Love Themes in the Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby Many people dream of being rich and famous because they want to be honored and idolized by people. This is the goal of Jay Gatsby, the protagonist in The Great Gatsby, a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald which was considered his masterpiece in the year 1925. Jay Gatsby only wished to be with Daisy, the girl that he truly loved. In this essay, one will notice that the high amount of love in the story isn’t usually the kind of love that saves people’s lives and brings them their true happiness.

Nick Carraway is a young man from Minnesota who moves to New York to learn about the bond business. He rents a house in West Egg, Long Island, a place where newly rich people live. He lives next to Jay Gatsby, the mysterious owner of the grand mansion who throws lavish parties every Saturday night. Nick’s cousin is Daisy, the wife of Tom Buchanan and the woman that Gatsby loves. Tom Buchanan has an affair with Myrtle Wilson.

Because of Jordan Baker, a competitive golfer with whom Nick met and fell in love but didn’t work out with, he found out that Gatsby’s been in love with Daisy for a long time, and the reason why he lives like a young rajah is to impress Daisy with how successful he is. Through a favor that Gatsby’s asks, Nick sets a meeting for Gatsby and Daisy for them to reunite and find out the love they had. After a short time, Tom suspects the extraordinary relationship of his wife with Gatsby.

Though Tom is involved in an affair, he is deeply insulted by the idea that his wife could also cheat on him. One day, Tom forced the group to go to New York to have lunch in Plaza Hotel, where he confronts Gatsby about his relationship with Daisy. Tom announced that Gatsby is a bootlegger and his involved on other illegal activities, and Daisy demanded to go home. Gatsby and Daisy drive back home together in Gatsby’s car, while Tom, Nick and Jordan are in Tom’s car. On the way home, Myrtle was hit and killed by the car of Gatsby.

Later Nick discovered that Daisy is the one who’s driving when the accident happened. Tom told Wilson, the husband of Myrtle, that the car who hit his wife is owned by Gatsby. While Gatsby is relaxing in his pool, Wilson shoots and kills Gatsby and himself. After the small funeral Nick arranged for Gatsby, he ended his relationship with Jordan, and moves back to Midwest. In the novel it was quite obvious how Gatsby longed for Daisy; watching the green light from Daisy’s house every night, reaching out to it. He did get Daisy back through Nick in the story, ut during the time that he wished very hard that Daisy would be his, he was unable to spend much time with the woman at all, and so, if truly thought about, he didn’t love Daisy for what she currently is because he didn’t know that anymore. Gatsby loved the Daisy he once knew, or how he remembers her to be. In turn, Daisy thought she was in love with Gatsby also, but shown through how she still didn’t try to get out of her marriage with Tom, she really wasn’t. She thought her appreciation of Gatsby’s attention was love.

Tom cheated on Daisy with Myrtle and thought that was fine as long as he loved his wife, but then how come he was furious when he found out about his Daisy’s love affair? Was it really only because he was insulted that Daisy would cheat on him too? Finally, the main character Nick claimed he loved Jordan Baker, but found it necessary to separate from her at the end of the book. There seems to be a lot of love going around in the story, but somehow love became something that ruined their lives, because somehow, it never became what the characters or what the readers knew it was supposed to be.

In chapter 3 Nick speaks of how he feels about Jordan towards the end of the story, talking about he thought he and Jordan had to go their separate ways, “…she had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her…I’d been writing letters once a week and signing them: ‘Love, Nick,’ and all I could think of was how, when that certain girl played tennis, a faint mustache of perspiration appeared on her upper lip. Nevertheless there was a vague understanding that had to be tactfully broken off before I was free. ” (3. 169) Nick says that he only thought he loved Jordan out right.

He probably thought to mention the sweat on her upper lip while playing tennis because that’s not something that you call to mind right away about the person you love, at least not something as shallow as sweat. You don’t do things you should only be doing with the person you love with someone else, as Tom did with Myrtle. Oddly he cheated on Daisy, but he loved her. “I love Daisy too,” he says during their group confrontation at the Plaza Hotel, “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. (7. 251) If you could love someone but go behind his or her back to have an affair, and everybody in the world believed this, no one would be happy in love. In the same chapter Daisy also proves the love she feels is also twisted, “‘Oh, you want too much! ’ she cried to Gatsby. ‘I love you now – isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past. ’ She began to sob helplessly. ‘I did love him once – but I loved you too. ’” (7. 266) If at one point Daisy suddenly said she loved everybody she knew, it wouldn’t be hard to believe.

With a lot of skill, Fitzgerald was able to sum up all that love was in the story in the first chapter. Gatsby was only reaching out to something, and the whole time he loved he Daisy, he was in love with a green light—the thought of her. In the first chapter, Nick notices an odd gesture of Gatsby’s which told about what he felt about Daisy. “…he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling.

Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away…” (1. 152) The book showed how love can take a hold and take full control of people’s lives, but in a scary way, not be real love at all. Though most people know that love is beautiful, that there can be times that love is all we need, there’s a need to be careful. You need to be sure that it’s truly love, or else, love will be something you’d rather not have at all.