Examples Of Passion In The Great Gatsby

Cause I Always Had a Passion for Flashin’

Imagine sitting at a wedding, watching two people that love the other more than anything in the entire world, about to commit themselves to each other forever. The couple is completely consumed by an intense emotion; passion. Passion plays a large part in the novel The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in the 1920’s, a time of great prosperity and the “American dream.” In this classic novel, the wealthy and enigmatic Jay Gatsby shows his deep and in some cases extreme passion for his old love, Daisy Buchanan, a beautiful and somewhat shallow heiress. As the story moves forward, readers can see many different instances of passion being exemplified throughout, from multiple different characters.

It is a result of yearning for more, whether it be money, love, or status. Although this feeling is most often seen between two people, in The Great Gatsby there are multiple examples of characters showing their passion for the way they live, or how they want to live. Myrtle, a promiscuous woman and Tom’s mistress, is trying her very best to be a different version of herself; a wealthier and respected woman in the eyes of society. She uses Tom’s money to throw gaudy parties for her friends and attempts to give an aire of sophistication, saying, “I told that boy about the ice...these people! You have to keep after them all the time" (32). Myrtle’s constant attempts to rise up out of her class exemplifies her passion for wealth and elegance. One can now infer that passion is an intense desire for what one wants that isn’t always

It is the fierce emotion that a person can have towards a person or ideal. Passion is not something that can be looked over easily, on either side of the affection. Passion and obsession in The Great Gatsby can be most easily seen in the confusing relationship between Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan, the novel’s main characters. The young millionaire Gatsby desires one thing, and it is to get his long time love back into his life. He has dreamt about it for years, and built an empire around his passion for Daisy. Characters surrounding the couple take a front row seat to Gatsby’s extreme love, including the narrator, saying, “he had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths--so he could 'come over' some afternoon to a stranger's garden” (78). The fact that Gatsby made his entire life about getting a small chance to see Daisy again, paired with the revelation that he kept, “‘a lot of clippings-about [Daisy]’” (94), cause cynicists, or less romantic people in general, to interpret Gatsby’s motives as less passionate and more obsessive. His actions involving Daisy prove his emotion to have an extra edge; therefore passion can border on obsession when the subject of one’s desire seems