The Great Gatsby - Essay Example

He has moved from the Midwest, where his family is wealthy and prominent, to become a bond salesman in New York. He is the quintessential lone representative of a bucolic bourgeois patriarchy, “making his name” in an urban area. This is not to say that Nick is alone on West Egg- his second cousin, Daisy, lives nearby with her overbearing, snobbish husband, Tom. Tom, who went to Yale and has all the trappings of class, displays a vulgar sort of vacuity that is actually rather disturbing.

Nick visits the couple and assays in his laid-back narrative the tense and precarious situation of the household: the hulking Tom is immersed in half-baked racist theories, and Daisy seems to float around in an ephemeral haze of blasé affectation which briefly disperses to reveal a still center of affected innocence. Nick meets Jordan Baker, a sophisticated and attractive golf champion who is visiting the Buchanan household, and the two begin what evolves into a casual romance. There is nothing obsessive about their offhanded relationship.

farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens” (Fitzgerald 27). Though many critics posit that Myrtle Wilson is a positive, down-to-earth character just because of the colors of her clothing, one could also believe that Fitzgerald intends to characterize her in terms of her class. Counterpoised against the monied world of the Buchanans and the distantly wry, self-deprecating objectivity of Carraway’s detached affluence, Myrtle seems to be a rather simplified representative of a middle-class agog with the glamour of the wealthy elite.

This behavior is irritating to Tom, who in a fit of rage behaves awfully and betrays his base nature, breaking Myrtle’s Nose when she presses the issue of Daisy’s cognizance. The pathetic, servile figure of George, Myrtle’s Daisy to visit him (Nick) while Gatsby “stops by.” After the two are finally together, the complicated