Desire and The Great Gatsby
Daisy and Gatsby
Daisy and Gatsby met while he was in the army. He pretended to be of a similar social class and spent a lot of time with Daisy. Eventually they became lovers, and this is when Gatsby says his feelings truly turn to love. With Daisy, we’re not sure when or if she loved him at that point. What we do know is that when she was about to marry Tom after Gatsby had gone overseas, she received a letter from Gatsby and had a breakdown. She does, however, pull herself together and marry Tom that night. When she eventually meets Gatsby again through Nick, she does a lot of crying. The relationship seems to reignite and she and Gatsby have an affair. She goes so far as to kiss Gatsby while Tom is out of the room when he visits her home with Nick. After Tom finds out about the affair, he and Gatsby engage in an argument over which of them Daisy loves, and Daisy at first follows Gatsby’s direction and says that she never loved Tom. She recants this shortly after, and rejects Gatsby through allowing Tom to make sure Gatsby takes the blame for the death of Myrtle. The book concludes with Gatsby killed and Daisy and Tom having left the area together, presumably to continue on elsewhere. -EB
Intrinsic or Extrinsic?
The relationship between Daisy and Gatsby is very interesting, and is often taken for true, romantic love. I disagree. It is extrinsic. In the book Gatsby mentions Daisy’s voice, which he says is “full of money” (Fitzgerald 120). This statement shows that his motives aren’t entirely intrinsic. He still wants her not only for her, but for the status she represents. Daisy, on the other hand, may have been truly in love the first time she met Gatsby, but by the time she meets him again things have changed. She is angry with Tom over his endless affairs with other women, and she is in love with the idea of what she could have had with Gatsby had she married him instead. Being in love with the memory of love is what caused her to cry so much when she meets him again. She realizes that it just a memory, but the very idea of it is so tantalizing that she can’t help but enter into the affair. During the affair she is in love with the excitement of keeping it a secret right under Tom’s nose, a sort of revenge. She likely also adores the attention she receives from Gatsby that Tom is giving to Myrtle instead of her. Another sign that this is only a bond of convenience for her is that she easily lets go of Gatsby when she reunites with Tom. Fitzgerald’s statement referring to Tom and Daisy is very true: “They were careless people…they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (Fitzgerald 179). Daisy didn’t love Gatsby. She used him and then left him to rot. -EB
After having intercourse with Daisy, Gatsby becomes entranced by the idea of marrying Daisy. This first sentence of this quote shows how he feels about her. The second sentence shows how Daisy’s life continues without him. -EB
“He knew that Daisy was extraordinary, but he didn’t realize just how extraordinary a “nice” girl could be. She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing.”
Fitzgerald, page 149
