Selfishness

Selfish people always seem to want everything for themselves. They never care about anybody else’s feelings or problems, they are in it to benefit them self. Like in basketball, when a player hogs the ball he tries to do all the work himself without using his other teammates. He is being selfish by hogging the ball. When people tend to be selfish, others tend to not be as attracted to the person, thinking they are stuck up. In the great Gatsby daisy and tom seem to be selfish people. Tom is selfish in the way he only wants daisy to himself, yet he can go mess around with other women thinking its ok. Daisy is also selfish though in the way she talks about the things she has or the things she wants. Whatever either of them wanted they always got. Gatsby on the other hand was far from selfish. He would always have parties, having people over he never invited. Even though they were uninvited Gatsby would still treat them as if they were invited personally by him. When daisy came over to nick’s house for tea, Gatsby ordered flowers to be placed in nicks home to make it look more furnished and house warming. Most of the things Gatsby did were to benefit other and to make others happy. When daisy was driving the car and hit myrtle Gatsby took the blame for her and ended up getting shot by Mr. Wilson. When people seem to have money and have a higher prestige then others, they seem to be more selfish with things, then if a person were to make his money from hard work and come up from a lower class.

sources:

http://www.enotes.com/great-gatsby/q-and-a/what-theme-selfishness-great-gatsby-how-similar-22863

The “green light” is not only a light at the end of daisy's dock at her house in east egg. To most people the green light would mean a warning sign to watch out for the dock, making sure nobody would crash into it. To Gatsby though, it was a sign of hope. Gatsby lived in west egg across the river from daisy's house. From Gatsby's lawn at night you could see the green light brightening up it surroundings. Gatsby planned to move into a house across the river from daisy. Every step he could take that would get him closer to being with daisy he would take. The green light was Gatsby's inspiration to keep pursuing daisy. It gave him hope that one day daisy and he would be reunited and everything would go back to how it was before Gatsby had left for the war. The light would lead him to his goal. The closer he was to the light the closer he was to daisy. Towards the end of the book nick also uses the green light as an example of early settlers seeking America seeing a light on Americas coast and perusing towards it keeping there hopes and dreams alive.

The women of gatsby

Women in The Great Gatsby are very materialistic, such as Daisy and Jordan baker. They were raised in very prestige families and have never once worried about money. Growing up around all the money gave them cockiness when they would talk about buying certain things and talking about things they already own. They were very judgmental on stuck up around many of the people they hung out with but didn’t really know, for example at Gatsby’s party. Daisy and Jordan were also very scandalous, daisy played Tom with Gatsby, and Jordan tried to play nick. But luckily for nick he learned from Gatsby's mistakes and stopped her right in her tracks. Myrtle on the other hand was not raised in a wealthy family nor married a rich man. She married Wilson who owned a repair shop in the valley of ashes. Myrtle always dreamed about being rich and living a wealthy life and when she met tom her dream came true. She started becoming materialistic and tom was getting her anything she wanted. She always wanted to have a good reputation and know all the wealthy and successful friends of tom. Myrtle would become extremely jealous of daisy thought because daisy was tom’s wife. She wanted to live the great life daisy was living unfortunately, by tradition, the rich never married the poor because instead of staying wealthy they would begin to lose money and become poor. Out of jealousy, ironically, when myrtle thought she saw daisy in the car with tom she ran out and tried to stop them, but instead gets ran over by a car driven by daisy but with Gatsby in the car. Myrtle was also scandalous though because she played Wilson, her husband, with tom. Wilson soon found out about it, but had no idea it was with one of his close friend, tom. The women in the great Gatsby were all scandalous and only wanted a man who had money, and if they had the money they were cocky and thought they were better then everyone else.

Sources:

Fitzgerald Scott F. "The Great Gatsby" New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1925