His social attitudes are laced with racism and sexism, and he never even considers trying to live up to the moral standard he demands from those around him. He has no moral qualms about his own extramarital affair with Myrtle, but when he begins to suspect Daisy and Gatsby of having an affair, he becomes outraged and forces a confrontation. Read an in-depth analysis of Tom Buchanan. Jordan is beautiful, but also dishonest: she cheated in order to win her first golf tournament and continually bends the truth.
Read an in-depth analysis of Jordan Baker. Myrtle herself possesses a fierce vitality and desperately looks for a way to improve her situation. Unfortunately for her, she chooses Tom, who treats her as a mere object of his desire. Read an in-depth analysis of Myrtle Wilson.
George loves and idealizes Myrtle, and is devastated by her affair with Tom. George is consumed with grief when Myrtle is killed. George is comparable to Gatsby in that both are dreamers and both are ruined by their unrequited love for women who love Tom. Tom brings up happy memories from early in the marriage, and for once, his voice has a "husky tenderness," which causes Daisy's voice to lose the cold tone it had when she said she never loved him.
She then breaks down and admits that she loved Tom. However, the fact that Tom is clinging to old memories, and Daisy uses the past tense—"I loved him once"—suggests that Tom and Daisy aren't exactly head-over-heels for each other anymore. But our last scene that shows Tom and Daisy together suggests that that doesn't matter.
Even if they're not in love, their relationship is stable, and neither has any interest in leaving the other:. Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table with a plate of cold fried chicken between them and two bottles of ale. He was talking intently across the table at her and in his earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her own. Once in a while she looked up at him and nodded in agreement. They weren't happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale—and yet they weren't unhappy either.
There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together. As we discuss above, Nick makes a point of showing Tom to be a racist, a believer in the pure white face's need to subjugate everyone else in the world.
But why does this come up at all? Is it just another unflattering detail about Tom? Tom's racism is a reflection of his slight insecurities and his need to continually reassert his money and status. Even with all of his money and privilege, he still has a slight fear that his place isn't assured.
That fear comes out in small moments in the novel—when George says he's taking Myrtle out west and when Daisy briefly threatens to leave him. This is why we see Tom constantly swaggering and asserting his status. If you're writing about Tom, it can be helpful to take a close look at the beginning of the novel , specifically, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.
In these chapters, you both see Tom both in his high-class, old money home, and engaging in a "spree" with Myrtle. Make sure to close read and annotate both chapters! Tom is a major player in not just one but two of the novel's major relationships. Read more about love, sex, and desire in The Great Gatsby in our detailed article. Check out our analyses of all the other characters in the novel and learn how to compare and contrast Tom to other characters.
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Why did Daisy marry Tom? Why does Gatsby arrange for Nick to have lunch with Jordan Baker? How does Tom find out about the affair between Gatsby and Daisy? How does Gatsby make his money? And Myrtle, in turn, is married to a struggling mechanic, whose emasculation is just thorough enough to leave him the strength for revenge. Nick sums up this dynamic:. 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.
Money is a shield between the careless wealthy and the consequences of their actions, cutting them off from the reality of what they have done and what it means. Yet Tom is far from the only character to use his wealth and status as a means for deceit.
Gatsby acquires a new identity when he acquires his fortune, the excess of his belongings—shirts and books and oranges and flowers—matched only by the proliferation of stories about his roots.
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