Was Daisy Worth It?

by Jessica

The Great Gatsby leaves something to be desired for almost every consumer of its vapidly glorious tale that told of the supposedly prosperous decade that was America in the 1920s.  A happy ending was not what was received or given to any of the pretentious characters in Fitzgerald's classic love story...or tragedy, if the ending was what's important.  Although Gatsby inevitably met his tragic end, his love for Daisy never did.

Even as he stood outside the Buchanan's home on his last night, staring in at his imagined fairytale with Nick Carraway's cousin, Jay Gatsby's life-consuming love never ceased.  The last word, noun, name he mumbled before the gunshot exploded was Daisy.  Daisy was the reason for Gatsby's parties, for Gatsby's glory, for Gatsby's ironic greatness.

The question lies here:  Was Daisy worth it?

Daisy Buchanan was a self-absorbed woman who never grew up.  She thrived under the security her cheating husband, Tom, provided her.  But the adventure that surrounded Gatsby was irresistible to her.  Their shared past, however, couldn't make up for the fact that Daisy was now a married woman and mother in the present.  Gatsby was highly mistaken when he uttered the famous quote:

"Can't repeat the past?  Why of course you can!"

Sorry, old sport, but you can't.  Not this time.

Jay Gatsby's past is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.  But perhaps there is a key.  To Daisy, Gatsby idolized the sense of the unknown, of the equivocal.  Gatsby was seemingly blind to the fact that Daisy had a life, a life she'd had for years.  Daisy sometimes appeared to be just as ignorant.  She told Nick in her glittering voice that she hoped her daughter would grow up to be a beautiful little fool.  In an ironic turn, that was exactly what Daisy became.

Gatsby faked his way through his whole life; he took over the identity of Dan Cody after the latter died and left nothing to his apprentice, the former.  He climbed his way up the social ladder to persue his dream of once again capturing Daisy.  But here we are again.  What was so great about Daisy Buchanan?

With her voice "full of money" and her face "sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes, and a bright, passionate mouth," Daisy's apparent good looks were the initial attraction to Jay Gatsby.  She was a fun-loving girl who never stopped moving, a girl that he just could not have - not now, not ever.  Gatsby did not provide Daisy with the aforementioned security she was handed on a silver platter from Tom.  Truth be told, Gatsby simply was not rich enough at the time of their first romantic encounter.

But alas, he sought to change that.  A growing social network brought Gatsby in line with all the right people to impress his love.  Putting in underhanded work with the not-so-nice side of New York prompted Gatsby to bank all the money he'd ever need to impress Daisy.  And finally, what better to woo Daisy Buchanan than a lavish and ostentatious mansion in West Egg just across the bay from her stunning abode in East egg?

The parties were off the hook.  Roaring music blared from the bandstand, and flappers danced until the sun had completed a 360 in the sky.  Jazz trumpets sounded, and the pool was filled with reluctant swimmers and wine stoppers party-goers popped as soon as the gate was opened.  They came from all over, simply to party at Gatsby's.  

"People were not invited - they went there."

But all that time, there was one man who did not drink, did not dance, did nothing but stare longingly out from the pier and across the water to the unreachable green light mocking him from the dock of the Buchanan's.  Daisy, like that light, was always going to be unreachable to Gatsby.

There was a time, however brief, in the summer that Gatsby and Daisy and Nick and Jordan would have a gay old time flinging shirts over railings and drinking tea on the hottest days.  Gatsby thought he had succeeded in gaining his love back.  All Daisy had to do was tell Tom she'd never loved him.

But Daisy couldn't do that.

Daisy could not relinquish the security, the old money, the normality that was her life with Tom.  Gatsby, for her, was simply a continuation of a previous chapter in her story, a short-lived adventure that was always meant to end.  Tom talked her into staying with him; Daisy, in the end, did not deserve the obsessive love Gatsby had given her all those years.

In the end, no one stayed for Gatsby's funeral except for Nick.  In the end, the parties Gatsby threw were thrown away, wasted on those for whom he cared nothing.  In the end, Daisy Buchanan was nothing but a beautiful little fool.