Significance Of Masks In The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby's Mask

Masks offer people the ability to be someone else and hide the person they truly are. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, there are many characters that hide behind masks. The characters I have chosen to focus on are Jay Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan, and Tom Buchanan.

Gatsby is a character in the novel that hid behind different masks almost his whole life. Masks provided him with an escape from his unglamorous upbringings. Jay Gatsby pretends to be an amazing business man, a picture of wealth. In reality he is the son of poor farmers from North Dakota named James Gatz. He was first offered a mask from Dan Cody, a wealthy ship captain. He taught Gatsby how to perfect his mask by teaching him how to act the

part of a wealthy man. He taught him how to dress, act, and carry himself. Gatsby was also offered another mask when he was a soldier. His uniform made it impossible to tell he was a poor farm boy from North Dakota. When he met Daisy she found security in this mask, being that she was with a soldier. He then created great wealth for himself, another mask, when he got out of the army. Everyone saw him as a rich, mysterious man who threw great parties that everyone wanted to attend. He made himself this popular, amazing mask so he could have Daisy (Fitzgerald 155).
Daisy is a rich girl, and although she never had to wear a mask to gain popularity she did have to wear one in order to live a comfortable life with Tom.

Her mask hid the fact that she loved Gatsby, it revealed a perfectly happy girl that was perfectly fine with the life she had with Tom. When she sees that Gatsby has now created wealth for her and himself she regrets ever creating a mask to hide true love in the first place. It is obvious to see this, in the scene where Gatsby is throwing his expensive shirts down to her, from the balcony in his mansion (Fitzgerald 97). She falls in love with his house as if it were her own and is reminded of the life she could have had with Gatsby. She also wears a mask to keep up her reputation of being a fantasy girl when she remains happy to her guests when the phone rings to Tom. She puts on this mask, because she doesn’t want to be saw as the wife that gets cheated. Jordan describes her as she wants to remain the happy rich girl she’s been her whole life. This mask is tore off in the scene where Gatsby asks Daisy to confess her love for him. She doesn’t want to admit she never loved Tom, but does admit she was mad about the ‘scandal’ in Chicago which is why they left Chicago (Fitzgerald 139). She breaks down and everyone sees that she isn’t okay with Tom having all these

affairs.
Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s husband, wears many masks.

He wears a mask of being a family man, when in reality he doesn’t pay attention to his family at all. He has a mistress in New York named Myrtle and he goes to see her often, but wears a mask to disguise the fact that he isn’t a great husband and family man. In the scene were Gatsby wants Daisy to tell Tom she never loved him Tom puts on a mask of being a of loving Daisy so much and he tells her that, but he actually cheats on her all the time with more than one women (Fitzgerald 139). It’s proven that he has had more than one affair when they are in the apartment with Gatsby, Nick, Jordan, and Daisy brings up Chicago (Fitzgerald 139). Tom also wears a mask of being an amazing rich man that has everything he could ever want to have. In reality he doesn’t have everything and he isn’t happy and you can see this in his jealousy of Gatsby and in the affairs he has showing he’s not completely happy with

Daisy.
The novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald we are shown many masks that hide many realities. The characters Jay Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan, and Tom Buchanan all wear masks. The novel illustrated the dark realities that can come from pretending to be someone you’re not and hiding behind a mask.