Unattainable Dreams: The Great Gatsby & The Crucible
Gatsby suddenly appears back in Daisy's life. While she is overtaken with happiness from Gatsby's return, she is also ridden with conflict.She has completely wiped away all of her previous memories of Gatsby, but she acts as if a day had never passed where they were apart. Daisy begins to feel conflicted when thoughts of her life with Tom start to creep back into her mind. She questions the consequences with Tom, of reigniting her relationship with Gatsby, as well as the self regret she will feel if she passes up her old love, and stays with Tom. The archetype of an innocent maiden. An innocent maiden is described as a young looking or young minded girl. This girl is typically oblivious to many of the hardships around her, and only tries to live out a good life. This is seen in Daisy when she wishes for the best of both worlds. She tries and succeeds at avoiding the decision of picking Tom or Gatsby. She lets fate decide the outcome, which in return leaves her more broken and lost than before hand.
Daisy
Daisy is a complicated character; as she wishes for a life that is unattainable for her. Daisy first met Gatsby when she was a young, innocent girl.The two fell head over heels for one another, eliminating the world around them. Daisy and Gatsby's dream of being inseparable was brought to an end, when Gatsby left for the war. After this, Daisy met Tom, and her entire character changed. She fell in love with this man, or so she believed, got married to him, and had a child with him. Daisy had thrown all memories and past feelings towards Gatsby right in the gutter. She is faced with a new life, and convinces herself that she is happy and satisfied with this life.
"Oh, you want too much!" she cried to Gatsby. "I love you now—isn't that enough? I can't help what's past." She began to sob helplessly. "I did love him once—but I loved you too." (264)
After Gatsby had left for the war, Daisy feels as though she would never find love again. She was extremely persistent that Gatsby will always be the only man in her life, making her incapable of loving another. In complete contrast to this, Daisy meets Tom, a very wealthy, prestigiously respectable man, unlike Gatsby, and throws out those past promises of only loving Gatsby. She adopts a new life with Tom, as if Gatsby had never existed before in her life. She gets married to Tom, showing a commitment to their love and relationship. She bares his child, heightening the amount of commitment she is presenting to Tom. Through this, Daisy displays features of the archetypal theme of the fatal woman. A fatal woman is a woman that "all" men desire. She is typically mysterious, doing something rebellious, a woman in a committed relationship typically would not do. Daisy displays this when she completely betrays her promises to Gatsby. She gives this man so much hope and mystery to look forward to after coming back from the war, and instead he is surprised with her already having a ring on her finger. She lets down Gatsby, yet still has him crawling back to her.
Although many connections can be made between Daisy and different characters from The Crucible, the most similar character is Elizabeth Proctor. Both characters have a very sweet and likeable outward personality, but on the inside, they are both getting tossed around with confliction. Daisy is conflicted when she is faced with the decision of choosing Tom or Gatsby, whereas Elizabeth is faced with the confliction her husband, John Proctor, has caused her. During their marriage, Elizabeth becomes aware that her husband has committed adultery with Abigail Williams. Throughout the story she has to decide if she's going to forgive John for cheating on her, as well as whether or not she will protect and lie for him when he is accused of committing this sin in court. Both of them give off the impression that they are quite naive, and do not know how to make their own decisions. As Elizabeth testifies in court for John, she is constantly looking over at him in hopes that he will lead her to the answer.
Gatsby
Jay Gatsby is a man of many mysteries. Everyone just knows him as "Gatsby". He is known by everyone, yet very very few have actually met him, or have realized they have met him. Gatsby keeps his personal life very reserved, claiming to love, and only love Daisy. As Gatsby leaves for the war, he is forced to say goodbye to Daisy. He puts his trust in her, that when he returns, he will be able to run back into her arms, and pick up where they left off, as if no time had passed at all. Unfortunately, Gatsby's dreams did not quite turn out as planned. For Gatsby, Daisy is his unattainable dream.
"I knew it was a great mistake for a man like me to fall in love" (85)
A way that Daisy is an unattainable dream is because, Gatsby wants Daisy to be happy. If Gatsby were a man who cared about himself more than Daisy, he would fight until he physically couldn't if that would mean he could get Daisy. Daisy is feeling torn between choosing Tom or choosing Gatsby. Gatsby wishes he wouldn't have to intervene and that Daisy would choose him over Tom. He wishes she would remember the time they shared together before he left and before Tom was added to the picture. Gatsby had built his life up from nothing for this girl, and was he going to let it all go to waste? Gatsby starts to see that Daisy is a new woman. She's now a married mother, who isn't the same innocent flower he once fell in love with. He starts to see his dream of a life with Daisy slip through his fingers because that Daisy no longer exists. He is physically incapable of loving the old Daisy because she has been replaced with a new Daisy. Gatsby questions everything he has revolved his life around. He may believe that there are still parts of the old Daisy that he is able to bring out of her, yet he may of wasted his life on a unknown girl who no longer loves him in the way she used to.
