Essay on The Great Gatsby Tomanddaisy
The Great Gatsby Tomanddaisy Term Papers
While the free essays can give you inspiration for writing, they cannot be used 'as is' because they will not meet your assignment's requirements. If you are in a time crunch, then you need a custom written term paper on your subject (the great gatsby tomanddaisy)
Here you can hire an independent writer/researcher to custom write you an authentic essay to your specifications that will pass any plagiarism test (e.g. Turnitin). Waste no more time!
F. Scott Fitzgerald s The Great Gatsby takes place in America in the 1920 s. It is a time of economic prosperity, but also a time of moral decline. Criminals are getting rich from bootlegging alcohol, selling street drugs, and gambling even to the point of fixing the popular World Series. They are part of the newly emerged wealthy people of West Egg, with Gatsby being one of them. However, as immoral and awful those people may be, there is another class of people that are worse the established high upper class of East Egg. Tom and Daisy are part of that class that is irresponsible, careless, ignorant, and highly immoral. They don t value the feelings or lives of others and recede back to the protection of their money when they ve made a mess of things. Nick sums it up perfectly when he yells out to Gatsby: They re a rotten crowd. You re worth the whole damn bunch put together. (162)
Tom Buchanan s bad character is established when he is introduced for the first time. He has a hard mouth , arrogant eyes , a supercilious manner , and seems to always lean aggressively forward (11). Nick even feels that Tom would say something extremely condescending when he sees him on his front porch: Now don t think my opinion on these matters is final, just because I m stronger and more of a man than you are. (11) Whether the description of Tom is an extreme exaggeration or not, the first impression of Tom is that of an arrogant, ignorant, condescending antagonist. In addition, he is very racist and sexist, thinking that white people and men [describing himself] are superior to everything else. Being a man with a superiority complex because of his wealth, he makes comments such as, Civilization s going to pieces It s up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things, (17) and Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions and next they ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white. (137) So it seems that Fitzerald is making Tom the villain of the story, the hated character for readers because of his egotistical, conceited personality.
Not only is Tom conceited, but he also acts cruelly towards others, seeming to have fun by torturing them. Neither does he cherish the things he has. Although Tom is established, in regard to his wealth and his family, he has an affair with Myrtle, and uses his wealth to torture her husband, Wilson. He is supposed to sell Wilson an old car of his that he doesn t use and has no need for, but never actually does and instead, constantly promises to sell it later. He even threatens to sell it elsewhere after promising numerous times. Wilson, however, really needs the money he can make from the car; otherwise his life would be in shambles. When he finds out that his wife has been having affair, and is desperate to get money to save his marriage, he calls Tom at home to ask about the car, but Tom in his superior way replies, Very well then, I won t sell you the car at all I m under no obligation to you at all And as for your bothering me about it at lunch time I won t stand that at all! (122) He shows a tremendous lack of consideration and is apathetic to the desperate needs of other people. Also, he is, in fact, under obligation as a gentleman to keep word of mouth promises. He is mad that Wilson is interrupting his lunch, and seems to disregard the fact that he is already doing Wilson wrong, by having an affair with his wife. Because he has always been wealthy his whole life and has never needed to think about financial problems, he doesn t know at all what money means to poor people such as Wilson, and doesn t bother to try to get an understanding of their situation.
By the end of the book, there are three deaths that of Myrtle, Wilson, and Gatsby. Tom is the cause of all of these deaths, both indirectly, and directly. He is the person who tells Wilson who owns the car that killed Myrtle, making the assumption that it is Gatsby who drove it. Later, when Nick runs into Tom, he still holds on to the idea that he did the right thing: He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadn t told him who owned the car He said defiantly. What if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him. (187) He doesn t seem to realize that if it were just an accident, Wilson would not have gone and killed the driver for revenge. He seems ignorant of the fact that Wilson wanted revenge on the man who had the affair with his wife, which is Tom himself. The night of Myrtle s death, Wilson does a lot of thinking and pieces together many events to figure out that his wife has been having an affair, and gets more and more distraught with every thought:
he blurted out that a couple of months ago his wife had come from the city with her face bruised and her nose swollen and began to cry Oh, my God! (164) I found [the small expensive dog leash] yesterday afternoon. She tried to tell me about it but I knew it was something funny He began saying Oh, my God! again in a whisper Then he killed her,...
MLA Style
. EssayMania.com. Retrieved on 12 Feb, 2012 from
<http://essaymania.com/134918/the-great-gatsby-tomanddaisy>
More College Papers
The Grapes Of Wrath 8
At the onset of The Grapes of Wrath we see the Joad family struggling just to keep their immediate family together. They are focused on just themselves. The Joad family s journey to California results in the breakup of their family. The breakup of their immediate family, and the embrace of the migr
The Grangerfords
Huck at The Grangerfords
Huckleberry Finn provides the narrative voice of Mark Twain s novel, and his honest voice combined with his personal vulnerabilities reveal the different levels of the Grangerfords world. Huck is without a family: neither the drunken attention of Pap nor the pious ministr
The Fish By Elizabeth Bishop
Gone Fishin
"The Fish" by Elizabeth Bishop is saturated with vivid imagery and abundant description, which help the reader visualize the action. Bishop s use of imagery, narration, and tone allow the reader to visualize the fish and create a bond with him, a bond in which the reader has a great d