Essay Comparing The Great Gatsby And One Sunday Morning

Love is a broad term. Among the human population, there is a belief that a significant determinant of our happiness depends on whether we feel loved. It is an emotion that has been set to such a high standard that it often results in destruction. In the novels, The Great Gatsby and One Sunday Morning, the characters experience several different types of love. Material love, lustful love and idealised love, which all result in the destruction of themselves and those around them. Scott Fitzgerald and Amy Ephron, through their complex characters, prove that society’s depiction of love is inaccurate. Love is not simply a happy ending. Love creates pain, betrayal and destruction.

In the novel, The Great Gatsby, Tom Buchanan and his wife Daisy

Buchanan share a material love. Their love destroys all of the people around them. Throughout the story, both Tom and Daisy are dissatisfied with their marriage and their lives. To cope with this discontent, Tom has numerous affairs, most recently with Myrtle Wilson, who is also married. Daisy, although in wedlock, reignites a secret relationship with past lover Jay Gatsby, leading him to believe that she will leave her husband and spend her life with him instead. Their affairs created immense pain, and suffering to those around them. Tom, due to his selfish disposition, ended a marriage. Daisy was shown not to be an innocent and brave, but a coward, giving Gatsby empty promises and in the end leaving him. Together, Tom and Daisy, and all of their selfishness resulted in the death of both Myrtle Wilson and Jay Gatsby, with absolutely no consequences. As Nick Carraway observed, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy, they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made...”(Fitzgerald 170). Tom and Daisy stay together not because of true love, but because their marriage makes them more accepted in a high class society; they need each other in order to get what they want.

For Daisy, Tom is financial security and for Tom, daisy is a beauty/status symbol on his arm. And in the end, that is put before anything else. In the novel, One Sunday Morning, The characters Billy Holmes and his fiance, Clara Hart share a similar relationship. Billy, through his actions hurts both himself and his fiance, deeply. It was only three weeks before they were set to be married when Billy Holmes was seen walking out of a hotel with another woman on his arm. Shortly after this he showed up at Clara’s door, looking very disturbed and disheveled. He confessed what he had done, and Clara was destroyed. She spent days locked away in her room, trying to comprehend why her fiance who loves her so much would have done such a thing. During this time Billy had gone missing, however Clara knew where he was hiding. She went with her good friend Mary Nell to find him. She was not there to forgive him, she was there so his family would be able to stop worrying. When she found him he seemed destroyed too, laying on a couch, tear stained cheeks, clearly has not bathed in days. All he does is beg for her

forgiveness, she shuts him down and leaves. Billy is left there with Mary Nell and he says, “If i'm going to go after her I guess I should be better dressed”. That sentence is the foundation of their relationship. They share material love. Clara is a well known socialite, she has status in the big city of New York. Billy, also a socialite, is also very successful. “Billy said that just by being there, they would set a trend. Clara didn't think there was much trendsetting about her, except Billy”( Ephron 26). Their marriage makes them more socially acceptable in a high class, tight knit, New York society where “people talk” (179). And that is why a couple of weeks later, she married him.

