Egomaniacs In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Egomaniacs are the kind of people who always have to feel important. All they do is talk themselves up. They are always looking for ways to be better than everyone else. Many people in society are like this, but mainly they lay among the rich crowd. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan acts very much this way, in the sense that she is a self-absorbed, vacuous socialite whose decisions lead to the destruction of both Jay Gatsby and Myrtle Wilson.
Critics agree that Daisy Buchanan behaved in a very selfish manner throughout Fitzgerald’s novel. Edwin Clark said, in the first New York Times review of The Great Gatsby, that the East Eggers had a “meanness of spirit, absence of loyalties”. These words perfectly describe …show more content…
She doesn’t love Tom and Tom doesn’t love her, yet she still stays with him. Jordan reveals to Nick, that “Tom’s got some woman in New York.” Before this she says “I thought everybody knew.” Daisy knew that Tom was cheating on her, but she didn’t leave him. Cheating was Tom’s way of saying Daisy wasn’t cutting it anymore, but she still stayed. She should’ve left him and let him be with someone else who he actually loved. On her wedding day, she instructed her bridesmaids to “’Tell ‘em all Daisy’s change’ her mine’”. She didn’t want to marry Tom, but she did, which was very selfish. There were probably lots of other girls who would’ve loved to marry Tom, but Daisy rid him of his chances of ever finding that out. Also on her wedding day, “She began to cry-she cried and cried” She really didn’t want to marry Tom, but the poor guy was stuck with her because she went through with it anyways. If she didn’t marry Tom, she could’ve been with Gatsby and neither affair would’ve happened and no one would’ve died. Daisy asked Nick, “Do you know why we left Chicago? I’m surprised that they didn’t treat you to the story of that little spree.” Daisy knew Tom had cheated on her a lot of different times, but she still stayed with him regardless. She either didn’t know or didn’t care that Tom didn’t love her, and if she did, she should’ve just gone and divorced him. If she had done that, no affairs would’ve taken place and no deaths would’ve …show more content…
Throughout the novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald was using Miss Daisy to convey the messages that wealth and selfishness can cause moral corruption, and that the American Dream really isn’t tangible. Money is never the answer, and it can’t buy happiness, although many people think it can. Though having a ton of money and obtaining the American Dream may seem like the ultimate goals that people aspire to attain, they are nothing more than illusions that people mindlessly chase to no