The Great Gatsby: Tom vs. Gatsby `It’s all about Tom and Gatsby in this book. In The Great Gatsby, Tom and Gatsby are the main character in this book. Tom and Gatsby are different in many way such as the way they make money or the way that they act, but there is similarities such as who they love. Who is the best Tom or Gatsby. Gatsby and Tom are very similar and different in many ways. One way that Gatsby and Tom are similar is that Gatsby and Tom both think that Daisy loves one of them. In Chapter 6, Gatsby states, “Your wife doesn’t love you,’ said Gatsby. ‘She’s never loved you. She loves me”(Fitzgerald 139), while Tom responds, “Daisy loved me when she married me and she loves me now.” (Fitzgerald 140). Both Gatsby and Tom claim that Daisy loves one and not the other. This shows that Gatsby and Tom really believe that Daisy loves one of them. Gatsby and Tom, both say that Daisy love one of them, they argue for the approval of Daisy. …show more content…
In chapter 1 Nick explains that Tom came from a wealthy family. “His family were enormously wealthy.” (Fitzgerald 8). In chapter 6 Gatsby explains the way he got rich. “And it was from Cody that he inherited money—a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars.” (Fitzgerald 108) ”Gatsby himself insist that he found his fortune with Dan Cody” (Moss, Joyce, and George Wilson). ”As a young man, Gatsby learned his way around the law through the mentoring advice of Dan Cody, a miner, drinker, and a gambler.”(Moss, Joyce, and George Wilson.) This explains how Tom and Gatsby are different in the way they became rich. This show how Gatsby and Tom made their money. Gatsby became rich because of Cody, he learned about money and Cody gave him a new beginning. Tom became rich because of his
Tom is the most selfish character because everything he does is in concern for himself. Tom is married to Daisy simply for wealth. After finding out that Daisy wants to be with Gatsby, Tom says, “‘...women run around too much these days to suit me. They meet all kinds of crazy
We like to imagine fictional characters meeting people from our world. It’s a nice little fantasy to imagine what would happen if Emma Watson met Hermione Granger, or if Jane Eyre met Quentin Tarantino.
Tom functions under the illusion that Daisy not only loves him now, but has always loved him and been completely devoted to him. Daisy does admit that she once loved him, but he was not her first choice; Gatsby was. Tom is also under the illusion that Daisy will never leave him. He has an ongoing, almost public affair with Myrtle but still wants to be devoted to Daisy and demands her devotion to him. Tom feels as if he will never lose anything: his money, Daisy, or his social status.
Gatsby realizes that life of the high class demands wealth to become priority; wealth becomes his superficial goal overshadowing his quest for love. He establishes his necessity to acquire wealth, which allows him to be with Daisy. The social elite of Gatsby's time sacrifice morality in order to attain wealth. Tom Buchanan, a man from an "enormously wealthy" family, seems to Nick to have lost all sense of being kind (Fitzgerald 10). Nick describes Tom's physical attributes as a metaphor for his true character when remarking that Tom had a "hard mouth and a supercilious manner...arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face...always leaning aggressively forward...a cruel body...[h]is speaking voice...added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed" (Fitzgerald 11). The wealth Tom has inherited causes him to become arrogant and condescending to others, while losing his morals. Rather than becoming immoral from wealth as Tom has, Gatsby engages in criminal activity as his only path to being rich. His need for money had become so great that he "was in the drug business" (Fitzgerald 95). Furthermore, he lies to Nick about his past in order to cover up his criminal activity. Gatsby claims to others that he has inherited his wealth, but Nick discovers "[h]is parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people" (Fitzgerald 104). Gatsby enters a world where money takes precedence over moral integrity. Materialism has already overshadowed a portion of his spiritual side. A quest for true love is doomed for failure in the presence of immorality. Once wealth has taken priority over integrity, members of the high social class focus on immediate indulgences, rather than on long-term pleasures of life such as love.
Through taking a look at Tom and Gatsby’s personalities, loyalty and lifestyle, it is clear their similarities were very little and their differences were evident and many. The wealthy of the roaring twenties did not turn out to be all the same, rather very different. Tom and Gatsby turned out to be true foils of each other. It is evident that one cannot be judged by the stereotypes pertaining to their class as everyone is very different from one another. To conclude, although Tom and Gatsby were different, their goal was Daisy, however Gatsby died for Daisy while Tom simply took her as a trophy. It is sad to see someone as disloyal as Tom taking Daisy at the end but that just comes to show how life is never in favour of the good guy.
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.
