This targets a major question about Gatsby’s affection for Daisy: does he truly love her?
In the novel, Gatsby and Daisy’s first kiss is described as Gatsby tells the story to Nick: “He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. . . . Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.” Gatsby explains that in that moment, they were vulnerable and finally confessed their true thoughts and feelings as they kissed. Apparently, he falls in love with Daisy and has been in love with her ever since.
However, Daisy is a different person five years later, so how …show more content…
could he possibly be in love with her for all that time without being with her or even talking to her?
“Sometimes the heart is deceiving”
Gatsby’s heart “deceived” him into thinking he was in love with her, when in reality he was in love with the feeling he had when they kissed.
When Nick stresses to Gatsby that he cannot repeat the past, Gatsby does not react well: “‘Can’t repeat the past?’ He cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can! ’ He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.‘I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,’ he said, nodding determinedly. ‘She’ll see.’” (110). Clearly, Gatsby is not truly in love with Daisy, otherwise he would cherish prize of simply being with her again. He wants to repeat the past because he is in love with the feeling he had.
Gatsby hangs on to this feeling, which develops into an obsession. He has specific plans based on getting Daisy back and goes so far as to buying a specific mansion just to be across the bay from her.
“I’m notorious for thinking you’re full of beautiful instead of hollow”
His love for the feeling that develops this obsession, also drives him to create this perfect and flawless image of her; however, Daisy does not live up to Gatsby’s
dream.
Nick discusses this fact when Gatsby and Daisy finally meet again: “Almost five years! There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams---not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion,” (95).
She is, in fact, “hollow” because of her priority of marrying into wealth.
She does reunite with Gatsby and has a short affair, but chooses to stay with Tom because in the end, status is just too important to her. Her desires are full of the superficial.
“Can't get out of my head, and I need you to save me. If I am delusional then maybe I'm crazy in love with you.”
Gatsby “can’t get out of his head” and idolizes Daisy so much that, as Nick states, “It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way” (95). Furthermore, Gatsby needing Daisy to “save him” stresses what Daisy becomes for him: a divinity he worships that drives everything he lives for.
“If I am delusional then maybe I’m crazy in love with you” highlights and summarizes Gatsby’s mindset. He is indeed delusional with his idea of Daisy and his obsession with needing her, but in his mind, everything he does and believes is justified as being “crazy in love” with her.
This song begs the following questions: Is Gatsby in love with who the person Daisy was five years ago, or is he in love with the feeling he had with her at the time? Is he in love with his thought of her? Is he in love with her five years later when they reunite? Or . . . has he been in love with the feeling of his attachment to that first kiss all this time throughout its development?