The Great Gatsby How can one be so careless? In the novel The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tom and Daisy were both careless in their actions. Their choices affected those around them, in the end killing three people. Tom showed his carelessness by cheating on his wife Daisy, openly showing off his mistress Myrtle, and telling Wilson that Gatsby owned the car that killed his wife. Daisy showed her carelessness by cheating on her husband Tom, openly showing her love for Gatsby in front of Nick and Jordan, and killing Myrtle without stopping like any sane person would. Tom and Daisy 's actions caused negative impacts on the people around them, however they had their money to lean on. Their money got them away at last where they didn …show more content…
Throughout the novel, one of Tom 's biggest careless acts was when he cheated on Daisy. Tom is a cocky, confident man shown many times throughout the novel like when Nick arrived at his house and "Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch" (Fitzgerald 6). His stance showed his arrogance, and how highly he thought of himself because of his wealth. Tom was a man who often acted without thinking things through, like having an affair with Myrtle. Despite both Tom and Myrtle being married, they both had affairs. Tom doesn 't hide his affair from Nick and introduces him to his mistress Myrtle at Wilson 's garage. Tom doesn 't seem to care if anyone finds out because he feels as though nothing would change due to his wealth. While at Myrtle 's husbands garage, Tom tells Myrtle to meet him at the train station. They end up going to their apartment in New York City that they keep for their affair. While at the Morningside Height 's apartment Myrtle starts to talk about Tom 's wife Daisy, ""Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!" shouted Mrs. Wilson. "I 'll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai-"" (Fitzgerald 37). Tom didn 't like Myrtle overstepping her boundaries and to show …show more content…
Their choices led to the death of Myrtle, Gatsby and Wilson. Myrtle wouldn 't have died if Tom didn 't cheat on Daisy. Tom 's choice to stray from his wife caused Myrtle to run out into the road because she thought Jordan was Tom 's wife so she ran to stop the car. The car was actually being driven by Daisy who was accompanied by Gatsby. This accident also put Daisy at fault because if she hadn’t of cheated as well, her and Tom never would have had the argument about her love for Gatsby. This would have prevented the accident altogether. Tom was also at fault for telling Wilson who the owner of the car was which was Gatsby. Although Gatsby wasn 't the one driving, he ended up with the blame for it. Wilson wasn 't in the right mindset and went to Gatsby 's house and shot him. Gatsby was found floating in the pool on an air mattress looking up at the sky. Wilson was found not too far away on the grass. All of these deaths were a result of Tom and Daisy not thinking through the choices they made, knowing that they had their money to fall back on if anything were to ever go
Three of the most important characters in the novel are Gatsby, Tom, and Daisy. They all execute very crucial forms of carelessness. For instance when Daisy is giving birth to their first daughter she didn’t even know where Tom was as this quote from the novel shows, “Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where.” (pg. 21). Daisy also shows carelessness when after all her and
Tom knew Myrtle better than any of the main characters. He had met her on a train headed for New York. When the train reached the city, she went with him in a taxi, and their affair began. Tom never made much of an effort to keep their relationship secret. In fact, he almost paraded her around in the presence of his acquaintances. They made frequent trips into New York so that they could be together. Myrtle was Tom's escape from his own life in East Egg. While Daisy provided him with a wealthy, acceptable social image, she was not much more to him than a mere possession. His affair with Myrtle offered him a chance to defy his social expectations. Their relationship was important to him because of this opportunity to escape. When Myrtle died, it shook him deeply, especially because he believed Gatsby had been driving the yellow car. After leaving George Wilson's garage the night of the accident, he managed to drive slowly until he and Nick were out of sight. Then he slammed his foot down on the accelerator, driving much faster. He began quietly sobbing, privately mourning her death. He immediately blamed Gatsby for bringing their relationship to an abrupt halt. "That God damned coward!" he cried. "He didn't even stop his car." His feelings of anger and hurt were greatly intensified by the day spent in New York....
