Daisy Buchanan Character Analysis

This lovely rich girl is known Daisy Buchanan, a women married to Tom Buchanan and also the love of Jay Gatsby’s life. The two met five years prior to her marriage, but were separated when Jay was forced to go off to war. The root of his desire for wealth occurs back to when Daisy’s parents did not approve of Gatsby for their daughter due to the fact that he came from a poor family. Jay is once again blinded, this time by the beauty and grace of Daisy and fails to see that Daisy is not who she appears to once be. He craves her for the realization of his golden family in his perfect dream, but really Daisy is far from that.

Gatsby is then reminded of his low status when Daisy’s mother“…had found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say goodbye to a soldier who was going overseas. She was effectually prevented, but she wasn’t on speaking terms with her family for several weeks.” (75) From that moment Gatsby becomes motivated to become one of the wealthy elite in order to win Daisy and her family.

She was a girl with wealth, connections and means—everything a seventeen-year-old boy could aspire to one day attain. It is this illusion that Gatsby falls in love with, not Daisy, and he dedicates his life to become a man that could parallel Daisy in both social status and wealth. “So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.” (98) Though Gatsby appears to be blinded by material possession and unethical in his means to acquire it, Fitzgerald sets him up to be the hero of the novel by contrasting his virtue to the sea of corruptness and material greed that made up the ambitions of most young folks in the 1920s. True, he made his money through illegal means, but his incredible sense of loyalty is striking against the dishonest, scheming American society. In the novel, it is clear that Gatsby is unfailingly loyal to everyone he loves, from his father to Dan Cody to Daisy, who he dedicated “five years of unwavering devotion” (109) to, even if they were not loyal to him in return.

Gatsby does not realize that Daisy also represents the corruption that comes along with wealth. "Her voice is full of money, he suddenly said. That was it. I'd never understood it before. It was full of money--that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it. . . . High in a white Palace the King's daughter, the golden girl" (127). Gatsby becomes obsessed with Daisy and her voice that promised riches, but he does not realize that money was the only thing she offered. After listening to Tom, Nick describes Daisy and Tom as careless people who "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 made" (188). Daisy lets Gatsby take the blame for Myrtle’s death and shows no concern over Gatsby’s death showing her carelessness with people’s lives. Tom and Daisy’s actions indicate the corrupting effects that wealth can have on someone. They focus too much on appearance and materialism and ignore other people’s feelings and lives.

“Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so,” once said Charles de Gaulle. This valiant quote by a former president of France accentuates my opinion of the Great Jay Gatsby. From humble beginnings rises our main focus of F. Scott Fitzgeralds’ The Great Gatsby. Young Jimmy Gatz is brought to West Egg from his heavily impoverished North Dakota family. His desire to be something greater than a farmer drove him to fortune and love through any means necessary; his life long obsession, Daisy Fay, infatuates Jay in his own insatiable thirst for her affection. James follows Daisy in the years after he is deployed to World War 1, and when he sees she has married Tom Buchanan he becomes hell-bent on replicating the success Tom has inherited in order to win over Daisy. Through moderately deceitful ways, Jay Gatsby builds his wealth and reputation to rival and even supersede many already lavish family names. Astonishingly, the great Mr. Gatsby, overrun with newfound affluence, stays true to his friends, lover, and his own ideals to his blissfully ignorant end.

Daisy sacrifices love and happiness for being wealthy. Nick believes “that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of [her] house, child in arms-but apparently there were no such intentions in her head” (25). In making this comment, Nick argues that Daisy refuses to break off her marriage to Tom because she will lose her “membership” to the East Egg social class. Not even Gatsby, who is one of the wealthiest men in the Northeast, can convince her to leave him. In Roberts’ literary criticism, she describes the aspects of Gatsby that Daisy disapproves. Roberts claims that Gatsby “Misread[s] the signs of American gentility … [by moving] to West Egg, instead of the more elegant East Egg (Fahey 74), [and throwing parties that] attract theatre people and gate crashers rather than a social elite” (Roberts) which repulses Daisy. In making this remark, Roberts claims that Gatsby is not everything Daisy could want. His mansion’s location and guests at his party ultimately is not enough to motivate Daisy to leave Tom. Close states that “we can’t be happy without at least one meaningful, close relationship.” Her claim that a close relationship brings happiness rests upon the questionable assumption that people in close relationships are always happy. In fact, some close relationships can bring more despair than joy. Hence, the cause of unhappiness for wealthy people, like Daisy, can be avoided if they choose their overall wellbeing over the amount of money they