A way that Daisy is an unattainable dream is because, Daisy no longer feels the same love for him that she used to. When Daisy first fell in love with Gatsby, she was a young naive girl. She was oblivious to the chaotic world around her and accepted her first love too easily. Gatsby was this young mysterious man, who told Daisy very very little about himself or his past. Considering Daisy's naivety, she did not raise any concerns at this lack of openness. After Gatsby had left, and Daisy got married to Tom, she began to gain experience as a person, and make some realizations about Gatsby. She had known nothing about this man and she was so set on spending her life with him. Daisy changed as a person. Her relationship with Tom changed her personality into one different than the one Gatsby once fell in love with. Once Gatsby returns, Daisy feels lost because she doesn't love the mysterious man, Gatsby nearly as much as she used to, and doesn't know who to choose. Gatsby is unable to be with the young naive girl he once loved because she is gone, and the new version of her is questioning him as a person. Perhaps if Gatsby would have come out and told Daisy about himself and his life, Daisy would have never had to have been faced with that decision in the first place.
The character from The Crucible that Gatsby relates to most is Abigail Williams. Both characters experience a very intense high, followed by a horrible fall. In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby experiences what it feels like to be with the love of your life, and then to have her leave you for a different man. In The Crucible, Abigail Williams experiences love with John Proctor, experiencing a feeling of joy and desire more than she had ever in her lifetime, only to have John Proctor abruptly confess to her that what they had experienced was nothing but a horrible mistake. Both of these characters have very similar personalities. They each are very persistent when it comes to getting something they want, they won't back down without a battle. They also both have mysterious personalities. Neither of them share much to the people around them, leaving the reader to make judgements of their character themselves.
Tom
Tom is a character with a lot of secrets held under the surface. Tom is symbol of wealth and perfection. As described in The Great Gatsby, Tom is a bulky, masculine, sporty, and sickeningly wealthy man. This is the man Gatsby wants to be. Gatsby saw that Tom was the new man that Daisy had fallen in love with, and tried to recreate that personna for himself. Looking at Tom as an outsider, you'd think he is rather perfect, a man who could do no harm. In reality, this is far from the truth. Tom's unattainable dream is power and control; the American Dream. He wants both Daisy and Myrtle to fully sumbit to his undesirable ways, and while both of them love him unconditionally.
"And what's more, I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time." (251-252)
There are two sides to the American dream. This side is the trouble that comes along with it. Tom Buchanan seems to have the perfect life. He is extraordinarily wealthy, he has a beautiful wife and daughter, he's spoken of in a polite, prestigious manor, and he has a mistress that seems to run to his beck and call. What could be wrong with that? Tom was not just magically granted with this "perfect" life, he had to work and sacrifice many things in his life. Although Daisy and Tom seem to be in a happy, loving relationship on the outside, but that is not quite the case in actuality. Daisy is well aware that her husband is cheating on her with a woman from the city, which wasn't apart of Tom's plan. Their marriage started to deteriorate because of the affair, making Daisy more interested in Gatsby. This makes Tom fit into the archetype of the tragic hero. Tom still loved Daisy when he was having an affair, and he only had good intentions. Unfortunately, he was quite naive and the situation snowballed down. Considering, Daisy knows very little about Gatsby, Tom may have saved her from entering into a relationship with a man who could of ruined her.
There are two sides to the American dream. This side is the greed that influences the decisions. The American Dream is what everyone wants; money, love, lust, popularity. When you're lucky enough to have one of those elements, you become greedy for the rest. Tom was born into his wealth. His family was extremely wealthy, in which he inherited, allowing him to stay out of work for the majority of his life. Later on in Tom's life, he meets Daisy and falls in love with her. At the time he couldn't ask for more, that is until Daisy starts to become expected for Tom. He sees this woman everyday, he always knows she's around, and she's no longer that young, fun girl he got married to. Then Myrtle enters the picture. Myrtle is married to a man named Wilson and is feeling the same worn out feeling as Tom. The two meet and get very comfortable with one another. Tom begins to cheat on Daisy, and regains the adrenaline rush he gets from the dream. This slides Tom into the archetype of the villain. Tom becomes a selfish man. He once was committed to Daisy and their relationship, working together in marriage. He then drops all of that and commits adultery hurting many people around him. He became overly infatuated with fulfilling his own American Dream that he became selfish and crushed those below him.
Tom Buchanan has many similarities to the character John Proctor in The Crucible. Each of these characters are both widley respected amongst their areas, yet have committed a great amount of chaos in their own, and others lives. John Proctor, married to Elizabeth Proctor, committed adultery against her with a young girl, named Abigail Williams. It is suspected that this affair occured due to a sense of boredom in his marriage. Abigail was a young, attractive girl who lured John in and caused him to be a villian in his relationship, just like Tom Buchanan. These characters overall had good intentions as people. They never had the desire to harm or upset the people that love them, but unfortunately their desires took over, resulting in them being blamed for the pain and suffereing in their loved ones lives.
Works Cited Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. England: The Penguin Group, 1950. Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. United States of America: The Penguin Group, 2003.
