For Jay Gatsby, money is a means to an end whereas for
Daisy and Tom Buchanan money is the end. In Chapter One of The Great
Gatsby, for instance, that the Buchanans exist for money is indicated in Nick
Carraway's comments,
Why they came East I don’t know. They had spent a
year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully
wherever people played polo and were rich
together.
The villain of
Fitzgerald's novel, Tom uses his money for power, exploiting Myrtle Wilson by buying her
things so that he can use her sexually and vent his brutish delights upon her. When
Daisy kills Myrtle as she strikes her with Gatsby's car, Tom's social and wealthy
influence keeps Daisy from being charged with the accident. Completely materialist, Tom
buys whatever and whoever he pleases. Exemplifying this attitude of Tom is a samll
incident in Chapter Seven in which Tom suggests that Gatsby take his car and he will
drive Gatsby's, Gatsby tries to dissuade him by saying his is low on gas, but Tom
counters,
"Plenty of gas," said Tom boisterously. He
looked at the gauge. "And if it runs out I can stop at a drug store. You can buy
anthing at a drug store
nowadays."
For Daisy,too,
monetary power and material possessions are the ultimate rewards. Jaded, Daisy asks her
group also in Chapter Seven,
"What'll we do with ourselves this
afternoon...and the day after than and the next thirty
years?"
After listening to
Daisy, Nick comments to Gatsby,
"She's got an indiscreet voice,....It's full
of---"
“Her voice is full of money,” he said
suddenly.
That was it. I'd never understood before. It was
full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of
it, the cymbals' song of it.… High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden
girl.…
In spite of what she
tells Gatsby, "the holy grail" that Gatsby seeks, yet loves Tom for his influence,
turning to him for succor after the murder of Myrtle rather to the man who in loving
solicitude stands in the rain outside her window.
In
contrast to Daisy and Tom Buchanan, Gatsby commits himself to the following of a grail,
the acquistion of wealth as a means of reaching that illusive green light at the end of
Daisy's dock. Gatsby's mansion and his many colored shirts that he displays to Daisy,
who buries her head in them and cries because for her money makes things more beautiful,
are all purchased to impress his idealized lover. Unlike the Buschanans, Gatsby's
loyalty is to his dream and not to money. When he is alone with Daisy, Nick
remarks,
...
I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had
gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he
could return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out
what that thing was…
Sadly,
however, Gatsby's vigil outside Daisy's finds Gatsby "watching over nothing" as Nick
narrates. For, Daisy vanishes "into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving
Gatsby--nothing." Realizing the emptiness of the materialistic lives of the Buchanans,
Nick later tells Gatsby,
"They're a rotten crowd....You're worth the whole
damn bunch put
together."
Nick reflects on
Gatsby's futile efforts to use his money for the end of winning Daisy in Chapter
Eight:
...he must have felt that he had lost the
old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single
dream.
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