One of the main themes for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is no matter how wealthy a person is they cannot buy happiness. Each of Fitzgerald’s characters in The Great Gatsby come to this conclusion in some way throughout the novel. The characters go about realizing this in different ways, some find it while searching for love and others find it because they realize even though they have everything that the could ever want or need they are still missing something. That something is true happiness.
Jay Gatsby found out money cannot buy happiness the hard way. He had hoped since he had left five years ago to go fight in the war, that he would come back a richer man and marry the love of his life, Daisy. However, he comes back home to …show more content…
Instead of learning it first hand, Nick learns about useless money is when it comes to happiness through Gatsby and Daisy and Tom. He even stated that “ I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others,” (62). He sees what it does to them and how it affects them in the moments when they to finally realize that their money cannot buy them the happiness that the desire. He sees Gatsby desperate to buy everything just to recreate the past with Daisy and then after Daisy finally says that she will not leave her life and follow Gatsby how Gatsby just tried to brush it off and act like he will get her one day. He sees Daisy try and be the perfect woman for her cheating husband and how she just really wants attention from anyone but will never leave the comfort of her money. He sees Tom with his mistress and how Tom believes that he has the right to enjoy other women and how after Myrtle dies, how torn up about it he was. Nick sees all of them face struggles when it comes to trying to buy their happiness and how it never works out for any of them for, Gatsby ends up dying, Daisy just goes back to her life with Tom, and Tom watched his mistress die and then has to go back to his wife and act like nothing happened. Nick states that “[t]hey were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up thing 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 made…”
Jay Gatsby found out money cannot buy happiness the hard way. He had hoped since he had left five years ago to go fight in the war, that he would come back a richer man and marry the love of his life, Daisy. However, he comes back home to …show more content…
Instead of learning it first hand, Nick learns about useless money is when it comes to happiness through Gatsby and Daisy and Tom. He even stated that “ I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others,” (62). He sees what it does to them and how it affects them in the moments when they to finally realize that their money cannot buy them the happiness that the desire. He sees Gatsby desperate to buy everything just to recreate the past with Daisy and then after Daisy finally says that she will not leave her life and follow Gatsby how Gatsby just tried to brush it off and act like he will get her one day. He sees Daisy try and be the perfect woman for her cheating husband and how she just really wants attention from anyone but will never leave the comfort of her money. He sees Tom with his mistress and how Tom believes that he has the right to enjoy other women and how after Myrtle dies, how torn up about it he was. Nick sees all of them face struggles when it comes to trying to buy their happiness and how it never works out for any of them for, Gatsby ends up dying, Daisy just goes back to her life with Tom, and Tom watched his mistress die and then has to go back to his wife and act like nothing happened. Nick states that “[t]hey were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up thing 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 made…”