I just recently read The Great Gatsby for the second time, and I think this time I noticed things that I didn’t notice or pay much attention to the last time I read it. I feel like most of these characters are fake and take advantage of the people around them. Daisy, who is cheating on her husband, doesn’t really think about how her husband may feel. Gatsby surrounds himself with people who are happy, making them think he is important and his life is fulfilled- whereas he feels the complete opposite on the inside. People look at Gatsby from the outside, but nobody even really sees who he is until he finds a true friend, Nick Carraway. These characters create a show for outsiders and nobody really knows who they are. Daisy lies to everyone except Nick and Gatsby. Gatsby lies to himself and the public.
I found that not only does Daisy fool her husband Tom into believing she loved him this whole time, but she also cheats on him and makes it obvious by flirting with Gatsby. Although Nick and Gatsby are the only ones who know Daisy has feelings for Gatsby, she is lying to everyone else by making them think her and Tom are happily married. He may not show it, but Tom cares for Daisy and when she admits to not loving him, he gets upset. Daisy was selfish and only cared about what she wanted for herself, not how it might have made others feel. Tom tries to convince himself that Daisy loves him and always has, but I can tell that he knows what is happening when Gatsby confronts him about it. “You’re crazy!” he exploded. “I can’t speak about what happened five years ago because I didn’t know Daisy then- and I’ll be damned if I see how you got within a mile of her unless you brought the groceries to the back door. But all the rest of that’s a god damned lie. Daisy loved me when she married me and she loves me now.” (Fitzgerald, 131) Daisy knows shes hurting Tom but choses Gatsby because she was selfish and didn’t realize Tom would be hurt as well.
Another character who lives a lie is Gatsby. I found that the first time I read this book, I thought of Gatsby as someone with many friends and lived his life to its fullest. However, after reading it over again I formed a new perspective on Gatsby’s life. He doesn’t really have friends who he sits with and talks to at his parties. Most people don’t even know what he looks like. He is a figure. Not a someone, a something. You could say that he is popular because everyone knows his name but nobody really knows who he is. He surely doesn’t open up to people, either. When he met Nick, he didn’t tell him anything about who he was, what he did for a living. Nick didn’t even know who Gatsby was until he told him. Everyone saw something special or magical about Gatsby but nobody really knew why. I think it was because nobody knew him. There was nothing to say about him other than that he had parties. He may have been a rich man but he was still a lonely man- and nobody knew that. The impression he gave was a confident, rich oxford man who was always keeping people wondering about his past. Thats why he was a lie. He surrounded himself with people, but nobody knew him. He was used by strangers for his popularity and parties and he used them to build on his reputation. He was living his life as a lie and nobody knew it.
In conclusion, these characters were putting on a show for others and they knew it. These characters were lying to others and thats what made them stand out. Gatsby lied to the public and to himself, and Daisy lied to her husband. Although they lied I still love these characters because they keep the story interesting and make you think about who they really could be or how they actually feel.
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