The comment that Daisy's voice is full of money has so many connotations. To what is Daisy attracted when she visits Gatsby's mansion? She is attracted to his shirts. She cries over them showing her superficiality and Gatsby's superficiality.Why would anyone want someone who cries over shirts?
Another indication of superficiality: Think about when Gatsby's father shows Nick, Gatsby's to do list, the one he made at seventeen. It is supposed to be made emulating Ben Franklin, but again it is superficial in that it's goals have nothing to do with virtue and all to do with acquiring wealth.
And think of the moonlit night when Gatsby looks up at the stars and sees a ladder to heaven. At that moment he can have anything and what he attaches to is very mortal and superficial--Daisy.
Daisy proves the banality of evil when she is able to kill Mabel and yet feel no guilt. In fact she is able to foist the guilt upon Gatsby.
But Daisy represents much more than herself. She represents what the United States has become, something unreal, gilded, but unreal.
If you read the very last passage, you realize that the first Europeans saw a marvelous, green, Eden and they tried to make it into something it could never be because they were all Gatsbys, searching for something they didn't have at home and caused them humiliation because they didn't have that thing, money and all it could purchase, nobility. etc. They didn't realize that if they had taken the land for what it was, they would have had so much more.
No there never was an American dream. America wasn't a dream. It was a completely different entity that no European bothered to see. And Daisy, the corrupt little woman child, is all that they've been able to attain.
No comments:
Post a Comment