The Obsessive Pursuit of Daisy by Jay Gatsby, Essay Example

In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates a fabulous and extraordinary life style of Jay Gatsby. His wealth and property is the image of his greatness. The origin for such prominence comes from Gatsby’s desire and pursuit of Daisy. However, this aspiration leads him astray from human relations and love. His desperate approach to get the girl of his dreams only causes him to get involved in illegal business. Gatsby holds several social parties so that he could impress and reunite with Daisy. However, this does not function as a social occasion for Gatsby to improve his human relations. Furthermore, his fascination for Daisy distorts the idea of true love because he chooses to recapture Daisy from her current husband Tom. Gatsby’s pursuit of Daisy is obsessive and his love for her is corrupted, which work together to illustrate Gatsby’s loneliness and a false ideology of love. Gatsby’s downfall comes from his dream of reuniting with Daisy.

Despite Gatsby’s prestige and power, he does not seem to use these factors intelligently, which ultimately lead to his demise. Loneliness is one of the great ironies of Gatsby’s character. Of all his characters, it seems that he avoids every chance of improving his social relations, which is eminent through Gatsby’s parties. Nick mentions the absence of Gatsby when he went to his party for the first time. He stated that “This is an unusual party, I haven’t seen the host” (47). This means that Gatsby does not make an effort to socialize with the people in his party because none of his guests are his friends. One of his guests commented that some of the uninvited people also went there (43). From this, it is evident that Gatsby is holding these parties to impress Daisy more than anything else. This comes along from Gatsby’s purchase of the house and his conversation with Jordan. Clearly, Gatsby uses these parties to regain Daisy’s attention when he says. “I don’t want to do anything out of the way; I want to see her next to me” (79). Gatsby seems to be aloof and alone in these parties because his mind is only thinking of more schemes of getting Daisy.

Daisy is a woman who needs to be satisfied with money. This is true when Gatsby describes her as “Gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor” (150). This is an important reason for Gatsby’s failure because he needs to acquire money as he tries to impress Daisy. Tom Buchanan further reiterates, “A lot of these newly rich people are bootleggers (107). It is for a fact that Gatsby is one of them. This is one of the reasons he cannot have close relationships with other people. In his funeral his closet business partner Meyer Wolfshiem refuses to show up at his funeral because he is “tied up in some important business and cannot get mixed up in this thing now”(166). The obscurity in Wolfshiem’s words and his refusal to attend the funeral shows that Gatsby illegal business coils him away from human relations even in his death.

Gatsby desperate approach to attain the girl of his dreams gives him a false image of Daisy. He fails to realize that Daisy’s nature is corrupted. Gatsby vividly remembers how Daisy used to be and fails to realize who she is now. The Daisy in his mind is not the same Daisy he is trying to win back. The failure to realize this brings about Gatsby’s downfall. His corruption begins from him loving the corrupted nature of Daisy. She is a woman who values social status more than anything else. Tom revealed to have cheated on Daisy but she continued to endure him because of his power and prestige. Daisy is foolish by choosing wealth over true love. She seems to recognize this and supports it by saying, “that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (17). The fact that Daisy recognizes money over true love is rash but continues to live her life in that manner, which is further prove that she is corrupted. Gatsby altered his idea of true love in order to satisfy women like Daisy.

Gatsby’s false ideology of love is shown vividly by the way he pursuits Daisy. He uses wealth as a method of reuniting with her. When Gatsby invites her to his house, he seems to imagine the spark of romance that will envelop them once again through money. This comes from Nick portrayal that, “Gatsby hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes” (91). This shows that Gatsby recognizes his wealth in order to rekindle his affair. He has to satisfy Daisy’s corrupted value of wealth over true love. By so doing, he falls into the trap of Tom and Daisy, which is a relationship that is a false ideal of love. This deception comes from the moments of Daisy reliving the memories along with Gatsby because for a short time both of them seem to be possessed by all the prosperity that surrounds them. This is eminent from Nick’s comment that, “I looked once more at them and they looked back at me, remotely, possessed by intense life” (96). It seems for a moment Gatsby’s way of pursuing Daisy was successful in restoring their relationship. Moreover, the corrupt ideology of love seemed to help fulfill Gatsby’s dream of reunion.

However, this triumphal moment is short lived. Gatsby’s ambition seemed to get the better of him when he continues to see Daisy even after Tom became suspicions that they were rekindling their love. Tom orders Daisy to say that she never loved him. Daisy finds herself in a dilemma and admits she cannot do that. This is the end of Gatsby’s infatuation to Daisy because he realizes the fatal flaw in his plans. He could not force Daisy to love him back. The true fear that Gatsby feels is unrequited love from the realization that he will never have Daisy as long as she remains with her husband Tom. These aspirations led to Gatsby’s obsession. Gatsby’s fanatical pursuit of Daisy ultimately sparks conflict with Tom. Their stay at the hotel causes the important argument between Tom and Gatsby regarding Daisy. This argument ended with Daisy saying, “I can’t say I never loved Tom” (133). Tom also added, “There are things between me and Daisy that you will never know, things that neither of us can forget” (132). These two sentences have strong effects on Gatsby’s dream of reuniting with Daisy. Nick articulates that these words seemed “to bite physically into Gatsby” (132). This proves that Gatsby’s obsessive dream of reuniting with a married woman backfired and his ideology of love is a deception.

Unfortunately, for Gatsby, he refuses to recognize and believe this false love, which leads him further to his downfall. After the confrontation at the hotel, Gatsby still stayed outside Daisy and Tom’s house as if he did not realize the pain and conflicts he caused through his actions (143). This is another sign that his pursuit is obsessive and deceptive because in the end Nick establishes that Daisy and Tom were together having “an unmistakable air of natural intimacy” (145). This proves that Gatsby’s efforts were futile and that in the end Daisy is a woman who will be satisfy with wealth. Moreover, it does not really matter whom she dates. In the end, Gatsby finds out that all the social status and the basis of his accumulated wealth was on a false ideology of love. Eventually, it only brings him shattered dreams and loneliness.

Gatsby’s ideology that Daisy still loves him makes him unable to overcome Daisy’s position that she is a married woman. He ultimately involves in corrupted thoughts by his own ways of loving Daisy passionately. He became is blind to both his and Daisy’s limitations. This corruption of wealth that gives way to the unworthiness of Daisy is a powerful allegory that crime never pays. The amoral pursuit of lust cannot satisfy his desires for love; nor can Daisy’s stance and her relationships with others ever be congruent with Gatsby’s lifestyle. Gatsby’s ultimate demise occurs when he realizes that he cannot attain Daisy by his money and power. He could not find her true love even by using the most expensive shirts. It seemed that love was about convenience in his material world. His dreams could not become a reality by sheer willpower, and no one can make Daisy become an honest wife to one man. Their pursuit of each other ironically drove away their lifestyles. In the end, their love was only an illusion thereby depicting that the power of true love is never real. Both Gatsby and Daisy lose their happiness because they had different versions of love during their time together.