She also ties into the theme of the American Dream and how she is there to fulfill the dream family that most Americans strive to have as a part of their American Dream. Daisy wanted others to get the impression that she lives in the perfect American dream with both a perfect family and an abundance of money. Daisy hopes her daughter will become a beautiful fool like she was. She makes this statement because she hopes her daughter, Pamela, will grow up and be dumb enough to not realize all the lying, cheating, and corruption that she has noticed in her life. She hopes that Pamela will never be smart enough to realize if her husband is being unfaithful, and notice how her life is going in a downhill spiral. Pamela also represents the distance between Gatsby and Daisy as well, because Pamela is the physical figure of what separates Gatsby and Daisy. She is another representation of the distance between the past and the present for both Gatsby and Daisy. When Gatsby left, Daisy married Tom and had a child. Gatsby came back to find that not only is she married with another man, but she has a child with him as
They show his drive and how far he is willing to go to gain her heart. In addition, her over-reaction to them, shows how shallow she is. Daisy responds to Gatsby throwing the silk shirts at her, “They’re such beautiful shirts," "It makes me sad because I've never seen such – such beautiful shirts before"(Fitzgerald). Gatsby shows his shirts to her like they were trophies of his wealth. It also shows that he has a more cultured side to him than Daisy's husband does. As she looks at the shirts, she begins to cry and realizes what an uncultured man she is married to. Gatsby is everything Tom is not, a gentleman. This is where her affair with Gatsby starts again, and how she manipulates him while Tom has no clue of the affair between the two until the end. In the 1920’s a gentleman was a man with both money and property, which Tom Buchanan had both. The gentleman that Daisy saw in Gatsby was how he had money, but he was also kind to her, which Tom was not. Although, Gatsby was manipulative in his own way, he gets Nick to bring Daisy over so she can see his house, which he purchased to show off to Daisy. In spite of the fact that Gatsby’s house was big and extravagant, Daisy was hit emotionally when the silk shirts were thrown at her. This may be because she could touch and feel the rich