The Murderous Pressures of Society In modern day society, there are pressures and stigmas everywhere. Many of these, pressure people into conforming to a certain lifestyle. The lifestyle of the 1920’s represented in The Great Gatsby was filled with pressures to have the perfect American life. The book is narrated by the young Nick Carraway who gets sucked into the lifestyle of the wealthiest people in New York. After all of the secrets and mysteries are exposed, three tragedies occur. Many people concur that these deaths occurred because of Daisy and Gatsby’s love, however they actually happened because of how society pushes the American Dream on everyone. For the era that The Great Gatsby is set in, the American Dream consisted of a married …show more content…
Tom got everything he could ever want in life such as a beautiful wife, an amazing house, popularity, and the image of a perfect life. Tom got the American Dream and wanting to keep it as well as Gatsby wanting it is what killed Gatsby and George Wilson, Myrtle’s husband. “Gatsby walked over and stood beside her. “Daisy, that’s all over now,” he said earnestly. “It doesn’t matter any more. Just tell him the truth- that you never loved him- and it’s all wiped out forever”” (Fitzgerald 131-132). The idea of having Daisy all to himself and having the perfect life with her lead Gatsby to start a fight with her husband. The fight went on with Daisy feeling nervous and shaken in the end, and when Gatsby let her drive she hit Myrtle. After this George did some of his own investigating which lead him to believe that Myrtle was having an affair with the owner of the yellow car. When Nick confronts Tom about what he told George he says, “”I told him the truth,” he said. “He came to the door while we were getting ready to leave, and when I sent down word that we weren’t in he tried to force his way upstairs. He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadn’t told him who owned the car. His hand was on a revolver in his pocket every minute he was in the house… He [Gatsby] ran over Myrtle like you’d run over a dog and never even stopped his car””(Fitzgerald 178). After telling George that Gatsby’s car was the one that hit Myrtle, George went to his house
On the way home from the hotel, Daisy, driving Gatsby's car, hits Tom's mistress, Myrtle. Gatsby says he'll take the blame for the death of Myrtle, therefore Daisy doesn't have to be arrested. Tom finds out and tells George Wilson, the husband of Myrtle. Enraged with the death of his wife, George shoots Gatsby in the pool. In the next chapter, Tom tells Nick one day passing by, "'That fellow had it coming to him.
Money and greed led to a death of morals in the 1920’s society. Fitzgerald showed this era with low moral and social values, along with greediness and empty happiness. “The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic mediation on 1920’s America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess” (SparkNotesEditors1). The Crazy parties Gatsby throws every Saturday show the desire for money and pleasure over a nobler, moral filled lifestyle. “The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music-epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night-resulted ultimately in the corruption of the American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals”
Thinking himself aware of how the rich and powerful Gatsby had taken advantage of him by seemingly having an affair with and then killing his wife, he murders him, taking his power and prestige; similar to Marx’s theory of the proletariat overthrowing the bourgeoisie. After destroying Gatsby and avenging his wife, he takes his own life. Tom, not knowing it was Daisy driving the car, is also under the impression that Gatsby killed Myrtle. “‘The God damned coward!’ he whimpered.
As a result of heartache and revenge due to Myrtle’s death, George Wilson is lead to killing Jay Gatsby. However, George happens to be oblivious to the affair between Tom and Myrtle. When George eventually discovers the love affair, he locked Myrtle inside of his office due to her sinful actions. Out of anger for her unfaithfulness to him, George yells at Myrtle, which causes her to run out into the street when she notices Tom’s vehicle driving towards the auto shop. “I took her to the window and I said ‘God knows what you've been doing, everything you've been doing.
Jealousy is the root of a lot problems this is the case with F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby. In this book we will talk about how jealousy is the main factor in this topic. Consequently proving how jealous Tom Buchanan is when he is surrounded Jay Gatsby.
