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Obsession In The Great Gatsby Research Paper

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The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a book full of love, wealth, status, achievement and obsession, yet it has the dark subjects of abuse, excessive alcohol use, and even murder. To a reader, there are many topics that can be dissected. Obsession is a major theme that is portrayed throughout The Great Gatsby. Obsession can be seen in how the characters cherish their wealth, fortune and material items. Jay Gatsby has an unusual form of obsession with the fact that he wants to win Daisy back. This can also be represented as love, but one could also argue that Gatsby takes his means to get Daisy back to the extremes. He not only obsesses over just Daisy’s love, but the past love that they once had. He wants to return to the past of just loving one another and not being so caught up in all of the wealth. Daisy, on the other hand, is full of greed and obsesses over the wealth and material items. She does not know how to love without wealth. This is why Gatsby did everything to win Daisy back in …show more content…

Unlike Gatsby, Daisy was born into wealth. She was use to having everything she ever wanted. Daisy’s friend Jordan Baker said, “ The largest of the banners and the largest of the lawns belonged to Daisy Fay’s house. She was just eighteen, two years older than me, and by far the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville” (Fitzgerald 74). Daisy was very privileged in childhood and adolescence years. She wanted to maintain that wealth when she found a husband. However, when Gatsby met Daisy, he was not wealthy at all. Gatsby had not been born in wealth, but rather he worked to achieve his fortune. “His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people- his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all” (Fitzgerald 98). Gatsby was not pleased with the status of his prestige or wealth that he had grown up with. He wanted to make a better life for himself even before meeting

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