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After she is left unhappy in her marriage because of Tom’s many rendezvous, Daisy is confronted by Gatsby and her past, and she chooses to begin a relationship with Gatsby. With this relationship, she becomes involved in a conflict with time, for Daisy is probing for a feeling she once knew in her rich, young innocence. During her prime blossoming at eighteen, Daisy had had men from a nearby army base occupy her attention, and one particular officer that Daisy had fallen in love with was Jay Gatsby. These many suitors gave her great attention, attention that she now lacks from her dead marriage. While arranging a meeting between Daisy and Gatsby, Daisy’s friend says, "‘Daisy ought to have something in her life’" (Fitzgerald 81). Daisy’s need for "‘something in her life’" (Fitzgerald 81) is her own responsibility, for she had allowed herself to be bought by Tom Buchanan and planted like a flower among the secure soil of the rich (Crawford). In her languid life without the energy of love, Daisy searches for someone to give her attention through money and sincere feelings. With Gatsby’s capability to give her this attention, she is trying to replenish the scarcity of this attention in her marriage by looking for the feeling she received from many suitors in her past. Violating time’s laws, Daisy can never recreate her memory of the past with the same atmosphere that
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Since Tom and Daisy are chasing a memory, they have no expectations for the future, but, living solely on the basis of a dream, Gatsby has extreme hopes for the upcoming years. Without his dream, Gatsby has no future and is forced to die, but, in their future, Tom and Daisy are forced to drift from place to place, dying with each move. Moving to another location is similar to experiencing a death because Tom and Daisy end their previous engagements when they begin anew in another area. The feelings that Tom and Daisy are trying to find exist in the mind from experience; therefore, these feelings lack the unique loveliness of something created from the human imagination. Altogether, "[. . .] the characters [. . .] have the wistful sense of a past [. . .] to be recaptured" (Stern 204). Gatsby’s dream cannot be achieved, and Tom and Daisy’s feeling from their memory cannot be felt again with the same initial excellence because of their position in time.
Through Tom and Daisy Buchanan’s conflict with time, the destruction of Gatsby’s underlying dream is illuminated because a dream has no hope of developing into a reality. Time holds all truths and changes all things, so nothing remains constant except the human ability to dream. Even though a dream cannot be obtained with the same level of
Since Tom and Daisy are chasing a memory, they have no expectations for the future, but, living solely on the basis of a dream, Gatsby has extreme hopes for the upcoming years. Without his dream, Gatsby has no future and is forced to die, but, in their future, Tom and Daisy are forced to drift from place to place, dying with each move. Moving to another location is similar to experiencing a death because Tom and Daisy end their previous engagements when they begin anew in another area. The feelings that Tom and Daisy are trying to find exist in the mind from experience; therefore, these feelings lack the unique loveliness of something created from the human imagination. Altogether, "[. . .] the characters [. . .] have the wistful sense of a past [. . .] to be recaptured" (Stern 204). Gatsby’s dream cannot be achieved, and Tom and Daisy’s feeling from their memory cannot be felt again with the same initial excellence because of their position in time.
Through Tom and Daisy Buchanan’s conflict with time, the destruction of Gatsby’s underlying dream is illuminated because a dream has no hope of developing into a reality. Time holds all truths and changes all things, so nothing remains constant except the human ability to dream. Even though a dream cannot be obtained with the same level of