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In Chapter One of The
Great Gatsby, Nick observes Jay Gatsby for the first time: Gatsby stands,
with outstretched trembling arms, gazing longingly at the green light at the end of
Daisy Buchanan's pier. For, Daisy represents for Gatsby an unattainable grail; she
represents social prestige, money, and, in her white dresses and with her name, an
idealized purity.
The plotline of Fitzgerald's novel
reflects the falseness of Jay Gatsby's idealization of Daisy, a falseness that parallels
the illusionary American Dream of the Jazz Age of easy money and amoral social values.
Just as the American Dream of Jay Gatsby is falsified with his illegally made money
and the illusions of his social status, so, too, is Daisy revealed to be false in her
purity and decency, and her love for him. Daisy only possesses attributes because Jay
Gatsby instills them with meaning; she is as empty of significance as the times in
which she and Gatsby live--as corrupt as the Valley
of Ashes.
Fitzgerald's novel both satirizes the
nouveau riche as well as it portrays the illusionary quality of the
American Dream. The character of Daisy serves as the symbol of the empty materialism
and lack of morals of the Jazz Age. Gatsby's assignment of meaning to Daisy is as
illusionary as his dream of social advancement through illegal money and
deception.
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