How Does Jay Gatsby Fall In Love

Many people fall in love every day, however what if the person you’re in love with is completely different than whom you think they are. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby is in love with Daisy Buchanan, but Daisy isn’t the same person Gatsby fell in love with five years ago. He disregards the fact that Daisy is now married, and her personality isn’t the same. Gatsby thinks repeating the past is possible and worthwhile as he strives to pursue Daisy and convince her of his love. Gatsby is simply a romantic idealist who can’t accept the reality that everything changes sooner or later.

Daisy Buchanan is married to Tom Buchanan, who is of an old money family. Before she met Tom, she and Gatsby were in love but Gatsby

He wants to pick up where he and Daisy left off five years ago. He wishes they would fall back in love and start their own family together, but the past can’t be repeated. The past is gone and so is their chance at a relationship. Now that Daisy is a mother and a wife she can’t run away to pick up things with Jay. Gatsby is so desperate to relive his past with Daisy that “he looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand” (Fitzgerald 110). He desperately wants Daisy back, but the past is in the past and cannot be revived. The author “presents it in Gatsby as a romantic baptism of desire for a reality that stubbornly remains out of his sight.” (Bewley) The reality of the situation is that Daisy has moved on and so should Gatsby. He doesn’t understand that the past cannot be brought back, and Daisy isn’t the same person he fell in love with five years ago. She is now older, and more mature with a daughter and husband. Daisy can’t and won’t leave her family for some unrealistic relationship with Gatsby. “Gatsby does not seem to realize that his idea of Daisy, whom he weds with a kiss one summer night, has as little bearing on reality as Jay Gatsby does” (Hermanson). Jay Gatsby is completely unaware of the fact that his vision of Daisy is a mere fantasy and is completely unrealistic. He also has an unrealistic vision of her and the kind

“She exists at the level of Gatsby’s vision of her” (Bewley), and she simply cannot live up to his expectations. “He has thrown himself into a creative passion, adding to it all the time” (Fitzgerald 95). Throughout those five years they spent apart, he has added on to his vision of Daisy making it reach a level of perfection, to which she can’t achieve. Daisy is a wonderful person, but no one can reach the unrealistic expectations for which Gatsby has composed in his mind. . “Gatsby’s sole pleasure lies in trying to win back Daisy in order to fulfill his dream of evoking the same deep feelings he had experienced five years earlier.” (“Desire in The Great Gatsby”) When Daisy and Gatsby got together one day, “there must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams- not through her fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion” (Fitzgerald 95). His standards are impossible for Daisy or anyone to reach. He thinks she will be some perfect person and will exceed all his dreams, but that is not possible. She has no idea he has created this image of her, so she can’t even try to live up to his expectation. Daisy is just being herself hoping it’s enough for Jay. His conjecture “had gone beyond her, beyond everything” (Fitzgerald 95) and now it’s just a fantasy. He kept “decking it out with every