Essay on The Great Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan

Submitted By ShraddhaP09
Words: 890
Pages: 4

Shraddha Patel
Period­6

Character Analysis: Daisy Who is Daisy Buchanan? She can be described as superficial, shallow, lustful and indecisive. However, there is another part of her, a deeper part, that she hides from everyone, including herself. Beneath the surface, there is a pool where not even light dares to go. That is her character, and it takes Jay Gatsby to churn the waters and bring the purest form of Daisy to the surface, if only for an instant.
At a first glance, Daisy is an utterly flat character, she came from wealth, she is currently wealthy, and will have wealth in the future. She appears to be in a state of stasis. However, upon closer inspection, Daisy fluctuates between being shallow and deep, feeling and unfeeling.
Although she does not undergo enough change to be classified as a round character, it is safe to say that she is a midpoint between flat and round, a rather complex personality. The reader catches glimpses of her true self in a multitude of instances, but none better than when she refers to her daughter’s birth. “’I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool­that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool’”. This quote is much like Daisy herself. On the surface, it appears ridiculous and unreal, but underneath, it is one of the most profound statements that she makes. What Daisy truly means is that she herself is a fool, a useless little housewife following an extravagantly normal routine day after day. However, in many stories, including many of Shakespeare’s plays, the fool is a character with hidden wisdom and knowledge about life. The same applies for Daisy, her child, and all women of the era. In order to survive in a man’s world, a woman either had to ignore gender roles entirely and never marry or become so meek and innocent that no one suspected her true nature or married her right away.
In the conventional definition of happiness for women, the latter was preferable, and thus, Daisy wished this curse of false happiness upon her daughter, because it is all she will ever know.
Daisy is aware of the adulterous acts of her husband. However, she seems to be ignorant about them. But why doesn’t she do anything about it? It is because of the money and power that
Tom posses. She admires the respect and honor that she gets when she is with Tom. The fact that she loves such respect makes her leave Gatsby. She knows that being with Gatsby would not provide her with an upper class luxury or respect even when Gatsby was rich. She finds West
Egg as “nouveaux riches” and admires the wealth of aristocrats. So, even when Gatsby died, she did not go to his funeral. Was that one month relationship worth nothing to Daisy? Was everything that Gatsby did to achieve her worth nothing? It suggests how emotionless Daisy could be. She is definitely blinded by her lust for money and upper class aristocratic respect.
When Daisy accidently hits Myrtle and leaves, more of her character is revealed. In the beginning of the novel, she is portrayed to be innocent, honest and all but the fact that she leaves the scene tell how unhumanitarian she is. The question is why did she not stop the car after the accident? We know that