10/2
Tom and Daisy. A new subject.
While it’s obvious that Jay Gatsby has an obsession with Daisy, it’s worth discussing Tom’s relationship with Daisy. Both partake in affairs in their marriage during the course of the book but they end up leaving the city with their daughter together. Why does Tom engage in an affair when he ends up leaving his home with Daisy and his family?
Tom makes it clear that he refuses to leave Daisy to be with Myrtle full time after making an elaborate lie that Daisy is catholic and therefore doesn’t believe in divorce. Tom also gets visibly upset when Myrtle brings up his wife and turns violent as shown when he breaks Myrtle’s nose for saying Daisy’s name. It’s apparent that Tom is possessive of Daisy but still holds on to his side piece and treats both of them with a lack of respect.
And after everything that happened in the novel, Tom and Daisy run off together with their daughter and continue on with life, content to play house. It can be argued that they got married after falling in love with each other and spent a consider amount of good years together but Tom got restless and wasn’t content with his life. And after realizing they were stuck with each other, they seemed to go off into their careless world and leave their disasters behind them.
So did they truly love each other or get stuck in a cyclone that pulled them together based on their lack of awareness?
I claim that they loved each other in the beginning and had an intense honeymoon phase that they clung to, they fell into pothole of frustration with each other and never fully recovered. Tom found a way around giving all of his energy to Daisy and in retaliation, Daisy used Gatsby to flip the table on Tom. Did they always love each other and still love each other when they made the decision to leave? Without the novel following them after Gatsby’s death, it’s just about impossible to know, but I like the think that they gave their daughter, Pammy, a happy family life and maybe found a way back to their beginning.