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Psychology of infidelity
What is the importance of character development in literature
Psychology of infidelity
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The Character of Tom Buchanan
In a world where wealth determines power, the character, Tom Buchanan, is an exemplary model of the American dream and how it is unattainable. Tom Buchanan represents a lifestyle in which many Americans live today, a lifestyle becoming increasingly more popular in modern times. Especially in today’s society, infidelity is becoming more and more acceptable to each generation. F. Scott Fitzgerald could see this happening in the society around him, and, in turn, created the character, Tom Buchanan, in “The Great Gatsby” to illustrate that ideology that was slowly becoming acceptable in today’s society and portray it in its true and repulsive form.
Tom Buchanan’s characteristics were fabricated to mimic those in society
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who decide against treating their significant other with the respect and love that he or she deserves. In the novel, Tom was never content with just having the wife that he swore he loved, so he began to have an affair with his mechanic’s wife. He never exhibited any remorse for his infidelity, and it was implied through Daisy’s, his wife’s, accusations on page 131: “Do you know why we left Chicago? I’m they didn’t treat you to the story of that little spree.”. She says this quote to her cousin in an attempt to get her husband to feel some remorse for his cheating or at least to convince him to allow her to leave him for Gatsby. Her attempts fail, and he fights even more to keep her as his own. Even though Daisy uses a term with a less harsh connotation to mimic Tom’s verbal evasion of his actions, it is clearly portrayed to the reader that Tom has been unfaithful before and continues to refuse to be monogamous yet won’t give her a say in the matter. F.
Scott Fitzgerald designed Tom Buchanan in an effort to showcase the absurd idea that society is conforming to-- the idea that being unfaithful to a significant other is morally justifiable. Fitzgerald was not naive when it came to the people around him, and he uses his writings to allude to the major problems that society faces. Statistics drawn have shown that infidelity has increasingly been becoming more popular, especially with the younger generations. This page about the “truth about deception” found that cheating is more common for those under thirty and is becoming more popular in modern times due to the increasing amount of younger members of society having numerous amounts of sexual relationships before marriage. Not only was F. Scott Fitzgerald able to accurately illustrate a growing problem through his character, Tom Buchanan, but he was also able to portray through this character just how few cheaters actually leave their original relationships that were unsatisfying to them. According to a study completed by the Pennsylvania State University, it was found that those who cheat in the relationship were less likely to leave the relationship while those who discovered that his or her partner was unfaithful were more likely. Tom fits these facts well-- even though he is thirty in the timeline of “The Great Gatsby”, his relationship with Myrtle Wilson was said in the novel to have been going on for some time, and he had also confessed in being in other affairs before. Even though he knew his actions and how it was hurting his wife, he still refused to leave her or let her leave him when she found a man who would give her the love she
wanted. While Fitzgerald represented, through his characters, the unfaithfulness of the world around him and made his readers hate those same characters by the end, he pushed Tom Buchanan as the worst of them; he pushed him as the hypocrite of society. He becomes controlling as he refuses to let Daisy mimic his actions, and, to make matters worse, he confesses he has cheated, is cheating, and will likely cheat on her again, showing to her that he feels no remorse and has no respect for her. Tom’s actions are very similar to those which many people are doing today with a similar mindset. For whatever reason, these people have convinced themselves that their actions are morally acceptable and refuse to see it in its true light, but F. Scott Fitzgerald could. It was his rational view on these relationships that spawned the character many readers grew to hate-- Tom Buchanan. Works Cited Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. London: Penguin, 2000. Print. "Researchers Study Effects of Infidelity on Long-term Relationships." Phys.org - News and Articles on Science and Technology. Web. 07 Mar. 2017. "Truth About Deception." Truth About Deception. Web. 07 Mar. 2017.
Scott Fitzgerald represent the american dream in the great Gatsby is Tom and daisy buchanan.daisy used to love Gatsby before she met Tom,but Gatsby was too por to get married.daisy married Tom buchanan just for his prestige in the upper class and his wealthy “I know you didn’t mean to, but you did do it. That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a ——”(F. Scott Fitzgerald, page 12).diasy nkow that Tom is cheating on her but she is not willing to leave him because of their prestige “Daisy cannot break away from Tom, particularly after she learns that Gatsby’s wealth comes from racketeering”(Burnam).Tom and Daisy are the one represented for Gatsby death and myrtle,and messing everyone live up.but the simply just move out and forget about everyone else.”I couldn 't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made (Page 179).Tom money shield him from being in any danger.he didn 't have to work for it he just inherited from his family when they
In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald displays Tom Buchanan as a significant character in his novel. Being a former Yale football player, Tom is blonde-haired, muscular, typically referred to as a “brute of a man” (Boyne 12), and around thirty years old. He was raised in an extremely wealthy family and owns an extravagant mansion in East Egg. As a result, Tom believes he is superior over society and allowed to abuse his wife, Daisy. Looking through the eyes of arrogance and racism, Buchanan views the white race as dominate and feels as if it will be diminished if other ethnic groups and cultures become popular. Although he claims to love Daisy, he owns a secret apartment that contains another mistress awaiting him in New York City and only
However, Fitzgerald does not write Gatsby as a bad person who embodies all that is wrong with western capitalism. Instead, Fitzgerald portrays Gatsby as a good man who was victim of the qualities ingrained in him by an imperfect ideological system. It is this distinction which makes Fitzgerald’s argument all the more potent, and his audience’s ability to mourn Gatsby as a tragic figure all the more important. Whereas Fitzgerald’s opinion of Gatsby may otherwise have been misconstrued as a negative one, the scene of Gatsby’s funeral clearly conveys the character of Gatsby as a tragic and sorrowful one. The character of Gatsby and Fitzgerald’s commentary on the logical fallacies of the American Dream are closely intertwined, which is why Fitzgerald goes to such great lengths to separate the two.
