In total, Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby are very similar characters, with only one major difference. In The Great Gatsby, the novel primarily follows Jay Gatsby's mission to reunite with his lover, Daisy Buchanan, from years ago. With the novel written from the perspective of a mediator, Nick Carraway, one is able to see the truth behind both Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan characters. When one arranges their two journeys throughout the novel, one can see that these characters' true selves and facades can be deemed alike. While Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby had different upbringings, it is undeniable that both shared many of the same emotions about certain things. Both Gatsby and Tom were strongly determined to have Daisy as their own. This caused both men to become grossly possessive over Daisy and …show more content…
With this, Gatsby holds a different facade from Tom. Tom is allowed to be a loud and aggressive person because of the position he holds in his social class. However, for Gatsby, he must be more cordial and therefore conceal the majority of his identity from his social class. Since Gatsby has to defend his wealth and is an overall mystery to other wealthy people, Daisy is going to be more inclined to stay with Tom because of the important status he holds. Once Gatsby’s past was uncovered, it was clear that Tom and Gatsby had very different lives and were under different circumstances when meeting Daisy. While Tom gained his wealthy status from domestic ties, Gatsby had to dedicate many years of his life to achieving his dream. Even then, Gatsby still had to use unethical methods, such as bootlegging, in order to live his dream. Gatsby’s meeting Daisy can only be explained by chance. There would have been no way for Gatsby and Daisy to meet, knowing that they were members of different social
Jeffery Myers, a highly credible writer and analyst, writes, “Gatsby.naively believes he can repeat.the past. Not satisfied to win Daisy’s love, he unrealistically insists that she also deny her former love for Tom and return to the pristine virginity she possessed when Gatsby first met her” (35). Alas, the events of the evening aren’t in Gatsby’s favor. By making justified speculations and personal jabs, Tom exposes Gatsby’s hidden bootlegging business to Daisy, who strongly rejects such reckless and illegal activity. This revelation is a major setback in Gatsby’s plan to convince Daisy to abandon Tom in order to be with him.
Shannon L. Alder once said, “If you want to discover the true character of a person, you have only to observe what they are passionate about.” There are many ways to see the truth about a person whether it is through what they do or how they act. True colors often show when people least expect it and many would be surprised. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, “The Great Gatsby”, Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby may seem like very similar people, but there is more than meets the eye.
It is commonly believed that all those who are wealthy adhere to a similar set of values, characteristics and have similar lifestyles. Fitzgerald provides the reader a clear view through the eyes of Nick Caraway of the differences and similarities that can be found between wealthy people in the roaring Twenties. Two characters that are very important to the story are Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan. Fitzgerald created two purposefully different characters- one that is easily despised, the other that although not perfect, is likeable- and united them in their love for money, the power that comes with it , and their haunt for the ultimate prize – Daisy. In this essay, we will compare Tom and Gatsby in several areas, including personality, loyalty, and life style so we can come to the conclusion whether or not they are perfect foils of each other or not. Tom and Gatsby bare little similarities and their differences are evident.
