Antagonists In The Great Gatsby

In Many works of literature, there are antagonists that are the clear and obvious antagonist. These antagonists do obvious evil things in attempt to ruin the lives of the protagonists or take over the world or enslave the human race or other malicious things. But in other works there are antagonists that are not clearly stated as such. These characters are the ones whose simple actions in the piece of literature affect the story in major ways and may cause horrible things to happen to other characters with one simple action that may not be as malicious as the actions of other antagonists. An example of the latter type of antagonists is Daisy Buchanan, from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby. The novel mainly revolves around the …show more content…
Daisy needs to have all of her money and be in the highest social class she can be in. She is afraid to love Gatsby because she would lose the social class she was in before. “She’d surely be disgraced and cast out of her social circle if she remarried her new-wealth lover.” (Baker 4) Daisy is afraid of losing her high class rank more than she is afraid of losing the man she says she loves. Daisy is also selfish when it came to her love for Gatsby. “She is attracted to Gatsby when he appears to her to be a sophisticated, empty man; at no time does she face the fact that he is truly in love with her.” (Pidgeon 4) Daisy only loves Gatsby because of the way she sees him as. She disregards his feelings towards her and refuses to leave Tom to be with …show more content…
She chose Tom because she was selfish and only loved her money and social class. Daisy let Gatsby take the blame for a murder that she committed. Gatsby was murdered by George Wilson after being blamed for the murder of George’s wife, Myrtle. Daisy then left with Tom, without even telling anyone why they were leaving, where they were going, or that they were even leaving at all. As Nick said at the end of the book, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy-they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had