In the novel “ The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nick describes Tom and Daisy as careless people which they are. Nick and Daisy are careless people because they can afford to be careless because of their money and use other people or do nothing at all for their own benefit. For example, When tom told Myrtle that he could not marry her because he was in a relationship with daisy and she was catholic and did not believe in divorce and told lies to myrtle to use her as a toy even though myrtle was also using Tom to get to a higher social class for her own benefit even Nick stated that when she was with Tom that she would act like from a higher class when she was with tom. Another example of Tom 's and Daisy 's carelessness is that daisy wanted Gatsby and had her fun with Gatsby for a while, but did not face the consequences when it was time to tell Tom the truth of Daisy and Gatsby and instead ran away. Another reason that tom and daisy are careless is that neither Tom or Tom is also careless because he was with Myrtle and told lies to her that he was going to marry her if Daisy was not a Catholic and believed in divorce, which meant that he could not marry Myrtle which was all a lie.
As a man of high privilege, Tom is considerably able to get away with a lot: “ I couldn’t forgive… they had made…” (179). Rich people often believe and are accustomed to having people clean up their mess. Both Tom and Daisy created a domino affect of issues which affected Gatsby, and both Myrtle and George Wilson. Because Tom has money, he has a the capability or privilege to get away with a lot opposed to people of lower socio-economic status. By moving West, he left others to deal with a the effect of his actions demonstrating, money gives him the approach as being superior and above the people below him. Also, due to the fact Tom and Daisy do not have the best relationship: “That’s what I… ‘Hulking’, insisted Daisy”(12) he is neither getting love or attention from Daisy. Because their relationship isn’t well he looks for affection elsewhere by adopting a mistress, Myrtle Wilson. He and Myrtle have secret relations though everyone seems to know about their secret: “Tom’s got some… Don’t you think?” (15). Much like Daisy, Tom is unhappy with his relationship with Daisy so he cheats on her with Myrtle. He is a coward for thinking no one would suspect they were together, but there is no hiding Tom and Myrtle’s relationship. Toms cheats on her for his own benefit so he can be happy and get affection from a woman who is of different social class and has a contrasting appearance as
Fitzgerald thinks they are inauthentic and destructive to everything and everyone around them. What disgusts him the most is that people like Tom and Daisy seem to be able to cause all this devastation around them and then turn around and walk away without a second thought. Though Tom and Daisy have tried to distance themselves from Gatsby and the culture of new wealth, they can’t escape the attitude of carelessness that has infected the wealthy in this time period. The Roaring 20’s was a time of carefree enjoyment, but what is often looked over is how those who indulged themselves refused to accept the consequences as a result of their actions and instead hid behind their shield of money. The wealthy didn’t see what was actually going on in
She became used to him being unfaithful to her that she suggests to him after leaving him during Gatsby wild party “ and if you want to take down any addresses here’s my little gold pencil” (105). Tom and Myrtle relationship caused problems more in Myrtle life rather than Tom’s because unlike Tom’s wide, Wilson was unaware about her unfaithfulness and reacted way differently by becoming sick. In Nick’s perspective, he explains, “He had discovered that Myrtle had some sort of life apart from him in another world, and the shock had made him physically sick” (124). Wilson behaves in way by having her locked in a room until he gets the car to move away but soon enough for jealousy to strike among Myrtle about Tom and his wife which later causes her death. Her death occurred because of the greatly amount of envy she has towards Daisy and her lifestyle with Tom. The feelings that she felt showed upon her by having “…one emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly developing picture” (124). This single small affair between Tom and Myrtle became something bigger than expected by a heart broken husband, dishonesty, and death among a mistress. This crime is much relatable to many affairs in the world that ends really bad divorces and trust issues from the dishonesty from their significant
Tom Buchanan is arguably the character who possesses the most corrupt set of morals. His actions can be described as “some of the most immoral and senseless actions in the entire novel” (“Ranking…). He cheats on Daisy “simply because he can” (“Ranking…”). This shows that he has no care or regard for anyone but himself. He is going to do what he wants no matter how it affects other people. It is this mindset that causes the deaths of Myrtle, Gatsby, and Mr. Wilson. He knows this, but “he runs away from the entire situation… as if he was never part of it in the first place” (“Ranking…”). He and Daisy mess things up and leave. They go back to their normal, careless life of wealth and leave someone else to fix their mess (Fitzgerald 187-188). Together Tom and Daisy are absolutely incorrigible people with no regard for others.
Nick’s idea of a careless person is someone that destroys everything and just lets others clean it up for them. They are not honest and do whatever it takes to save themselves. It is someone who does everything but the moral thing in a situation.Nick states that, ”...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). Jordan, Tom, and Daisy, are all careless people. They fit Nick’s description thoroughly. All three of them are careless in their own way yet they are carelessness in the same.