Through the use of symbolism and critique, F. Scott Fitzgerald is able to elucidate the lifestyles and dreams of variously natured people of the 1920s in his novel, The Great Gatsby. He uses specific characters to signify diverse groups of people, each with their own version of the “American Dream.” Mostly all of the poor dream of transforming from “rags to riches”, while some members of the upper class use other people as their motivators. In any case, no matter how obsessed someone may be about their “American Dream”, Fitzgerald reasons that they are all implausible to attain.
Tom Buchanan and George Wilson have plenty in common with their attitude pertaining towards women in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald throughout the entire novel gives the audience an insight on his thoughts about the nature of man. Fitzgerald portrays men often treating women harshly throughout his novel. For example, there are many violent acts towards women, a constant presence of dominance, and also ironically Tom and Georges over reactions to being cheated on.
In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald shows that a materialistic mindset will corrupt the chance at true love. Gatsby tried to get Daisy to love him again by showing off his money and failed because he didn’t put his heart and self into their relationship. Myrtle mistakenly married a man whom she thought was wealthy and turned out he was poor. She quickly attempted to evade their marriage, but then had an affair with Tom Buchanan, a well known rich man. Fitzgerald demonstrates how none of these relationships worked out because of the materialistic ways of these characters. Finally, this theme is explored because it proves how true love isn’t real with fake values. True love should be two people who love each other unconditionally and is not based on money-oriented things.
Gatsby plays the god-like character in this book so his means are good but both him and Myrtle do bad things to get higher in a crowd that will never take them in. To make themselves appear better to the other crowd, they lose some of the moral fiber that was there to begin with. (Fitzgerald, -page 83) Loss of morals in the 1920' in America caused the American dream to vanish. The god-like character of the book was a good person but he did bad things like bootlegging and joining in organized crime. Affairs happened in the elite crowd between Tom and Myrtle.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's most famous novel, The Great Gatsby (1925), is about many things that have to do with American life in the "Roaring Twenties," things such as the abuse of alcohol and the pursuit of other pleasures, including that elusive entity, the "American dream." Mainly it is the story of Jay Gatsby, told by Gatsby's friend and neighbor, Nick Carraway, a bonds salesman in New York. Three other important characters are Daisy Buchanan, Tom Buchanan, and Myrtle Wilson. Nick is distantly related to Daisy, whose wealthy husband, Tom, went to college with Nick. Myrtle is married to a mechanic but is sleeping with Tom. Fitzgerald's novel seems to affirm the Biblical adage that the love of money is the root of all evil, for his characters value money inordinately. And this attitude is a central moral concern of the novel. Fitzgerald's characters erroneously believe money can buy them love, friends, and happiness.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was a romantic character in both his fiction life and his real life and “…was perhaps the last notable writer to affirm the Romantic fantasy, descended from the Renaissance, of personal ambition and heroism, of life committed to, or thrown away for, some ideal of self"(Voegeli). The inspiration for The Great Gatsby came from the experience Fitzgerald had with a Jewish bootlegger and his symbolism for the book is “never more ingenious than in his depiction of the bankruptcy of the old agrarian myth” (Trask). The realization that America had been changed and transformed into a new world arose. America has become a new world with a new set of traditional beliefs. The beliefs were onset by the growing fields of industrialization and urbanization. America is now a place in which “a revolution in manners and morals was inevitable” (Trask). The trend of this new life style and tradition was reinforced by World War 1 and the writers critiqued the traditional faiths. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald paints a story about love and intrigue. He shows the possibility of movement between the different social classes during the Roaring Twenties in the United States. The American dream was the thought that people who had talent in the 'land of opportunity' could gain success if they followed a set of well-defined behavioral rules. During this time period, Americans believed that satisfaction would automatically follow success. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald raises many important political questions: "What does it mean to live well, and on what terms people can live together?” and it shows America's thoughts and answers to these essential questions (Voegeli). These questions are referring to the different social classes and be...
