Essay About Love in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

Twisted Love in The Great Gatsby

In the story The Great Gatsby, many of the characters seemed to express what

seemed like love. I tend to disagree with this. Daisy, Tom, Gatsby, and Mertle all express

fake love to their significant others, but didn’t actually feel true love.

Starting with Daisy, she married Tom because all that he had was money. She was

so aristocratic that she wouldn’t marry Gatsby while they were in love after the war. All

that Daisy seemed to care about was having so comfortable of a life that I believe she

forgot what love was until Gatsby showed up again. But this isn’t all true, Daisy was so

impressed by Gatsby’s wealth that her greed once again took over her and she was almost

prepared to leave Tom for Gatsby. Also, I don’t think that she loved her daughter.

Daisy’s daughter was just a little plaything for Daisy’s enjoyment. She never cared for her

and she never really had a social interaction with her daughter.

I don’t think that Tom ever really loved Daisy or Mertle. Tom only loved Daisy

because she was a pretty face and he thought that he deserved her. He didn’t love Mertle

at all. She was just a woman he was having an affair with.

Mertle didn’t love Tom what so ever. She was just impressed by his money. Her

husband was very poor and she wanted the good life. A life where all she had to do all

day was to sit around and drink. She didn’t care for her husband either. He was a hard

working man that was barley getting by running his little gas station. All that she wanted

was more, more, and more.

Gatsby might have been the only character to understand love, besides George

Wilson. Although Gatsby’s interpretation of love was a little twisted. He didn’t love

Daisy for who she was when they met at Nick’s, he loved her for who she used to be. He

just wanted things to be like they used to be between them. What’s ironic about the

situation though is that this can never take place because Daisy now has a child and a

husband to tend for and would have no time for Gatsby.

George Wilson, I believe, was the only character in the book that really loved and