The Great Gatsby: An Analysis of Love

“If love is only a will to possess, it is not love.” America in the 1920s was a country where moral values ​​were in decline. Every American had one goal to achieve: success.

Francis Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, presents a realistic picture of American life in the 1920s. His characters, like many people of that period, care only about money; Getting rich is their main goal. As a result, their relationships, which are no longer based on love, fail.

All the relationships in the novel are failures because they are not based on love, but on materialism.

An example of a failed relationship in The Great Gatsby is the adulterous relationship between Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson. This case is based on mutual exploitation. Tom uses Myrtle for sex; Myrtle receives gifts and money in return. Tom Buchanan, a resident of East Egg, is “old money” so he despises everyone who isn’t his kind. Therefore, he treats Myrtle like trash. Myrtle Wilson, the wife of poor George Wilson, has become disenchanted with her marriage of 12 years due to her husband’s lack of success. His desire for a better life is evident when he recounts his first meeting with Tom:

“I was in the two small seats facing each other that are always the last ones left on the train. I was going to New York to see my sister and spend the night. He had a tuxedo and patent leather shoes, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him but every time he looked at me I had to pretend to look at the sign above his head against my arm so I told him I’d have to call a cop but he knew I was lying. All I thought, over and over again, was ‘You can’t live forever, you can’t live forever’ (Fitzgerald 42).

Myrtle even believes that Tom will leave Daisy and marry her. Actually, Tom doesn’t even see Myrtle as a person but as a sexual object. This is made clear by his demeaning treatment of Myrtle at the party, especially when he breaks her nose for having the nerve to mention his wife’s name:

“‘Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!’ cried Mrs. Wilson. ‘I’ll say it any time I want! Daisy! Dai – ‘Making a short deft move, Tom Buchanan broke his nose with an open hand’ (Fitzgerald 43).

The pathetic nature of their relationship is reinforced when she dies. After a fight with George Wilson, Myrtle flees to a gold car that she thinks is Tom’s. The golden color of the car symbolizes money, the wealth that Myrtle so desires. The car is apparently driven by Daisy, another symbol of materialism, and what happens has significant meaning:

A moment later [Myrtle] he ran off into the twilight, waving his hands and screaming… The ‘car of death’, as the newspapers called it, did not stop… Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mixed with his thick dark blood. with the dust… The mouth was open wide and a little torn at the corners, as if it had choked a little on giving up the tremendous vitality it had stored up for so long (Fitzgerald 143-44).

The nature of the relationship between Tom and Myrtle is best symbolized by the expensive dog leash that Tom had bought for Myrtle’s puppy. It reflects the fact that Tom is the master, the one who controls his “pet” with money. As a teacher, Tom is free to do as he pleases. As the “dog”, Myrtle receives gifts for proper behavior. Tom and Myrtle’s unequal status reflects the failure of their relationship which, given its adulterous nature, was doomed from the start.

The Buchanan marriage is also a complete failure. It is the war that separated Daisy and Gatsby, and its absence is one of the reasons she married Tom. However, the most important factor was his money and status. Tom is from a rich family. He can give Daisy anything she wants. The wedding ceremony demonstrated this:

In June [Daisy] she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago, with more pomp and circumstance than Louisville ever knew before. He came down with a hundred people in four private cars, and rented an entire floor of the Hotel Muhlbach, and the day before the wedding he gave her a pearl necklace valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars (Fitzgerald 82).

That it is a marriage of convenience -not of love- is manifested several times in the novel. For example, while Daisy was giving birth to their only child, “Tom was God knows where” (Fitzgerald 23). Also, Tom’s affair begins only after 3 months of their marriage. A newspaper account of Tom’s accident mentions that the waitress had a broken arm. Of course, Daisy knows Tom too well; he even offers Tom his “little gold pencil” to get the number of a “pretty but ordinary” girl he’s interested in at the Gatsby party, though Tom pretends to want to switch tables for another reason. The fact is that their marriage is based on wealth and power; that is what keeps them together, and what reveals how sterile a marriage is.

Gatsby is the one who tries to separate Tom and Daisy. Gatsby’s dream is to reunite with Daisy, go back in time and marry Daisy. This is his incorruptible dream, as Gatsby tells Nick: “‘Can’t the past repeat itself?’ [Gatsby] he yelled in disbelief. ‘Of course you can!'” (Fitzgerald 117).

After meeting with Daisy, Gatsby begins an affair that is possible because he is extremely rich; Daisy is a materialist who can be attracted to money. When they first meet again, Daisy shows little true emotion. Only when he shows off his huge mansion and his expensive possession does Daisy show strong emotion. For example, when Gatsby shows you his expensive clothes from England; “Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bowed her head into her shirts and began to cry violently” (Fitzgerald 99).

When Gatsby and Daisy’s affair is discovered, Tom and Gatsby clash over Daisy. In this pivotal event, Daisy reveals her true vision of her affair with Gatsby: that it was simply a way to fill her empty days, an entertainment. It is also payback for Tom’s many adulterous affairs. Deep in her heart, she is undecided: “Oh, you want too much!” [Daisy] he yelled at Gatsby. ‘I love you now, isn’t that enough? I can’t help what happened. She started sobbing helplessly. ‘I loved him once, but I loved you too'” (Fitzgerald 139).

Having betrayed Gatsby twice, Daisy now betrays him one last time: unwilling to face the consequences of Myrtle’s death, Daisy and Tom conspire to frame Gatsby for the accident. Gatsby is then murdered by George Wilson, having been led to believe by Tom that Gatsby is both Myrtle’s lover and murderer.

Ultimately, this relationship fails because Daisy values ​​nothing more than materialism; he doesn’t even send a flower to Gatsby’s feural.

Love is essential in a relationship. However, materialism is essential to the relationship presented in The Great Gatsby. Those relationships are failures because they are based on the physical rather than the spiritual. Fitzgerald shows that any relationship based on materialism will ultimately fail.