Hello everyone!

Today, in today’s topic, we will be exploring The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby is a novel written in 1925, which explored many characteristics and themes during the Roaring 20s. In this post, we will look at 3 specific characters: Nick Carraway, Tom Buchanan, and Jordan Baker.

Mark Laflaur. “The Great Gatsby.’” Flickr, Flickr, 5 Jan. 2012, www.flickr.com/photos/56116584@N07/8147212503/in/album-72157631910462924/.

Firstly, we will look at our narrator and main character: Nick Carraway. At the beginning of the book, he quickly describes himself as non-judgemental due to his father’s influence. He said, “I’m inclined to reserve all judgment” (Fitzgerald 1).  However, this proved to be false when he criticized internally on Tom Buchman by saying “Now he was a sturdy straw haired man of thirty with rather hard mouth and supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward.” He is in fact, quite a judgemental person, even though he may not know it.

The reason that Nick Carraway was included in the book could be to show how a supposedly “non-judgemental” character would judge the social and economic differences between different locations (East and West Egg) of the book.

Nick Carraway reminds me of modern-day judges. Judges are supposed to be as non-biased as they can when deciding a victor. However, sub-consciously, most judges likely already have a favourable and disfavorable side, and therefore make a biased judgment which could be similar to Nick’s situation.

 

The next person that we’ll explore is Tom Buchanan. He is an incredibly rich man with a large frame. Before the story, they were both on the football team at Yale University. Even though we don’t know much about Tom’s thoughts on Nick, Nick do have some negative judgments on Tom, by describing him as “arrogant” and “aggressive”. During chapter 1, he said, “The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved” (Fitzgerald 1). Through this quote, Tom seems to be racist and believes the white race is “superior” than others. He is overall described to have traits of a protagonist.

Tom Buchanan’s purpose in this book could be to serve as the protagonist, or trouble-maker, where conflicts would revolve around him. A possible conflict would be clashing with Gatsby, where the conflict’s topic would be Daisy. We know Daisy is Tom’s wife, who disapproves of some of Tom’s actions. And Gatsby, who has an interest in Daisy, could cause conflict between him and Tom.

Tom Buchanan reminds me of action movies and books, where there is almost always a protagonist or trouble-maker which causes all sorts of trouble for the main characters. From the start of the book, Tom Buchanan already have traits of what most protagonists in movies and books usually have: Arrogance.

 

For the last person, we will be looking at Daisy Buchanan. Daisy Buchanan is the wife of Tom Buchanan who seems to have a negative view on the world. During Nick’s visit, she hopes her daughter be “a beautiful fool” (Fitzgerald 1). To wish such dull statements shows that Daisy probably isn’t very satisfied with her life.

Daisy’s role in the book could be to show the goalless life of some women during the Roaring 20s. Fitzgerald’s inclusion of Daisy was to show readers that despite the improvements in the freedom that many women had during the Roaring 20s, there were still many women who had no goals other than to be a housewife. She could be serving as a symbol to remind people that not all women were free like men.

Daisy reminds me of Squidward Tentacles from the cartoon Spongebob. Despite the fact that the characters are in very different settings, they both do not have any personal purpose or goal in their individual worlds. Squidward was the cashier at Crabby Patties and had a depressing life due to Spongebob and Patrick’s existence. Daisy was also seen to have no goals and have a pessimistic view of the world after knowing Tom’s affair.

This is it, for now, I will definitely post more content on The Great Gatsby in the near future! Stay Tuned!