When he first meets Daisy, Gatsby becomes infatuated with his idea of her, or rather, the false persona that she creates of herself. In fact, Gatsby reveals that “she was the first ‘nice’ girl he had ever known” (155). Gatsby was so impressed with Daisy mainly because of her wealth and her status; it is what he wants. However, Daisy chooses Tom Buchanan over Gatsby, solely because of his social status. As a result, Gatsby revolves his whole life around her: he becomes wealthy, creates a new image of himself, and buys a house across the bay from Daisy. For instance, he fabricates lies about how “ [he is] the son of some wealthy people in the middle-west” (69) and how “ [he] was brought up in America but educated at Oxford” (69) in order to impress her. These lies end up altering others’ perspectives of him - not necessarily in a positive way - and impacting his life as a whole. Daisy unwittingly transforms Gatsby into a picture-perfect image of the 1920s: lavish parties, showy cars, and a false illusion of the attainment of the American Dream. Despite Gatsby’s newfound wealth and success, he never fully accomplishes his dream: to get Daisy. Gatsby’s final act for the sake of Daisy has no impact on her feelings towards him. When Gatsby claims that he crashed into Myrtle and killed her, Daisy carelessly lets him do so, which ultimately results in his death. To make
The novel The Great Gatsby displays deceitfulness in many of its characters. The deceit brings many of the characters to their downfall. Gatsby had the greatest downfall of them all due to the fact it took his life. In The Great Gatsby , “ Gatsby goes to spectacular lengths to try to achieve what Nick calls ‘his incorruptible dream’ to recapture the past by getting Daisy Buchannan love” (Sutton). Gatsby always had an infatuation with Daisy, Jordan Baker said,”Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay” (Fitzgerald 83). Gatsby and Daisy did have a past together. While Jordan was golfing, “The Officer looked at Daisy while she was speaking in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at sometime[…]His name was Jay Gatsby and I didn’t lay eyes on him for over four years-even after I’d met him in long island I didn’t realize it was the same man” (Fitzgerald 80). Daisy is now in an abusive relationship with Tom Buchannan, “Nick Carraway attends a small publicly blames Tom for the bruise on her knuckle” (Sutton). When they meet again Gatsby showers Daisy with love and affection, wanting her to leave her husband Tom, but she does not want to in their society. Tom and Gatsby get into an argument and tom tells Daisy about Gatsby’s bootlegging that brought him to his riches. Tom yelled, “He a...
Daisy Buchanan, this woman is crazy, uncaring, and many would argue cold hearted. She is married to Tom and yet, has an affair with Gatsby. Tom is her husband, a very well-off man that goes off and has affairs, and never attempts to hide the fact. Then there is Gatsby. Ah, Gatsby. The young man she was so in love with as a teenage girl. Tom and Gatsby have many similarities; from the fact that both Tom and Gatsby want Daisy all to themselves to the fact that they both love her. While they share many similarities they have far more numerable differences between them. The differences range from how they treat her to how rich they and what social class they are in, to the simple fact that Tom lives in “East Egg” and Gatsby in “West Egg.” Both the similarities and differences between these two men are what ultimately cause Daisy to believe that she is in love with Tom more than she is with Gatsby.
He never wanted to give up on her, so he tried to recreate their past in hopes of rekindling a love they once had. “Gatsby's gospel of hedonism is reflected in his house, wild parties, clothing, roadster, and particularly in his blatant wooing of another man's wife. Daisy, a rather soiled and cheapened figure, is Gatsby's ultimate goal in his concept of the American dream. However, he falls victim to his own preaching. He comes to believe himself omniscient-above the restrictions of society and morality. His presumption extends to a belief that he can even transcend the natural boundaries placed upon human beings. He will win back Daisy by recapturing the past” (Pearson). Gatsby lies about his lifestyle including the parties, clothing, and almost all of the other aspects he reveals about himself, to impress his teenage love, Daisy, who also happens to be Tom’s wife. He believes he can win Daisy back from her husband by throwing lavish parties, and putting on a deceitful lifestyle in an attempt to lead her in believing he qualified to be one of the elite. “The book's chief characters are blind, and they behave blindly. Gatsby does not see Daisy's vicious emptiness, and Daisy, deluded, thinks she will reward her gold-hatted lover until he tries to force from her an affirmation she is too weak to make. Tom is blind to his hypocrisy; with "a short deft movement" he breaks Myrtle's nose for daring to mention the
For example, after Daisy speaks to Nick, the man in which she gave a look that there was no one else in the world that she wanted to see, he realizes her insincerity in all she had claims the paragraph before; he feels as if he is part of a trick. This scene foreshadows her practically tricking Gatsby into believing she will leave Tom to be with him, in which this desertion of Tom does not occur. Furthermore, Daisy’s smirk to Nick seemed to him “as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged”. This explanation reveals that Daisy and Tom are joined by their ample wealth as a result of them having an esteemed and respectable place in society (old money); therefore they look down on others below themselves, such as Gatsby, who have to earn their money. Consequentially, for this reason, Daisy chooses to remain with Tom
Apparently being wealthy is not all Gatsby wants, but also wants love from Daisy. He loves her so much he wants her to break Tom’s heart and come with him. This man is clever and cold hearted like Lord Voldemort and Sauron. Jordan glanced at Nick and told him in a calm tone, “Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay” (Fitzgerald 78). Gatsby’s way of being in love with Daisy is to be a creepy stalker, never giving her space and always spying on her.
