The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

When Myrtle and Tom are in the city with Nick, she says “I want to get one of those dogs [...] I want to get one for the apartment. They’re nice to have-a dog” (27). Myrtle has always wanted to be part of the upper class, and one day she meets Tom. They have an affair and Myrtle believes them to be in love, although Myrtle is mainly attracted to Tom’s money and extravagance. She holds onto the hope that they will leave their spouses together and get married, she wants to be a family with Tom. The act of getting a dog signifies this desire as the dog represents being a family. Myrtle truly wants to believe she and Tom will one day get married, as her sister Catherine says “When they do get married [...] they’re going out West to live for a while until it blows over” (34). Myrtle’s hope in this dream is unrealistic, and she knows deep down this will never happen, but she holds onto her hope anyway. In addition, Myrtle is overcome with her thoughts of hope. In a further explanation, Birkerts shows how hope holds “the power of our expectations and our longings” (124). Hope is an amazing emotion, but also incredibly dangerous. Dreaming unrealistically can lead to a loss of reality, one is no longer grounded in real life. Life rushes by as thoughts of hope fog the head with the deceitful promise of happiness. Myrtle reveals the strengths and weaknesses of

After Myrtle leaves to go to New York her personality seems to take somewhat of a turn, she starts making purchases with Tom's money and you can see the shift. This reveals that Myrtle is different when money is around her, she can live the lavish lifestyle she wants to live. Once at the apartment her actual true colors started showing through “ Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume sometime before and was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room.” The “Change” was not only the dress that Myrtle was wearing, but her persona changed as well, the “Costume” was just Myrtle trying to show off what she had and the person she was trying to

The character Myrtle showed symbolism by wearing plain and dull clothes at home with her husband George, but when she knew she would be around Tom, she would change into clothes with bright colors. She did this to try to fool herself in to thinking that she was not a poor girl from the suburbs, and tried to fool Tom into thinking that she was exotic and would fit into a rich life style. Some times when she would put on these clothes, her whole attitude would change. Myrtle would go from being a nice lady to a

Myrtle Wilson is obsessed with leaving her poor life behind her by being with Tom but unlike Gatsby, her attempts are fruitless. She attempts to make herself seem an upper class person like when she changed her dress before the party in chapter two. She believes her husband is beneath her and talks of all low statuses as if she isn’t one of them. "I told that boy about the ice." Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. "These people! You have to keep after them all the time." (42)

Myrtle’s goal was to achieve a form of substantial wealth and some form of escape from her lower-middle class life with George Wilson in the valley of ashes. Myrtle’s dream was perhaps more easily fulfilled because it could be deemed as more material, while Gatsby desired also desired certain immaterial things, to ascend to the old aristocracy, and therefore Daisy’s hand in marriage. However, Myrtle pursued similar means to Gatsby, choosing to use im moral means, just as Gatsby took part in bootlegging, she engaged in an affair with Tom Buchanan. This helped her to achieve the material aspect of her American Dream, as shown when Tom showers her with material gifts and wealth. Myrtle continues to take it upon herself to become a fitting

When she arrives at the apartment, she throws a “regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood” as if she belonged there all her life. She invites people over in order to create a fancy lifestyle that mirrors the rich “dinner party” lifestyle. Myrtle not only changed her “costume” again, but also her personality. The use of “costume” illustrates that she does not belong in it, and that seems like a foreign object on her body. When Mrs. McKee compliments her dress, Myrtle says that “[she] slips it on when [she] doesn’t care what [she] looks like.” Her insecurity and self-consciousness forces her to fabricate the lie that it is just a normality for her to be so beautiful and classy. She continues on to scold the “lower orders” when she herself is the lower class. Additionally, Myrtle easily accepts the lie that Daisy is Catholic, which demonstrates the power that Tom has over her, and that the love that she has for him is not reciprocated. Myrtle believes that she is superior to where she is originally from, especially her husband, whom she does not care

Myrtle is false, for example she possesses “artificial laughter” and acts in a way she believes someone from a higher class would and comes across as “haughty”. She is the victim of two acts of violence, Tom Buchanan hits her and Daisy kills her, so it is surprising that the reader tends not to feel sorry for her or be able to empathise with her. This could be because we do not know her true character. The negative aspects of her personality, for example, the fact that she buys a puppy that she cannot possibly care for shows she is irresponsible and thoughtless. She also spends Tom Buchanan’s money recklessly, which emphasises her carelessness. Myrtle is rude about Nick and her husband, she raises her eyebrows in “disdain” and points at Nick saying “I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there”.

