What Are The Similarities Between The Great Gatsby And Daisy's Relationship

1. In my initial reading of The Great Gatsby I thought that Gatsby’s never-dying love of Daisy was sweet, just as how he stayed in love with her all the time they were apart. Yet, in my second reading, I was irritated with it; for all he knew, Daisy could have changed into an entirely separate person. Yet, he projected past-Daisy onto current Daisy, trying to force her to be that person. I felt that his urgency for Daisy to renounce her love for Tom to be extremely vexing because he would not stop trying to change something that already happened, ruining everything that was happing in the present.
2. Fitzgerald and Jay Gatsby have similarities that include, their army service and their respective loves. Fitzgerald met his wife Zelda, when
he was assigned to Camp Sheridan outside Montgomery, Alabama; this also how Gatsby met his wife. Additionally, Daisy like Zelda came from wealthy families, they were both also very popular in the high society of that time, and both were considered “golden girls”.
3. Fitzgerald chose to tell the story through the eyes of Nick Caraway instead of Gatsby himself to give some removal to the overall story. While Nick injects himself into the overall narrative, the main intrigue revolves around Gatsby. Gatsby’s character is not revealed until well into the novel, this not only creates an air of mystery around him but also fuels suspicions and causes many false stories to circulate- relating back to Gatsby as a Christ figure. Additionally, it is told in retrospect as a way of Nick getting rid of the guilt and responsibility he felt over the events of the novel.
4. Most women in the 1920s were regarded at things, pretty to look at but were not allowed to have any real opinion. They especially couldn’t talk back to their husbands; they were still considered unofficial property and only barely had rights then. Jordan is the only independent woman in the novel and yet Nick half dislikes her, displaying Fitzgerald’s disproval of that aspect of women.
5. What determines class and status in The Great Gatsby is very simple: money. But it cannot be just any money, its only old money from blue blood families. New money buys a certain degree of wealth and status but not at the same level. New money is gaudy and does not garner the same degree of respect that old money does.
6. Gatsby represents the American Dream; he worked hard when he was born in the mid-west with no money. He always considered himself above his economic status and achieved every bit of success that he ever dreamed about, yet Gatsby soon dies regardless of his monetary accomplishments. This death parallels the death of the American Dream, one that dies soon after the First World War. His death proves that all that hard work eventually surmounts to nothing, just like the American Dream.
7. In regards to race the novel takes on a racist standpoint through the character of Tom Buchanan. He mentions to Nick in the beginning of the novel that he read this book on race and that whites were the superior race due to genetics. This is extremely false on all accounts but it personified the racist standpoint of that era. Additionally, after the war there was a nationalistic sentiment that reverberated throughout the country; after WWI so many Americans were cruel and rude to anyone immigrating into the country.
9.
Daisy and Jay Gatsby are both complex and intricate characters; however, their love does take on a darker tone. Gatsby, on his part, was in love with the Daisy he knew when he met her, and when he went off to war he continued to build up Daisy in his head, created so magnificent a person she would never be able to live up to the image. Daisy acknowledged this fact but Gatsby could never; he wasn’t even able to acknowledge her daughter because it didn’t fit into the mental fantasy he built up around Daisy. Daisy on her part was in love with Gatsby and did love Tom but she was unable to choose Gatsby because she could never match the other version of herself. Tom and Daisy are very similar, almost cohorts, they knew who they married and while they were not desperately in love, they knew exactly what the other person was offering and that was enough.
11. Life in the 1920s was filled with materialism. Wealth was abundant and those that had it were spending it in extreme excess. Women were taking control of their sexuality and were beginning to gain independence. A frantic energy almost pervaded the city of New York as every citizen was trying to fill some hole that WWI left behind. The generation after the war was called the “Lost Generation” a fitting title because most characters in this novel are unhappy in some way, there is no root cause for it, but it is
there.
12. Those words come to represent how everyone continually looks back on some aspect of their life and tries to relive that moment. Whether it is an emotion or memory of a loved one, one always tries to recapture that exact moment in time. One is “borne ceaselessly into the past” in the sense that continually one thinks that if that get that one moment right by saying or doing the right thing than an entire new life will suddenly be made available. And even with the knowledge that it is fruitless, the endeavor will still be attempted.

The overarching message of the final pages of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is all about the American Dream, and to a further extent, hope. While Nick is at Gatsby’s funeral the only attendants are a couple of the house workers, the postman, Mr. Gatz and the man with the Owl Eyed glasses. Gatsby used to throw extravagant parties filled with hundreds of people, and yet half people who show up were in his employment. Nick later stops to converse with the man with the Owl Eyed glasses and in comment on the lack of people, he declared that Gatsby was one “poor son-of-a-bitch”. These words are ironic enough, as Gatsby was extravagantly wealthy but also come to mean that having extreme amounts of money are not the only ways to be wealthy. As Gatsby went on to accomplish the American Dream with wealth and popularity, he had no real friends, only admirers, but these are not the sorts of people to attend his funeral. Additionally, as Nick reflects back on Gatsby’s life he muses about how the island must have looked to the Dutch- “a fresh, green breast of the new world”. In that infinitely long passage over to the new world, the only think keeping those sailors going forward was that green new world. Similarly the only thing motivating Gatsby was his idea of Daisy, which later came to represent that green light at the end of that dock. The green color represents hope, but almost fool hearted hope, Gatsby did not know what would happen when he encountered Daisy again just at the Dutch did not know what would happen when they encountered land. Furthermore, the message Fitzgerald conveys is the interesting dichotomy that is the idea of the American Dream and the actual Dream itself, because the American Dream is nonexistent because it represents something to everyone else. The Dream “recedes before us” in a way that makes one think it is achievable because that is the draw of the Dream. If one thinks they can obtain said dream then they will keep hope alive until their dying breath. However, the dream is “already behind [us]”, because turning back time just as hard as accomplishing the American Dream, and for intensive purposes, dead.