Daisy In The Great Gatsby Essay

In Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Daisy is portrayed as a modern woman; she is sophisticated, careless and beautifully shallow. Daisy knows who she is, and what it takes for her to be able to keep the lifestyle she grew up in, and this adds to her carelessness and her feigned interest in life. In all, Daisy is a woman who will not sacrifice material desires or comfort for love or for others, and her character is politely cruel in this way.

Daisy’s main strength, which buoyed her throughout her youth and when she was in Louisville, is her ability to know what was expected of her and feign cluelessness. This is shown in her statement about her child: 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool--that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool." Daisy acts like a fool, especially to Tom to cover her true feelings so she can have what she wants without consequence. After diner in chapter 1, when Tom asks Nick what Daisy and he talked about on the veranda, Daisy responds, "I can't seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I'm sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know----," referencing a racist spiel that Tom had gone on during dinner. Daisy keeps he knowledge concealed, but she understands the complexity of the world around her

She doesn’t try to confront Tom about his mistress, and she feigns sophistication to remain in wealth and out of gossip. She even gives up Gatsby, who she states she loves, and dreads the drama that comes from the confrontation between Tom and Gatsby. She goes so far as to let Gatsby take the fall for Myrtle’s death, which ends in his death. She and Tom leave immediately, leaving no forwarding address; Daisy ends up running from the trouble she helped cause. Daisy is so utterly unattached and desperate for material comfort that she has no morals left to care