Great Gatsby Compare and Contrast Essay

Great Gatsby compare and Contrast Essay

The Great Gatsby contains many intriguing characters, each with their own traits and nature. Women characters play a big role in the plot of the novel and in the final outcome so it is only fitting that I'm going to compare two influencial female characters from this book. The first being Daisy Buchanan, who is Tom's wife and the other being Myrtle Wilson, Tom's Mistress and Wife of George Wilson.

First off, as you read the novel you may notice that these two characters rarely interact but still they have much in common. First off, they are both in a relationship with Tom Buchanan. Myrtle is aware of this but she has little regard for Daisy because in her opinion, "You don't live forever" thus referring that she is just living life to the fullest and on the edge. These two women also were drawn to Tom mostly because of his wealth. Daisy said that one of the reasons that she married him was because she was "blinded by his wealth". As for Myrtle she is used to living a middle class lifestyle so she enjoys endulging in the half of her double life with Tom.

Besides that these two characters are vastly different. Myrtle resides in The Valley of Ashes and doesn't experience the wonders of being rich for her husband just owns a gas station and makes little money. Daisy on the other hand was born into wealth and it is all that she has known all of her life. Also personality wise Daisy is much more careless and thinks that she is somewhat above the law and that she is safe behind her money. The Book points out that Myrtle has two distinct personalities, one with Tom, and one with George. With Tom she is much more arrogant and tries to live the typical snobby wealthy lifestyle while with George she acts more down to earth.

I believe that fitzgerald using his female characters perfectly conveys the different social standings in the twenty's just because they are so diverse. With Daisy he shows how the wealthy tended to act and with myrtle he shows how money can change how a person acts in an instant. I believe neither of these characters were meant to convey any of the good things of that time period, they were used to display mainly the faults and that is what partially made this novel so interesting. Overall there were only a couple "good" characters in the novel such as Nick, Michaelis, and Gatsby but, that's a topic for a totally different essay.

After Reading the novel and closely examining all of the characters, it is in my opimion that this book was used to get across how careless, reckless, and dangerous rich people lived in his time period in which he mostly conveyed through Daisy and Gatsby but also in other characters such as Myrtle and Tom. Overall these differences and similarities caused for a lot of exciting conflict in the book thus making it an