Compare And Contrast Tom And Gatsby

Register to read the introduction… Tom loves who she actually is. He may have many affairs, but he still loves her. During the novel Tom says: “I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife” (99). In this quote Tom is saying that he still loves Daisy, despite his affairs, and that he will not stand by and be silent if his wife is sleeping around. So while Tom is in love with the real Daisy Gatsby loves the image of her that he has created over the past five years, since he last saw her. Gatsby is in love with, essentially, everything she is not. Gatsby shows the depth of his love for Daisy near the end of the novel when he takes the blame for hitting, and killing, Myrtle Wilson. Therefore, when Gatsby dies at the end on the story, it was his love for Daisy that killed him. Even though this is a poetically romantic thought, Daisy decide that she loves Tom more than Gatsby, simply for the fact that loving him and living with him is easy. She knows that he will have affairs, but that he will always come running right back to …show more content…
Tom is in one of the higher social classes because he is in possession of a substantial amount of money, and he was born into the money. This is considered the “old money”, families that have had money for quite some time. Gatsby earned his money after the war, how? Simple, he participating in organized crime; most specifically he was a bootlegger. Gatsby went from being in the “no money” class to being part of the “new money” class. The new money and, definitely the no money, class is so far below Daisy that she has no real interest in staying with Gatsby long-term. Another deciding factor in this difference is that Daisy loves money, and while Gatsby has an abundance of wealth, Tom has more. Gatsby got it right when he states that “Her voice is full of money” (93). Daisy will always go for the person that has the larger amount of money, and has a far lesser chance if losing the …show more content…
The higher class people, the “old money” folks, typically tend to live in East Egg, as this one is thought of as the more fashionable of the two. West Egg is usually full of the lower class “new money” folks. For Tom, or Daisy for that matter, to go over to Gatsby’s house they have to pass though the “valley of ashes”. The valley of ashes is the area of New York where all the poor people live, the people that are below Gatsby in class live. Having to pass though this area to get from East Egg to West Egg signifies just how far apart Tom and Gatsby are in every way. Tom and Daisy having to go through the valley of ashes symbolizes that they are going down the social ladder while heading over to Gatsby’s