Great Gatsby Essentialism

Love, an intense feeling that can create beautiful things or destroy the world. For some, love is a fantasy that may never be realized. For others, love fuels them throughout their day giving them life and filling them with a joy that no other can imagine. It can bring families together or tear them apart. However, the one true fact about love, is that it is different for everyone. In the movie The Great Gatsby, the viewer experiences the love story of Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan, two lovers who have to overcome great trials and tribulations to be together. Their story, told by Nick Carraway, begins when Nick moves to New York. In New York he rents a house located next to a huge mansion. Even though he is content with his location he finds …show more content…
After reviewing the movie, the idea of essentialism and social constructionism came to mind. The idea came about because of Daisy. At the end of the movie, and after all she had been through with Gatsby, she still left with her husband. For some, knowing that she left Gatsby to stay with her husband, showed her loyalty to her marriage. However, for others it was a horrific thing for her to so especially since Gatsby was shot because of her. Conversely, the idea of essentialism shows why she did what she …show more content…
In a way a social construct is an idea that is widely accepted by society. It can be seen as norms or values held by that society. Daisy’s character can be thought of in respect to social constructs because of the things she does throughout the movie. In the beginning we see her as a fragile house wife, which would have been common for the 1920s. Her relationship with Tom was one in which she was to be submissive and nothing else to the point where she knew that Tom had a mistress but did nothing to stop it. When her affair with Gatsby started back, she hesitated because she was married even though she had loved Gatsby for almost her entire life. The last event that connected her character to social constructionism was the way she handled leaving Gatsby as well as his death. Daisy knew how society would look at her if she left her husband for another man no matter how rich he was. In the 1920s it was taboo for a woman to divorce her husband so for someone of her status to do that would have caused her trouble. This plays into the way she handled his death. For Daisy not to attend Gatsby’s funeral or even answer when Nick called showed that she cared more about how society would think about her than how she felt. The social constructs at the time left Daisy with no choice but to leave Gatsby and move on with her