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What Is The Theme Of Death In The Great Gatsby

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“Life and death are one thread, same line viewed from different sides” Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu once stated life and death has an resembling, same stories different views. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby the author reveals love, greed, and a lack of morals results in death displayed by Myrtle, George Wilson and Gatsby’s demise. Myrtle Wilson love for Tom Buchanan led to her death. Myrtle once detailed her lust for Tom "...He had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes and I couldn't keep my eyes off him but every time he looked at me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head. When we came into the station he was next to me and his white shirt-front pressed against my arm...All I kept thinking about, over …show more content…

Myrtle had love for her husband. "I married him because I thought he was a gentleman," she said finally. "I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn't fit to lick my shoe." "You were crazy about him for a while," said Catherine. "Crazy about him!" cried Myrtle incredulously. "Who said I was crazy about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there."Here we get a bit of back-story about George and Myrtle’s marriage, like Daisy, Myrtle was crazy about her husband at first but the marriage has since soured. But while Daisy doesn’t have any real desire to leave Tom, here we see Myrtle eager to leave, and very dismissive of her husband. Myrtle seems to suggest that even having her husband wait on her is unacceptable – it’s clear she thinks she is finally headed for bigger and better things.”Generally he was one of these worn-out men, when he wasn't working he sat on a chair in the doorway and stared at the people and the cars that passed along the road. When any one spoke to him he invariably laughed in an agreeable, colorless way. He was his wife's man and not his own. “ strangely unshakeable partnership of Tom and Daisy, the co-conspirators, observes that George “was his wife’s man,” “worn out.” Obviously, this situation gets turned on its head when George locks Myrtle up when he discovers the affair, but Michaelis’s observation speaks to instability in the Wilson’s marriage, in …show more content…

“There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind, and as we drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic. His wife and his mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping precipitately from his control.” Nick leaves us with an image of Tom confessing to crying over Myrtle. This complicates the reader’s desire to see Tom as a straightforward villain. This confession of emotion certainly doesn’t redeem Tom, but it does prevent you from seeing him as a complete monster. “...we drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic. His wife and his mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping precipitately from his control.” So just as he passionately rants and raves against the “colored races,” he also gets panicked and angry when he sees that he is losing control both over Myrtle and Daisy. This speaks to Tom’s entitlement both as a wealthy person, as a man, and as a white person and shows how his relationship with Myrtle is just another display of power. "And what's more, I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time." Tom’s liaisons with Myrtle and his generally boorish behavior, this claim to loving Daisy comes off as fake at best and manipulative at worst. Flaunting his relationship with Myrtle, revealing Gatsby as a bootlegger, and manipulating George to kill Gatsby's, thus

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