Examples Of Tom In The Great Gatsby

Tom Buchanan’s ethnic discrimination is a product of complex Americans history and common attitude of the 1920’s, which becomes an obstacle of Gatsby’s Dream. Tom is a current husband of Daisy who comes out from a very wealthy and conservative family. To most readers, Tom appears to be one of the main villains of novel who does not have any morals. His racist statements bring out a lot of criticism nowadays: “Well, these books are all scientific…It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things” (Fitzgerald 13). Tom gets really defensive on the subject of protecting the superiority of white race mentioned in the book. The readers consider this statement to be extremely racist because the …show more content…
In the beginning of the twentieth century, there were people who thought the way Tom thinks in the novel because of widespread desire to preserve the American identity. Tom also uses the tactic of discrimination to condescend other characters. Slater suggests, “Later, during the climactic confrontation with Gatsby at the Plaza Hotel, Tom attempts to use invidious ethnicity as a weapon, a device to demean the rival” (Slater 54). Tom says, “Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything overbroad and have intermarriage between black and white” (Fitzgerald 130). Tom tries to degrade Gatsby by picking up on his color or origin arising a question of Gatsby’s ethnic roots, which were not questioned prior to this point. Michaelis claims, “Gatsby functions in the book as a figure of the threat of racial admixture” (Michaels 134). A strong power of Nativist movement called for a racialization of the society by excluding those of mixed blood despite their social-economic class. It is not fair to say that Tom is the only negative character because there is a race prejudice showed by Jordan’s response to the previous quote, “We’re all white here” (Fitzgerald