mahjae05’s Blog

“In spite of this wives’ agreement that such malevolence was beyond credibility, the dispute ended in a short struggle, and both wives were lifted, kicking, into the night.”  pg 52

The views attained in the previous chapter may have been a bit too critical of Tom Buchanan; his actions are just the same as everyone else’s in East Egg. All the men are just out to gain more and more power over not only their wives, but everyone they associate with. Fitzgerald is trying to show how influential conformity is to the American way of life through the personalities of all these wealthy men. Everyone is always out to be better then someone else. People in America just want to keep up with their neighbors. They want the best car, the newest clothes, and even the most progressive ideas just so that they do not fall behind everyone else. Many people devote their lives to this endless competition of conformity and yet in the long run really do not attain anything useful throughout their entire lives. A prime example of this is in high school life. Throughout a year things such as clothes styles change countless times just because they are the new “in” thing. Kids do not want to be left behind in this shuffle and thus go out and buy these new clothes to conform to the times. Tom is in exactly the same position and is simply acting as his peers do. Though cheating on your wife is a bit more extreme then wearing a strange hat or something of that sort, Tom is essentially just a target of peer influence and would seem like an outcast if he acted any differently. Regardless, this influence on one another makes it seem as if this way of life is going to cause some trouble for many people in the future, especially for our main characters such as Tom and Gatsby.

“‘It’s a bitch,’ said Tom decisively. ‘Here’s your money. Go and buy ten more dogs with it.’” pg 28

Just as in the new Britney Spears song, Tom Buchanan is a womanizer. Not only is he cheating on his seemingly loyal and beautiful wife Daisy, but he also flouts it as if it didn’t matter. Though he does not sit with her on the train, everyone who knows Tom knows that he has this mistress. He just has very little respect for women and what they think and just uses them to get his “power fix”. The quote was striking because he seemed to intuitively know that the dog was a female despite what others thought. Tom has just gotten to a point in which he can just degrade and disrespect women without any repercussions. He seems to have an eye for the “weaknesses” of women and uses it to his advantage. Also, by telling the dog vendor to go buy ten more dogs, Tom showed how little he valued women. Each one is the same as the next and they are all worth just about the same. This way of thinking seems very strange considering the descriptions of Daisy given in the earlier chapter. Wearing white, which symbolizes many things, among them being beauty, purity, and most of all the unreachable, Daisy seems like the perfect fit for this power hungry Tom, and yet it seems as if he wants more. Just as captain Ahab, Tom’s need for more power and his quest for the top may be foreshadowing his impending downfall.

“Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water…” pg 5

The color white, just as in Moby Dick, has a very significant meaning in The Great Gatsby. The houses, owned by people who have too much money to possibly spend in their lifetimes, are all glittery white. They are houses that to almost any person in the world would be unattainable in even ones wildest dreams, and yet these people own them as if they were clothes. As the narrator, Nick, says, his neighbor Mr. Gatsby owns 40 acres of land in one of the most expensive and prominent places in America. Similarly, Daisy Buchanan is a white blond woman who was wearing a small white dress. Though these people seem to have attained the unattainable on the outside, in reality, they have many more problems then one would think. It seems that since Tom Buchanan has everything from polo horses to speedboats, he has started to go for a goal of just pure power. With power over his wife being easy, Tom turned to other women to suffice for this need. It is quite ironic that these people with everything and more actually have nothing.