Also when Myrtle is hit by the car that he thinks is Tom’s, he shows up to Tom’s house with a gun. When Tom points George in the direction of Gatsby, George kills Gatsby and then himself. “It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson’s body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete” (Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby is an American novel written by Scott Fitzgerald. On the surface, the book revolves around the concept of romance, the love between two individuals. However, the novel incorporates less of a romantic scope and rather focuses on the theme of the American Dream in the 1920s. Fitzgerald depicts the 1920’s as an era of decline in moral values. The strong desire for luxurious pleasure and money ultimately corrupts the American dream which was originally about individualism.
If Tom hadn’t falsely accused Gatsby of killing Myrtle to her husband then Mr. Wilson would not have had any motive to murder Gatsby. Also, Daisy’s knowledge of Tom’s affair drove Daisy to pursue Gatsby; putting Tom’s relationship with his mistress as an indirect cause of Gatsby’s death. This murderous climax exemplifies Fitzgerald’s theme of carelessness, because it shows Tom’s lack of care for Gatsby’s life to the point where he wanted him
His feelings towards Gatsby were negative and full of hate, so he set the target on him when he told Wilson that it was a yellow car who had killed his wife and that he was a friend of the person who owned it. Which also leads to the death of George Wilson since it drives him to insanity and sets him on a mission to go and find that yellow car which didn’t take him that long. Since Tom was the real lover of Myrtle. He was the one driving the yellow car earlier
In addition to Gatsby, Fitzgerald also uses this scene to add another victim of the pursuit of elitism: Myrtle. George, her husband, notes that before her fatal accident she ran out to meet “the man in that car. She ran out to speak to him and he wouldn’t stop,” (p. 159). Earlier in the novel, it has been established that Myrtle is having an affair with Tom, and uses him to escape her working-class reality into the fantasy of the American upper-class. She runs out to the road believing that Tom is “the man in that car,” and she could use him and his car to literally escape George and her humble roots.
The theme of The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald is that the upper class tend to participate in actions that are commonly seen as dishonest, unfaithful, or sketchy. Characters like Nick, Gatsby, Tom and George have twisted views on their own reality due to unfaithfulness and dishonesty. Nick was constantly lied to in the story, for example, Gatsby lied to him about where he got his money. Lies, similar to the one above, gave Nick some twisted views on the reality of his friendship. Gatsby had a twisted view on love due to Daisy marrying Tom right after he left for the war, rather than waiting for him.
Daisy then ran over Myrtle. But Gatsby was so in love with Daisy that he was willing to take the blame and face the consequences that came along with this accident. He planned on telling everybody that he was driving, not
Gatsby has the American Dream of being successful and wanting to marry the girl of his dreams. However, Fitzgerald argues that The American Dream is a paradox because dreams aren’t supposed to be achieved, and are better off to remain in one’s imagination. For example, Gatsby wants to marry the love of his life, Daisy Buchanan. Sadly Gatsby sets such a high standard for her that she will never be able to live up to. Gatsby envisions Daisy as the golden girl, and once he put his plan into action, he realizes
After having the argument of weather Daisy loved her husband, Gatsby and Daisy ride back home together in Gatsby’s car. As they are driving back they hit Myrtle Wilson who was a married woman that was having an affair with Daisy’s husband Tom. As the events of that night unravel, one learns who exactly hit the woman. In the novel, Gatsby talks to Nick about what happened by saying, that Daisy was the one who was driving the car, and that Myrtle came out running towards the car and then she hit her.
Tom and Daisy are able to avoid the consequences of Myrtle’s death. After the accident George goes into a rage and to control him Tom tells him “the truth” about “who owned the car” which was Gatsby, but Tom also thinks that Gatsby “ran over Myrtle like you’d run over a dog and never even stopped his car” (Fitzgerald 190-191). George was ready to kill whoever Myrtle was cheating with. Tom then tells George that Gatsby owned the car that had killed Myrtle so George thinks that Myrtle was cheating on him with Gatsby, and that Gatsby killed Myrtle. Tom and Daisy then go on a vacation and leave their problems behind them for others such as Nick to deal with.