Essay About Relationships In The Great Gatsby

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As is well known, relationships can be complicated, but perhaps the most complicated of them all is marriage. We see this everyday: whether it might be with our relationships, others’ relationships, or relationships in books and movies. It is also strongly demonstrated through F. Scott Fitzgerald’s work from the Roaring 20s, The Great Gatsby. The two primary but thoroughly flawed marriages are the Buchanans’ (Tom and Daisy) and the Wilsons’ (George and Myrtle). The Buchanans, though not in a perfectly happy relationship, are brought together by their similar natures. The Wilsons, in contrast, have a far more distant relationship. Both Daisy and Myrtle find themselves to be unhappy in their relationships, and eventually get caught in affairs. …show more content…

We see a certain closeness appear in the Buchanans’ relationship the night of Myrtle’s death. As Nick looks through the Buchanans’ window, he notices that “They weren’t happy...and yet they weren’t unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together” (153). Even if Tom and Daisy aren 't very happy with each other, they are close and share a kind of “partnership”. They are drawn to each other by nature. On the contrary, Myrtle and Wilson are of completely different personalities and drawn apart. When Nick and Tom visit George’s garage, they meet Myrtle, who “[smiles] slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost [shakes] hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. Then she [wets] her lips and without turning around [speaks] to her husband in a soft, coarse voice: ‘Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down’”(30), to which George agrees and hurriedly goes away. This scene strongly emphasizes the distance between the two; the only time Myrtle talks to George, or even acknowledges him, is when she needs him to do something, to which he responds in the way a servant would to his master. Based on the way they act, we would not expect them to be married for twelve

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