Jay Gatsby is the main character of the novel, The Great Gatsby, in which he is obsessively infatuated with Daisy Buchannan, who is married to Tom Buchannan, an adulterer. F. Scott Fitzgerald shows Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchannan as foils in order to portray the extreme obsession Gatsby has with Daisy and the way he imagines her in the novel, The Great Gatsby. While there are many ways Gatsby and Daisy are portrayed as foils by Fitzgerald, one of the most emphasized foils between the two characters is the extreme difference between how the two grew up. Gatsby grew up with parents that he had “never really accepted… as his parents at all” (98) because they were lowly “farm people” (98) that were never going to be rich and successful, which
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When Daisy was prevented from eloping with a young soldier “who was going overseas” (75) she refused to talk to “her family for several weeks” (75) but eventually was able to overcome the inability to marry, who can be inferred to be Gatsby, and began dating men “who couldn’t get into the army at all” (75). She was able to overcome the situation quickly, unlike Gatsby, through expressing silently to her family that she was unpleased with the actions that took place the one night she tried to run away and marry him. Daisy is shown repeatedly going through catharsis, possibly used to show how childlike Daisy is overall, but also to demonstrate that releasing negative emotions will have a better effect on one’s sanity unlike Gatsby who is rarely shown ever going through catharsis in the novel. Gatsby handled his and Daisy’s eloping being prevented in a completely different fashion. Although his immediate reaction to the event is not mentioned in the novel, when Gatsby returned from the war and discovered that Daisy was planning to marry Tom Buchannan, he sent her a letter, trying to convince her to come back to him. Gatsby held in all of this emotion, unwilling to admit that he had lost Daisy – the one person who could directly give him the life he had always dreamed of …show more content…
Gatsby never denied the fact that he grew up poor and was at the lowest of the social ladder as one could get, and though he rarely spoke openly about his past and if he did it was only at times of mass confusion or emotional despair as previously stated, he recognized that without wealth he would never be accepted by the social class he desired to interact with. This is an additional factor into Gatsby’s obsession with her as “the first ‘nice’ girl he had ever” (148) met and noticed that there was not an “indiscernible barbed wire” (148) of social ranking between them when they spoke. Maybe this is why Gatsby felt that even when it was blatantly clear later on in the novel that Daisy had “tumbled short of his dreams” (94), she was still the first “nice” rich girl that he had spoken to, although she was not aware of his lack of wealth at the time. This is another reason Gatsby is still obsessed with Daisy even when she falls short of his dreams, it is because Gatsby has this “extraordinary gift for hope” (2) that he was possibly able to convince himself that even though Daisy falls short of his romantic dreams, he would still be able to believe that he had successfully become the person he wanted to be and had achieved everything that Daisy represented: wealth, freedom to pursue happiness, and simply the American Dream in and of itself. Daisy
When Daisy was prevented from eloping with a young soldier “who was going overseas” (75) she refused to talk to “her family for several weeks” (75) but eventually was able to overcome the inability to marry, who can be inferred to be Gatsby, and began dating men “who couldn’t get into the army at all” (75). She was able to overcome the situation quickly, unlike Gatsby, through expressing silently to her family that she was unpleased with the actions that took place the one night she tried to run away and marry him. Daisy is shown repeatedly going through catharsis, possibly used to show how childlike Daisy is overall, but also to demonstrate that releasing negative emotions will have a better effect on one’s sanity unlike Gatsby who is rarely shown ever going through catharsis in the novel. Gatsby handled his and Daisy’s eloping being prevented in a completely different fashion. Although his immediate reaction to the event is not mentioned in the novel, when Gatsby returned from the war and discovered that Daisy was planning to marry Tom Buchannan, he sent her a letter, trying to convince her to come back to him. Gatsby held in all of this emotion, unwilling to admit that he had lost Daisy – the one person who could directly give him the life he had always dreamed of …show more content…
Gatsby never denied the fact that he grew up poor and was at the lowest of the social ladder as one could get, and though he rarely spoke openly about his past and if he did it was only at times of mass confusion or emotional despair as previously stated, he recognized that without wealth he would never be accepted by the social class he desired to interact with. This is an additional factor into Gatsby’s obsession with her as “the first ‘nice’ girl he had ever” (148) met and noticed that there was not an “indiscernible barbed wire” (148) of social ranking between them when they spoke. Maybe this is why Gatsby felt that even when it was blatantly clear later on in the novel that Daisy had “tumbled short of his dreams” (94), she was still the first “nice” rich girl that he had spoken to, although she was not aware of his lack of wealth at the time. This is another reason Gatsby is still obsessed with Daisy even when she falls short of his dreams, it is because Gatsby has this “extraordinary gift for hope” (2) that he was possibly able to convince himself that even though Daisy falls short of his romantic dreams, he would still be able to believe that he had successfully become the person he wanted to be and had achieved everything that Daisy represented: wealth, freedom to pursue happiness, and simply the American Dream in and of itself. Daisy