Destructive Love In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Love can be the most beautiful flower, but that flower can produce the most deadly poison. F. Scott Fitzgerald portrayed this in his book, The Great Gatsby. Gatsby loved Daisy, a woman he met when they were younger and they fell in love them but Daisy couldn’t be with him because he didn’t have money. She is now married, to Tom, who is having an affair on her with a woman, Myrtle, who is also married, but is having the affair because Tom has money. Nick didn’t care to be with Jordan, he just got with her for social reasons. The Great Gatsby was a story about destructive love, whether it’s love for money, just carelessness, or love for someone we shouldn’t love. A conflict occurs between Nick and Jordan. Theirs is a destructive love

This was destructive for an obvious reason; they were both married. However, their attraction to each other was also destructive. In his own way, Tom did love Myrtle. She worshipped him for his money, and gave him the lifestyle he wanted. Tom felt like a king because he had this other life going on with Myrtle, while Daisy was at home being faithful, He had the best of everything. Myrtle was destructive in her love for him because she just wanted to live a different life. Her husband, the mechanic, could not provide the lifestyle she was looking for; he was not the kind of person she wanted to take to parties. Myrtle also had a carefree lifestyle, feeling as though she was getting away with having her husband be so foolish and not know about her affair with Tom. “’The only crazy I was [,] was when I Married him. I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in and never even told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he was out.’” She looked around to see who was listening: ‘Oh, is that your suit?’ I said. ‘This is the first I ever heard about it.’ But I gave it to him and then I laid down and cried to beat the band all afternoon.”(Fitzgerald, 35). This shows that Myrtle is a material girl and that she has a deep love for money. In the end, Tom and Myrtle’s relationship was destructive, it resulted in her

Theirs is maybe the truest love in the book, but perhaps also the most doomed. Gatsby loves Daisy, but he isn’t financially in the position to marry her when they were young and she was available. When Gatsby has spent several years planning his return with wealth to get Daisy, she has already married another and has a child with him. Daisy, being of a particular station, could not marry Gatsby because he was poor, and instead settles for a man of her own class whom she doesn’t love. These star-crossed lovers meet again, only to find themselves torn apart by her husband’s affair. Because of Gatsby’s great love for her, he takes the blame for Myrtle’s death, which ultimately leads to his own. “Gatsby, he was at present a penniless young man without a past, and at any moment the invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders. So he made the most of his time. He took what he could get, ravenously and unscrupulously—eventually he took Daisy one still October night, took her because he had no real right to touch her hand.”(149) This shows that Gatsby had no right to fall in love with Daisy, but he did anyway. Daisy and Gatsby are just victims of circumstance, and their love becomes the most destructive of