Free Great Gatsby Essays: Deception :: Great Gatsby Essays

There are many American novels that yield insights into human nature, but few are as honest or intriguing as Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is brilliantly composed, and involves many different personalities, but it is at the core of this novel that we find the dark secret of humanity: deception. All of the inhabitants of East and West Egg use one another to get what they want, with little care as to how it will affect the people around them. Through the eyes of Nick Carraway, we see how the wealthy live: they live in a luxurious society surrounded by their own lies and deception. Looking in from the outside, their lives seem perfect; they have everything that money can buy, right? Wrong, the one thing that their money cannot buy them is happiness, and this is why each character deceives someone. Our story unravels early on in The Great Gatsby, Nick's very wealthy cousin, Daisy, simply has it all: she is beautiful and graceful; her bank account is large; she's traveled and knows people no matter where she goes. Her husband, Tom Buchanan, is without a doubt very lucky to be with her; but there's a ripple in this perfect couple: he's cheating on her. Not only is Tom cheating on her, but he's cheating on her with someone of a far lesser class; which makes the reader question why he's with her in the first place. Daisy had a very good reputation among the elite; she had never done anything that would have embarrassed her. "They moved with a fast crowd, all of them young and rich and wild, but she came out with an absolutely perfect reputation" (82). This illustrates how well put together Daisy is, he has used her, and continues to use her not only for her wealth, but also for her firm social standing. She could, literally, make or break Tom depending merely on whether or not she stayed with him; of course he'd remain with her, she defined his social standing. At the same time that Tom was using Daisy for her money, Daisy was using Tom, but for far different reasons. Nick reveals that Daisy doesn't need Tom in the same way that he needs her, she needs Tom to remain emotionally stable. As the story of Daisy and Gatsby's history unfolded, it became clear that they, at one point, loved each other very deeply, however, Gatsby had to leave Daisy to go to war.