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Rylee Jones

Mrs.Schenk

English 11/ period 1

15 February 2022

The Great Gatsby Essay

The novel, “The Great Gatsby” by Scott F Fitzgerald can be described as a tragic love

story with the underlying theme of the death of the American dream. The distinction between old

money and new money plays an ultimate part in the destiny of the main characters of the novel,

Jay Gatsby, Daisy, Tom Buchanan, Jordan Baker, Myrtle, George Wilson, and Nick Carraway.

The novel ends with the appalling death of Jay Gatsby. The characters most responsible for

Gatsby's death is his once lover Daisy and her husband Tom Buchanan.

Gatsby fell in love when he first laid his eyes on Daisy on a summer night in Kentucky.

Since then gatsby has loved her, she had become his dream and his ultimate hope for the future.

Daisy promised Gatsby that she would wait for him after the war. She did not in fact wait for

Gatsby, she found another man. Another rich man who practically bought her love, Tom

Buchanan. Now, both Tom and Daisy are reckless and careless individuals who don't care much

about anyone but themselves, leading both to have affairs. Tom with his mistress, Myrtle, and

Daisy with Gatsby once they became reunited through Nick. Daisy had made Gatsby think his

dream had fully come true; that Gatsby was good enough for her and that she loved him with

every inch of her body but when it came down to telling her husband and father of her child she
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could not commit to Gatsby fully. In distress, Gatsby and Daisy leave on a drive in Gatsby’s car

and Daisy chose to drive. As she is driving, she runs over Tom’s mistress Myrtle and she

unfortunately dies. “He didn’t even stop his car” (Fitzgerald 141). Daisy knows that driving

Gatsby’s car has already set the blame on him for the death of Tom’s mistress, she doesn’t stop

the car after hitting Myrtle so no one knows it was her driving. Once Daisy and Gatsby return

from that horrid car ride, Gatsby sits and stays outside of the Buchanan household. Nick

carraway approaches him and asks about what happened because there was talk of the car that hit

Myrtle belonged to Gatsby because Gatsby is one of the only people to own a yellow car that

was described as one of the witnesses. Nick then asks him if daisy was driving, Gatsby then

responds with “Yes”, he said after a moment, but of course, I’ll say it was me”(Fitzgerald 143).

Daisy is the one who really killed Tom’s mistress but because she has Gatsby wrapped around

her finger she lets Gatsby take the blame for everything.

Though Tom did not run over anyone or shoot Gatsby. He is directly tied to and

responsible for Gatsby's death. In the novel, Tom is portrayed as a careless, aggressive, and

selfish man. At the end of the novel, we see the true evil manners that lie within him. When

Myrtle Wilson got run over, Tom came to the scene. He then found out that George Wilson

thought that the person who ran over Myrtle was also the man that she was having an affair with.

Tom knowing this assumption, tells George that it was a man named Gatsby and “He ran over

Myrtle like you'd run over a dog and never even stopped his car”(Fitsgerald 110). Now, not only

did Tom not know exactly who hit Myrtle, he leads George to think that Gatsby is a horrible man

who had an affair with Myrtle and ran her over. Later in the story, we find out that this brings

George to breaking point and a rampage set out to kill Gatsby. The narrator, Nick Carraway, also
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explains that Gatsby's death was on Tom’s hands by stating “I couldn’t forgive [Tom] or like

him, but I saw that what he nj6had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless

and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures

and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept

them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made”(Fitzgerald 114). Through

this, Nick is stating that the blame is on Tom and Daisy. They left the ‘mess’ they made which

was Myrtle's death for Gatsby to clean up. Gatsby did not only take the blame but he died with

nothing left for him. They showed no remorse or guilt, they went on with their shallow lives.

In conclusion, Tom and Daisy Buchanan are most responsible for Gatsby's death even

though neither of their hands was on the trigger of George Wilson's gun. Their selfish and

careless manners lead to the bullet that ended the life of an innocent man who wanted to be with

the woman he loved.