As you read on, Daisy’s true character is slowly revealed, and you come to achieve that she is a very careless person. She seems to never care about the consequences of her actions, and this is proven when she is driving home from the city, and hits Myrtle with Gatsby’s car. Unlike most other people, she didn’t even hesitate and just drove home, without a care in the world about what she had done. One of Nick Caraway’s final assessments of Daisy after the accident is that she is very careless. He even says; “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back to 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 187) This quote is proof that people i...
Logically speaking, George Wilson is the one who shot Gatsby out of anger and sadness. His wife was murdered and he wanted someone to pay for what they had done, and rightfully so. It is possible that Gatsby would have never died if Wilson wasn’t egged on by Tom, the one who gave him Gatsby’s name. Tom wanted to protect his guilty wife, so he sent a man in a precarious mental state after an innocent person. Ultimately, Tom Buchanan is to blame for Gatsby’s death because he was motivated by his selfish desires, rather than a need for justice. Both Tom and Daisy hurt people to get what they wanted “and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness… and let other people clean up the mess they had made,” (Fitzgerald 191) just as Wilson acted on Tom’s
George Wilson, who is married to Myrtle, and Tom Buchanan, married to Daisy, are most responsible for Gatsby's death. Wilson went up to Tom asking who owned the yellow car that killed his wife. Tom revealed that it was Gatsby’s car, knowing that Wilson had intentions of killing whoever owned the car, yet Tom didn’t add to the fact that Daisy was driving. Gatsby did have a relationship with Daisy, and Tom knew about it. Tom allowed Daisy to go in Gatsby’s car back to West Egg to prove that he did not care if Daisy and Gatsby were together, had Tom not let Daisy go in Gatsby’s car, both Myrtle and Gatsby would be alive.
"They'll keep out of my way," she insisted. "It takes two to make an accident."
Lying has deadly effects on both the individual who lies and those around them. This concept is demonstrated in The Great Gatsby. Although Gatsby, Tom and Myrtle have different motives for being deceitful, they all lie in order to fulfill their desires and personal needs. Myrtle’s desire to be wealthy is illustrated when she first meets Tom, dressed in his expensive clothing, as her attitude changes when she puts on the luxurious dress and when she encourages Tom to buy her a dog. Tom’s deception is clear when he hides his affair with Myrtle by placing Myrtle in a different train, withholding the truth from Mr. Wilson of the affair and convincing Myrtle and Catherine that he will one day marry Myrtle. Gatsby tries to convince himself and others that he is the son of wealthy people, he creates an appearance that he is a successful, educated man through the books in his library and assures himself that Daisy loves him. Tom’s dishonesty reveals that he is selfish, while Gatsby’s distortions expose his insecurities, and Myrtle’s misrepresentations show that her sole focus in life is to achieve materialistic success. Gatsby and Myrtle both lie in order to obtain the “American dream.” However, Tom, who appears to already have achieved the “American dream”, deceives others out of boredom and because he takes his wealthy lifestyle for granted. F. Scott Fitzgerald demonstrates the human flaw of dishonesty for personal gain and how lies have inevitably tragic consequences in his characterization of Gatsby, Myrtle and Tom.
The passage in which Myrtle Wilson is killed exemplifies the recklessness of Daisy and Tom. Daisy sees Myrtle running out into the road and at first swerves toward the other car and seems to change her mind and just collide with Myrtle and continue on. Afterwards, Tom and Daisy just pack up and leave, without even attending Gatsby’s funeral. Nick seems to think they used their position in society to escape any mess they had gotten themselves into. Later on in the book, Nick says, "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness." That quote supports the way Daisy and Tom acted with the Myrtle incident. In this passage they retreat back into both their money and carelessness by running away.
Although he claims that he is happy with his wife Daisy, he still is having an affair with Myrtle Wilson, a married woman from one of the poorest parts of New York. Because of Myrtle’s low class, Tom orders her to get the drinks for the guests in their New York apartment (32). Later in the night, he breaks her nose when she starts screaming Daisy’s name, which shows that Tom does not really love Myrtle as he is more devoted to protecting his wife’s image. Instead, he uses her to supply mutual satisfaction for himself and Myrtle, but refuses to love her any more than he needs to for the