The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, perfectly symbolizes many emerging trends of the 1920’s. More importantly, the character of Jay Gatsby is depicted as a man amongst his American dreams and the trials he faces in the pursuit of its complete achievement. His drive to acquire the girl of his dreams, Daisy Buchanan, through gaining status and wealth shows many aspects of the author's view on the American dream. Through this, one can hope to disassemble the complex picture that is Fitzgerald’s view of this through the novel. Fitzgerald believes, through his experiences during the 1920’s, that only fractions of the American Dream are attainable, and he demonstrates this through three distinct images in The Great Gastby.
On one level The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald comments on the careless gaiety and moral decadence of the period in which it was set. It contains innumerable references to the contemporary scene. The wild extravagance of Gatsby's parties, the shallowness and aimlessness of the guests and the hint of Gatsby's involvement in crime all identify the period and the American setting. But as a piece of social commentary The Great Gatsby also describes the failure of the American dream, from the point of view that American political ideals conflict with the actual social conditions that exist. For whereas American democracy is based on the idea of equality among people, the truth is that social discrimination still exists and the divisions among the classes cannot be overcome. Myrtle's attempt to break into the group to which the Buchanans belong is doomed to fail. Taking advantage of her vivacity, her lively nature, she seeks to escape from her own class. She enters into an affair with Tom and takes on his way of living. But she only becomes vulgar and corrupt like the rich. She scorns people from her own class and loses all sense of morality. And for all her social ambition, Myrtle never succeeds in her attempt to find a place for herself in Tom's class. When it comes to a crisis, the rich stand together against all outsiders.
The Great Gatsby was a major success in Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald’s writing career. With more failures than successes, Fitzgerald’s determination to achieve a best seller had become a reality by reason of The Great Gatsby published 1996. The novel is written with many twists and hidden mysteries. Nick Carraway, a young and said to be attractive man, finds himself mentally captivated by Jay Gatsby, his neighbor who is seen to live this wild lifestyle. Carraway receives an invitation to one of Gatsby’s parties. Intrigued by Gatsby’s ambitious lifestyle, Nick attends. Although seeming to be wild and overwhelming, he realizes something about this atmosphere seems phony. Nobody knew the real Gatsby; most guests couldn’t identify him if he was standing right next to him. Taken back by all that is happening around him, Nick is determined to find this Gatsby everyone speaks so highly about, but no one really knew. Further on Gatsby’s side, his heart ached for Daisy Buchanan. Married to Tom Buchanan with a child, it was not as easy to love him as it was for him to love her. Gatsby truly believed Daisy never loved Tom, and pressed for her to admit it throughout the novel. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald highlights the concept of the cliché upper class living in the 1920’s along with the act of illegal importing; this thematic structure of the text parallels the concept of the American Dream and hustling in current popular culture and for this reason the text is a classic still read and respected today.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was an unknown author who only received great acclaim for his book The Great Gatsby after his passing. He was always a keen believer that the pursuit of a dream was much more rewarding than the achievement. In this novel, Nick Carraway recounts the tale of James Gatz’s a poor farmer’s son’s transition to Jay Gatsby an affluent grandiose man. Gatz unlike the other central characters is new money. He overcame the conditions that he was born into. His parents were mere farmers but he has been able to reinvent himself both figuratively and literally. His achievements cannot be dismissed because of such factors as luck or wealth. The medal of honor Gatsby earns from serving in the war and the mansion he owns on West Egg are a consequence of his enduring persistence. Although Gatsby’s objectification of women is displeasing, this novel is considered a great American novel because it convinces its readers, at least briefly, of Niccolò Machiavelli’s ideal that "the ends justify the means." Gatsby transcendes the wealth gap through dealings with alcohol, gains fame, buys a mansion across from his Daisy’s house all in aggregate to be with Daisy Buchanan once again. His perseverance and his rise to fame and riches from nothing are the keystone of the American Dream.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, “The Great Gatsby”, identities and knowledge about a person are very important in the novel. One character that has a depth to his identity is Tom Buchanan. On the surface, Tom has the appearance of a respectable, wealthy person; however, studying the novel closer brings out the self-evident truth that this is not Tom’s identity. Throughout the course of the novel, it becomes easy to infer Tom’s true identity; Tom is an unfaithful spouse, consumed with wealth, and a narcissist.
In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald employs the use of characters, themes, and symbolism to convey the idea of the American Dream and its corruption through the aspects of wealth, family, and status. In regards to wealth and success, Fitzgerald makes clear the growing corruption of the American Dream by using Gatsby himself as a symbol for the corrupted dream throughout the text. In addition, when portraying the family the characters in Great Gatsby are used to expose the corruption growing in the family system present in the novel. Finally, the American longing for status as a citizen is gravely overshot when Gatsby surrounds his life with walls of lies in order to fulfill his desires for an impure dream. F. Scot. Fitzgerald, through his use of symbols, characters, and theme, displays for the reader a tale that provides a commentary on the American dream and more importantly on its corruption.