Daisy, too, has this hollowness, but in not as sharp as a way. She’ll listen to Tom’s racism and gossip, but may not immediately come to see it as true. This lack of complete emptiness is evidenced again with her hopes for her daughter. “And I hope she’ll be a fool - that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful fool” (Fitzgerald, 17). While it appears she is trying to perpetuate the hollow subordination of rich women, she knows that it exists, and that it would be better to already be in this state than suffer trying to rebel against it. The ability to see the hollowness is shared by Gatsby, who puts on lavish parties for others to fill there time with, but never is himself fulfilled by them. Gatsby, like Daisy, exists and subscribes by the shallow wading pool of high society, but are quietly disobeying it. Nick, the character who has no immense wealth, or came from too much either, though is the one most entranced by the rich lifestyle. He attends Gatsby’s parties, and enjoys their atmosphere. This seems to be him just being fascinated by this wealth and excess, as many do today with celebrity culture, but as his life progress it seems to have become more

Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby’s relationship was damaged by their contrasting social classes, but also because he had a lack of status and wealth. In relation to this Daisy married Tom for his wealth and status not for his love, which suggests Daisy is a materialistic character is more concerned about her money and possessions than she is about intellectual and spiritual objects. “Gatsby is an idealist, he seeks for

Jay Gatsby’s tragic fallacy that hinders his happiness is his fusion of his dreams with Daisy Buchannan, and his obsession with her overrules his rationality. During his early life, spent as James Gatz, Gatsby imagined a

Daisy, like her husband, is a girl of material and class at heart, and Gatsby being her escape from a hierarchist world. Daisy has just grown up knowing wealth, so in her greedy pursuit of happiness and the “American Dream” Myrtle Wilson died, Gatsby's heart and life were compromised, without claiming responsibility on her part. Daisy was “by far the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville...” (116) Jordan says, describing early affections between Daisy and Gatsby. She goes on to say, “...all day long the telephone rang in her house and excited young officers from Camp Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that night.” (116) . Daisy was a fancied girl who has Gatsby tied around her finger, Jordan explains that he was looking at Daisy “...in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at some time...” (117). Daisy, abusing Gatsby’s love for her uses it to create security and protection, greedily and selfishly allowing him to take the fault. While Daisy’s beautiful, alluring traits turn her into an innocent, naive flower, she plays the ultimate villain.

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, there are villains, victims, and venerables. Although she might not think so herself, Daisy Buchanan is the villain. Only caring about herself, she did whatever she wanted, and got away with it. As the victim of the story, Mr. Wilson was caught up in multiple lies, and was treated terribly. However, Nick Carraway was unlike any other character. Having personal integrity, he was portrayed as a venerable.

While most people chase love, few know that it is foolish. One should not chase after love, but allow it to find them naturally. Obviously, Gatsby was none the wiser about that bit of advice. In the story, we see Gatsby chase after his supposedly long lost love, but is she truly his love? With how little time they spent together, how much they’ve grown throughout the years, and all that has happened in both of their lives, does Gatsby truly love Daisy, a married mother of one? Their star-crossed story is the perfect example of a hold on the past destroying a future. This essay will explore their strange and twisted romance while supporting one simple fact. Jay Gatsby was not in love with Daisy.

Gatsby’s willingness to send a “‘gratulat[ing]” letter to Daisy illustrates the idea that he loves her enough to want her happy, with or without him. The image of an inoffensive romance is continued until we find that Gatsby, upon returning from the Great War, has moved across the bay from Daisy, just so that he might be close to her. This need for closeness tarnishes the idea of simple love, and ushers in a feeling of endearing but almost stalker-like devotion.

Daisy, Tom’s wife and the object of Gatsby’s romantic quest, for example, possesses a voice “full of money,” (144) which blatantly associates her character with wealth. Fitzgerald makes Daisy seem desirable, but never describes her physical features, which is odd considering she is the force behind the profound obsession of Jay Gatsby. Perhaps Fitzgerald chooses to ignore Daisy’s physical description to purposefully display her as a bare character. In essence, he dehumanizes her to better reveal her shallowness. One of the few times a physical description of Daisy appears comes in conjunction with Miss Baker, another character under the spell of wealth, when Nick comments on their white dresses with “their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire” (17). With

His main motive for becoming wealthy steams from one thing, which is to be with Daisy again like before the war. "‘You can't repeat the past.' ‘Can't repeat the past?'… ‘Why of Course you can!'"(Fitzgerald, 106) Gatsby's thinking process is distorted by his love for Daisy; he truly believes that the past can be recreated exactly how it was before. The true fact is that now there are too many implications in Daisy's life. Daisy has a husband and a child to whom she is bond to no matter how they can both justify it. Jay Gatsby's wealth is simply a desperation attempt to woo Daisy's past love to an inevitable negative end.