Characters in the book have all been corrupted and destroyed by the American Dream. Myrtle is having an affair with Tom. By having the affair it harms her marriage with George. Myrtle sees the American Dream as being perfect, wealthy, and well respected. This shows why she's having an affair with Tom, is because he is rich and well respected.

She is a woman with a bigger, curved body, and her personality has a certain darkness to it. Upon meeting Tom, she instantly falls for him because of his wealth and status, which she craves to have in life. Although she is married to George, she finds him to be pathetic and lazy because he doesn’t have money like Tom. Myrtle doesn’t care that she ruined Tom and Daisy’s relationship, since she wants him all to herself no matter the consequences. Both women live a different lifestyle, but in the end they share the same

Myrtle changes herself to please tom, adopting a ‘higher class taste’; “with the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change. the intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur” (31). Myrtle lies and maintains a different personality to conceivably meet tomes level. Tom is very high up on the social ladder being as rich as he is, and myrtle feels that to be on that level she needs to act like him- “impressively hauteur”. Myrtle lies to try and keep tom, by acting not like herself but acting more like tom and the higher

In order for WWI to be resolved, an excessive amount of devastation to Germany was a price that the Allied Powers were willing to pay. In order to excel and prosper, the Allied Powers undermined Germany, leaving them with reparations to pay, and a colossal amount of damage to their country. Consequently, this hunger for peace led to a rise in an even bigger issue, the nationalist sentiment and the upsurge to power of Adolf Hitler. The small fee to pay resulted in destruction on other countries, and the Allied Powers themselves. In a similar manner, the protagonist in the classic American novel, The Great Gatsby, experiences an identical and consequential outcome. As the main character, Jay Gatsby, attempts to win over his “golden girl”, he is oblivious to the fact that he is hurting himself and the people he cares about along his journey. Not only is Gatsby blind to not comprehend the incongruity of his goal, but he fails to realize that the love of his life, Daisy Buchanan, has other aspirations for her ideal lifestyle in which she never wanted Gatsby to participate. Much like the way Gatsby chases his dreams, Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson struggle to be mollified with what they already have accomplished and obtained. These naïve hopes of a textbook life cause the vast majority of the key characters in The Great Gatsby to inflict hurt and destruction on the people surrounding them. Throughout F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fictional novel, symbolism is utilized to further

In the book The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald the plot condemns a common theme throughout the story of, the “American Dream”. The American Dream to many , is this vision of becoming successful through trials & tribulations in our free land, that anybody could achieve whatever it is they want if they work hard for it . The time decade in which the story is written in is referred to as “The Roaring 20’s”. The 20’s were notorious as it was a time of rapid economic growth,the introduction of the modern consumer culture, and a new vibrant and colorful cultural scene. With the addition of Prohibition, instituted by the Eighteenth Amendment, a business of bootlegging the banned alcohol made a booming amount millionaires and

In an attempt to act fancy, she comes across as a snob who wants to be something she is not, an unattractive trait to have. Nick recognizes this as he articulates that she laughed at him “pointlessly”; since she is not actually wealthy, she has no reason to behave this way. Although Myrtle is portrayed as being confident, her desire for money, obtainable through Tom, shows that she is actually a distasteful, cheating woman, who uses her confidence to get what she wants out of men, although it doesn’t always

Though Myrtle Wilson tries her best to get out of her own social class and pursue happiness with the rich people, her efforts ultimately result in nothing as she ends up dying, being a victim of the people in the group she tried so hard to become a part of. Myrtle tried to join the rich class by entering an affair with Tom and taking on his lifestyle, but in doing so she becomes a terrible and corrupt person like the typical rich. She loses her sense of morality and is gross toward the people in the same class as her. With the way she is always changing her clothes, it really points out her dissatisfaction in her life. She changes how she acts pretty much every single time she changes her dress: "with the influence of the dress her whole personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality… was converted into impressive hauteur" (Fitzgerald 35). She treats the elevator boy in her apartment building with hatred: "Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. 'These people! You have to keep after them all

The Great Gatsby is not a fairytale about the perfect love of star crossed lovers; it is a novel about the idealistic love, corruption of the wealth and the American Dream that is never fulfilled. There are many relationships portrayed throughout the novel; however fail to fulfill the requirements of a real love story.