Love in Th Great Gatsby

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Lack of True Love in The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald
The idealized conception of love is one in which individuals are committed and faithful to each other unconditionally. Indeed, marriage vows usually involve making a promise to love one another in poverty and riches, in good health and in sickness. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, however, portrays love as a deceptive relationship in which couples stay together as a means of achieving their selfish goals. For instance, Tom Buchanan’s and Daisy’s marriage is intended to protect their upper class image, while Myrtle is in a relationship with Tom because of his material wealth. Most important, Gatsby, the novel’s major character, is not in live with Daisy as a person, but is romantically obsessed with his conception of her beauty. Thus, although he seems to be love-struck, his object is Daisy’s beauty and not her as a person. In this regard, the relationship between the characters in the novel shows that each is motivated either by self interests or self-deception about the essence of true love. This essay examines the idea of love in The Great Gatsby, and how the characters relationships exhibit lack of true love. Accordingly, the paper argues that there is no true love in the characters’ lives as each one is motivated by self interests as well as blinded by self-deception.
The most evident portrayal of the characters’ hypocrisy in their romantic relationships is the allure of materialism. This is most exemplified by Tom and Myrtle’s secret affair. On her part, Myrtle is infatuated and obsessed by the materialistic and luxurious life that Tom leads. She belongs to the lower-class of the Valley of Ash, while tom represents the affluence of the East Egg aristocracy. Eager to have a piece of the luxury of Tom’s world, Myrtle betrays her husband Wilson and starts an affair with Tom. Her motivation, therefore, is not pure love for Tom, but the opportunity the affair gives her to break into the social cycles of the wealthy and rich class of East and West Egg. The element of materialism corrupts any genuine feelings of love she may have for Tom. It is arguable, accordingly, that Myrtle is in the affair because she sees it as a ticket from her own poverty and lower class status. If she has any true love, then it is for Wilson whom she married in poverty. Even then, she seems to be more concerned about the wealth and social class of the people she has a relationship with than the individuals themselves. For example, she cried after learning that Wilson and borrowed the suit he had worn for their wedding. She cannot “stand him” because he represents poverty, a situation she is eager to escape from. Consequently, she starts an affair with Tom because it gives her material satisfaction and helps her, if only temporarily, to escape from the poverty of the Valley of Ash.
Tom’s relationship with Myrtle portrays a desire to dominate and posses a woman as a show of power and authority. She treats Myrtle as his sex slave, dictating when and where they meet. It is possible, therefore, that Tom is in the relationship to feed his ego, to show that he can control the women in his life. This attitude toward women, whereby he sees them as objects, is further portrayed in his marriage to Daisy. His wife is endowed with abundant beauty, and he is eager to show her off as a trophy. He sees her beauty as testimony of his upper class social status because he has managed to marry the most beautiful woman. For him, Daisy is a symbol of status and not a life partner and companion. The things that a man should get in a marriage, such as sex, romance and love, he gets it out of marriage through his adulterous relationships.
Similarly, Daisy represents to Tom what he needs to be a socially acceptable person not only in his East Egg community, but also in the upper class society. As a descendant of the English aristocracy and inheritor of old money, Tom wants to project the image of a successful high society person. Daisy’s fragility and beauty makes her an ideal lady to compliment his image as a successful upper class gentleman. In this regard, love is not the real thing that attracts Tom to Daisy, or the bond that keeps their marriage together. As innocent as she appears, the reader may easily sympathize with Daisy because of her husband’s infidelity. She is portrayed as a victim of patriarchal social structures in which men can be excused for having extra marital relationships. On the issue of love, however, it is difficult to establish whether her allegiance is to Tom or Gatsby. This is because she got herself drunk on the eve of her wedding to Tom. On the one hand, this may be explained as an attempt to close her conscience to the fact that she was marrying someone she did no love. Thus, she wanted to go into it in a stupor, so that she can go through it without being involved at a conscious level. On the other hand, it can be seen as an attempt to forget Gatsby, the only man she was truly in love with but was now away in World War One (Gross and Gross 2). The revelation that she got herself drunk after receiving a letter from Gatsby also hints to the possibility that he had dumped her, and Tom was her soft landing, a shoulder to cry on and forget Gatsby. She may have also married Tom because of the financial security he represents owing to his upper class background and inheritance. These facts raises the high possibility that she did not marry Tom for love, but because he was her remaining option after Gatsby left for the war, as well as for wealth and financial security of her future.
The relationship between Gatsby and Daisy is the central focus of the novel’s story line because events move towards their reunion. From the first chapters, Gatsby is introduced as a handsome young man who is not only dumb-struck by Daisy’s beauty, but is also deeply in love. However, it soon becomes apparent that his infatuation about Daisy is not of true love, but his idealization of Daisy as the perfect object of adoration. His outward show of humility and charm are not genuine, but a false mask he has perfected to win Daisy’s heart again. The narrator describes him thus: “He had one of those rare ...