The reader sees how much Gatsby wishes for Daisy and their past relationship, but Tom has become an issue through his wealth, power, and social status. Gatsby knows that he has to eclipse Tom’s appeal to Daisy in some way and that he would need money for this. This gets him into the illegal actions of bootlegging. In the end of the novel, the reader realizes the sign...
Many aspects of Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby are polar opposites. They grew up differently, they look at life from vastly diverse views, and they treat people contrarily. Their commonalities lie in their wealth and their connection to Daisy, although they differ in many aspects there as well. At the end of The Great Gatsby, Tom gets to keep living his privileged lifestyle and he still has Daisy while Gatsby is left dead and betrayed.
Gatsby started off as a poor man who has to struggle through life. The only nice clothes that he has is his army uniform, which Daisy, his girlfriend enjoys when he wears she thinks that he looks nice. Gatsby is in love with Daisy and she is in love with him but because he was so poor they cannot get married. To survive Gatsby has to join the army and when he goes to war Daisy marries Tom, a rich stockbroker from New York, who gives Daisy a life of luxury. The problem, unbeknown to Daisy is that he is cheating on her. When Gatsby returns from battle he notices that Daisy has married a rich man and after realizing that Daisy was after Tom’s money Gatsby figures that the only way to get her back is by becoming rich himself. Once Gatsby has his dream of being rich he makes it his goal in life…to fulfill the needs of Daisy and marry her. Although luring ones wife into marrying yourself is not polite, it does make Gatsby great because it takes a strong willed man to make a life goal and stick to it
...her and didn’t stop to think about the consequences he may have from the affair and his actions led to bad karma. Along with all this, he had been lying to Daisy about how he had all his wealth. Tom revealed to Daisy that Gatsby “bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter . . .I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him” (178). Although at that point Gatsby didn’t seem to care much about Daisy hearing the truth but her thoughts differed. His whole plan to have her all to himself backfired, leaving Daisy back with Tom.
In the first part of the book Gatsby throws a number of large parties, hoping Daisy will come to one of them so he can pursue her. Unsuccessful, he manipulates Nick into arranging a meeting between himself and Daisy. Nick has Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby for tea. Subsequently, Gatsby invites them to go for a ride with him. Thereafter, Gatsby tries to drive a wedge between Daisy and Tom, but though she claims to love him, her love is as superficial as the image Gatsby has created with his money.
Gatsby believes in the aforementioned "American Dream." Thus, Gatsby believes that money alone will allow him to enter the upper class. However, the unspoken truth of the "American Dream" is that class mobility requires money and the culture typical of the upper class. Gatsby becomes wealthy, but his lack of this culture prevents him from fulfilling his goal of social mobility. Writer Andrew B. Trigg discusses Gatsby 's inability to climb the social ladder: "culture provides a barrier to entering the top echelons of the leisure class" (Trigg.) Throughout The Great Gatsby, Gatsby 's lack of taste is evident, which leads to the upper class 's rejection of him. Gatsby repeatedly displays his wealth in excessive ways. Gatsby throws extravagant parties, buys flamboyant clothes, and purchases an opulent car and mansion. Throughout the novel, these displays of wealth are met by criticism from those that Gatsby is trying to impress. Tom Buchanan, Daisy 's husband, and a man of inherited wealth, detests Gatsby. In Chapter seven, Tom frequently criticizes Gatsby for his gaudy displays of wealth. First, Tom criticizes Gatsby 's car: " 'Come on, Daisy, ' said