Lustful love is a type of love seen very evidently throughout both novels. The characters are coming into conflict with the “liberated spirit of the jazz age”, as Amy Ephron says. In the novel, The Great Gatsby, Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson, share a lustful love. They are both married, but that does not stop them. Tom met Wilson on the train on the way to the city. Myrtle explained, “When we came into the station he was next to me and his white shirt-front pressed against my arm--and so I told him I'd have to call a policeman, but he knew I lied”(Fitzgerald 38). This was their first interaction and it epitomizes their relationship. Tom used Myrtle to satisfy his carnal desires. He took her out for nice dinners and to parties as well, but that was all Tom wanted from the relationship. Myrtle however, was getting something different out of it. More than anything, she wanted to be a part of Toms high class lifestyle. She lusts for a life with high social standing, and money. This was a selfish relationship, on both sides. It hurt Daisy, Toms wife, who knew about it the whole time but stayed silent in order to protect her marriage. It also deeply affected Myrtle's husband, who was devastated when he found out his wife was having an affair. She had been neglecting him for a long time, “She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye”. Their relationship caused difficulty in Tom’s marriage and the destruction of Myrtle's marriage. They hurt everyone around them by being together. Similarly, in the novel, One Sunday Morning, Mary Nell and long time friend Geoffrey Rice begin sharing a lustful love while travelling in France. Throughout their travels, they became closer. Although they were just friends, there was no denying the spark between them. Mary absolutely adored him, but she spent much of her time trying to understand how he felt about her. Their relationship consisted of stolen glances and subtle touching, never any real confrontation. There was a lot of tension and suggestiveness about them. Nearing the end of their trip, Mary Nell felt strongly for Geoffrey and through his actions, he seemed to feel the same way. Days before leaving France, Mary Nell went to visit Lizzie Caswell, to confront her about continuing her affair with Billy Holmes, Mary’s good friend Clara’s husband. While she was there a man bounded in and said, “Darling we should hurry. We’re going to be late”(Ephron 209). Mary was shocked to see that it was Geoffrey Rice. She immediately left, she was destroyed, going over everything in her head again and again. “Mary couldn’t fathom, not at first, that he was calling Lizzie Caswell darling”(209). She realized that all they shared was lustful love.

In the 1920’s, the american dream was all anyone wanted; the idea that an individual can achieve anything if they just work hard enough. This ideal is carried on through relationships and results in nothing but disappointment. In the novel, The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby believes he truly loves Daisy Buchanan. However, what he loves is the idea of who she is and what she represents; beauty and wealth. This is clear in the way he speaks about her, “Her voice was full of money....High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl…”(Fitzgerald 115). Daisy was a beautiful woman who was given status and wealth, something Gatsby had to work very hard for and continues to work hard to maintain. He was not born into old money like Daisy or Tom, or any of the other people living in East Egg, he had to earn it himself. Although Gatsby did seem to have genuine love for Daisy, he had put her on a pedestal, with expectations nobody could live up to. And when she left him and decided to stay with her husband Tom, Gatsby was destroyed, completely heart broken. Daisy to him represented the ideal woman, with her wealth, her status and her beauty, when in reality she was a selfish woman who hid behind her money, capable of destroying all of those around her, if it meant she would be untouched. Comparably, in the novel, One Sunday Morning, Iris Ogleby meets a man by the name of Maurice Chabon on a boat in Paris, France and she immediately falls for his charm and good looks. Right after she meets him, she hurries back to her room to tell her good friend Mary. She talks about him like he puts the stars in the sky. “He already has a pet name for me, ‘Butter cup’, it sounds so funny when he says it with his accent, ‘But-ter-cup’. Do you think you can fall in love that quickly?”( Ephron 133). Iris Ogleby is a hopeless romantic, she is in love with the idea of love. She shares an idealised love with Maurice. Their time together is spent away from home and reality in Paris, France, the city of love. As they spend time together, Iris becomes more and more infatuated. Her friends however, Mary Nell in particular are skeptical and warn her about becoming attached so quickly. While on the train, Mary heard Maurice say to Iris, “To be in love in Paris buttercup..” (Ephron 142), which demonstrates the fantasy that they both are living. Mary responds, “But to be in love anywhere else in the world, that is the true test” (Ephron 143). Maurice calls her a cynic, but she is just in reality. One day Maurice asks Iris to meet him for dinner, and he confesses something he has been keeping from her. He tells her that he has a wife a two sons. Iris was shocked, he lied to her the for the entire time that he knew her. She was destroyed by this, and realized that maybe she really was not aware of who this person in front of her was.

Love is an emotion felt by every individual throughout their lives, experienced in all kinds of ways. Society puts an incredible amount of pressure on the word, expectations that are so unrealistic, that it often leads to pain and destruction. In both novels, the types of love seen were material love between Daisy Buchanan and Tom Buchanan, and Clara Hart and Billy Holmes. Lustful love between Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson, and Mary Nell and Geoffrey Rice. Lastly idealised love between Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby, and Iris Ogleby. All of these relationships share the same trait. The end result of the destruction of themselves and those around them. Proving once again that society’s depiction of love is false.