Another theme of “The Great Gatsby” is the idea of new and old money and how that affects who society thinks you should be with. Society in all of these texts has a great influence on why couples or lovers find it so hard to express and show or maintain their love.... ... middle of paper ... ... Fitzgerald has shown this with the differences between Gatsby and Tom. Tom is all about representing old money and inheriting his fortune alongside the old dynamics of American society, while Gatsby is representing the new money and the new change in society.
One of the main characters that is an influence to Gatsby’s ambition is one of his good friends, Dan Cody. Most people can say that Dan Cody was one of Gatsby’s leading inspirations when he was growing up. When Gatsby was seventeen years old he had no money and had no clue what his future held, but then he meet Dan Cody, who was very wealthy man and earned his money by mining silver. Dan Cody was motivated to transform Gatsby so that he would have a future and become rich. Dan Cody took Gatsby for five years to achieve this. Before Cody and Gatsby met, the author described how Gatsby would get any job and work anytime just to get food and shelter “ he had been beating his way along the south shore of Lake Superi...
Tom did nothing to Gatsby to force him into taking his wife away from him. Gatsby has an unconditional love for Daisy which
The way that Gatsby becomes rich is in a way the demise of his dream. Gatsby becomes wealthy by participating in organized crime, including distributing illegal alcohol and trading in stolen securities. Daisy eventually learns about this and it is one of the reasons she will never again be with Gatsby.... ... middle of paper ... ...
The characters that are brought to life in Fitzgerald’s 1920’s love story The Great Gatsby each have many traits making them their own person, yet some of these traits can be found in more than one character. Each character is described in such a way that as you read the novel each one becomes a real person in your mind. As you begin reading the story there are some characters that you want to see succeed, while there are others that you want to see get what’s coming to them. Although you may feel one way about a charter at the begin of the novel, throughout the story, the charters change and may lead to a change in opinions of them. What do these characters have in common and how are they different?
In the book, one of the main things about the past is how Gatsby got his finances. We find out he was actually born James Gats, was intricsic without cash, and was drafted in Ww1. When he comes back for Daisy, something gets mixed up with Oxford University. He makes Nick believe that he went to do academic studies there, but we find out that he went to endeavor as a janitor. Then he met Dan Cody, who was filthy rich, who promised him that he could inherit all him money. However, Dan Cody's wife ends up inheriting the money. So, how did Gatsby get his money? We know that this book was written in the 1920s because of the advertences it makes such as those of the flappers, the world series of 1919, and the American Dream. Mr. Wolfsheim is a very apprehensive working partner of Gatsby's. By the end of the book, we see that Gatsby is actually a bootlegger, and this is how he got money. In conclusion, Gatsby's life is a mystery for most of the book. However, by the end we know the factualness of his
Now, Tom’s money is from generations of his wealthy family, which had been passed on to him. Gatsby money is self-made wealth; he acquired his money by doing something for it. In the book they both show there wealth in different ways Tom does not show it as much as Gatsby. The wealth does make Tom thinking he is better than everyone by saying, “Now don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I’m a stronger and more of men than you are.”(Fitzgerald 7) It is showing that he thinks he is more important and knows more because he has money than the other people. Tom is very arrogant with his money and he lets better know about it in many ways. Even though Tom thought he was better than everyone he did not get his money by doing the things Gatsby has done. Jay Gatsby liked to show off his money by throwing big parties and having many cars (Fitzgerald). He wanted people to know that he had money and liked to entertain hoping one day Daisy would come to his party. Another reason that shows that Gatsby liked to show off his money is he threw those parties which added to the carelessness of the time with money (Novel guide). If Gatsby did not want people to know about his wealth he would not have had parties every week. Another quote that adds to Gatsby’s carelessness is, “Every Friday five crates of
As Tom and Gatsby’s fight begins, Gatsby is telling Tom that Daisy never loved him when Daisy shockingly interjects and says, “Even alone I can’t say I never loved Tom” (Fitzgerald, 140). Gatsby thinking that Daisy and Tom’s love is fake, tries to tell Tom about how she doesn’t love him. Tom, knowing this is wrong, ignores the comment and goes directly after Daisy’s heart reminding her of the times that she felt their love was real. This comes into play later in the chapter when Tom starts to take the lead in the fight.While Tom and Gatsby battle it out in the apartment, Tom realizes that he has finally topped Gatsby and in a smart remark he says, “Go on he won’t annoy you. I think he realizes that his presumptuous little flirtation is over”(Fitzgerald, 142). Gatsby realizes his dream of winning Daisy back has come to a screeching halt when Tom lays down the law and shows Daisy that he is indeed better for her than Gatsby
How many times do you think about what a book truly means through symbolism? Many books around the world use symbolism to bring a whole new meaning to a story, and The Great Gatsby is no different. Symbolism in books are a key part any story writer needs to know how to use. F. Scott Fitzgerald does just that as he knows symbolism is a key part to any story.