Curtin
English 300 5°
25 March 2015
The Great Gatsby Essay
In F. Scott Fitzgerald's
The Great Gatsby
, Daisy is a perfect model of The Lost
Generation through her loss of faith for finding love, confusion about where and who she belongs to, and her reckless driving which causes chaos.
Daisy does not have much faith when it comes to believing and finding her true love. Her first love was Gatsby, and they were madly in love. When Jordan Baker describes Daisy and
Gatsby’s relationship, she says, “[Gatsby] looked at Daisy while she was speaking, in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at sometime, and because it seemed romantic to me I have remembered the incident ever since.” (80) This romance illuminates the deepness and genuine love between Gatsby and Daisy, unlike Tom and Daisy. When Gatsby leaves for war, Daisy ends up being pushed to find that true love in someone else, but finds Tom instead. Daisy ends up losing faith in listening to what her heart wants because she is blinded by her status with Tom and having luxurious materials and gifts such as “a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” (80) Tom's opulent lifestyle is the source of Daisy's love for him. When
Jordan describes Daisy and Tom’s relationship, it is completely different from the description with Gatsby. Jordan says, “I was scared, I can tell you; I’d never seen a girl like that before. She began to cryshe cried and she cried. She wouldn’t let go of the letter.” (81) Daisy cries over
Gatsby and gets drunk the night before her wedding with Tom. Daisy’s letter, her tears, and
drunkenness symbolizes her loss of faith of ever reuniting with her true love, Gatsby. Daisy shows her inability to obtain full happiness as she says, “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.” (20) Daisy says this because she sees her daughter as a mirror of herself, a beautiful little fool. Daisy is a fool who loses faith in being with her true love and forced herself into a marriage with a man she doesn’t feel happy with.
Daisy reflects chaotic behavior. She creates disorder when she kills Myrtle with her reckless driving. Daisy’s inability to stop a car displays her careless behavior and lack of basic human emotion. Gatsby goes out of his way to help Daisy, yet Daisy continues to drive off away from the murder scene. Nick asks, “Was Daisy driving?” and Gatsby says “Yes, but of course I’ll say I was.” (151) She does not take any responsibility for her heedless faults and is only thinking about herself. Gatsby had to pay for her mistakes and was murdered because of Daisy’s foolishness. Nick perfectly describes Daisy when he says “They were