Money or Love: A theme paper over The Great Gatsby

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What is more important to you love or money and financial security? This theme plays out a lot in The Great Gatsby. Readers are constantly left wondering what certain characters are going to do. One of those characters is Daisy. We are also waiting to see what she is going to do such as if she will finally leave Tom for Gatsby. In the end however, we find out that Daisy was for the most part just worried about money. When Daisy has a child she tells Nick that she was so happy when she had a daughter and that she hoped her daughter would be foolish and beautiful. When Daisy finds out that Gatsby got his money illegally she says that she still loves Tom. Then When Gatsby gets murdered she doesn’t even have the decency to show up to the funeral. Fitzgerald helps us develop the theme people try to find love in each other but instead they usually find love in money.
Daisy wants her daughter to be beautiful and foolish so that way her daughter can find a husband. On page 17 Daisy and Nick are having a conversation about when Daisy had her daughter. She was very happy that the baby was a girl. She tells Nick that she hopes that her little girl is a fool then she says, “that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool”. All Daisy really wants for her little girl is to be like that so she can marry a rich man. Nick explains to the readers in a few paragraphs after that, still on page 17, that it is a different society that Daisy is in. He says “ as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged”. Daisy knows that she lives in a different type of society. The woman basically does nothing and she wants the same thing for her daughter.
If Daisy really had lo...

... middle of paper ...

...y have truly loved Gatsby at some point, perhaps when she met him in college, but now that she has grown all she cares about is money and finical security. She even says that she loves Gatsby and that she is going to leave Tom. Yes, Gatsby could have given all the money he had and finical security but since he didn’t earn his money in a legal way it is just not the same. Daisy wishes the same thing for her daughter. She thinks that the only way her daughter will be able to accomplish this is for her daughter to be beautiful and foolish. If you truly love someone you would attend his or her funeral, in this case Gatsby’s. The only person who I feel was truly in love was Gatsby. All these points that I have talked about help prove Fitzgerald’s theme that people try to find love in each other but instead they usually find love in money.

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The Great Gatsby

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