Daisy: daisy as a person can across as being a delicate, precious, and caring. However her personality changed in a way that the viewer saw her at the end. Nick describes daisy as being a rose because when you see a rose you don’t think of all of the thorns meaning that you just look at its beauty but really have no idea how dangerous it can be. Daisy is like a rose and Gatsby only sees the perfect and beautiful side in her and only at the last moment realises that she is damaging, dangerous an has a prickly personality behind the beauty. Although the author Fitzgerald has made sure that the readers only realise this until the near end of the book.
Nick: Personally i don’t think nicks physical personality changed in any way ( the way he can across as a person). But I do feel as though his opinion of people changed and the way he thinks of other people. For example at the start Nick believed Daisy to be delicate and kind hearted however his opinion changed towards the end and he saw that daisy was like a rose beautiful on the outside but once you get up close and see her thorns she is very damaging and has a very prickly personality. Nick says during the near end “ Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or what ever it was that keeps them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made….” this quote means that daisy and tom never really cared about anything in the end all they wanted was their money and let other people clean up the mess that THEY made.
Gatsby: Gatsby I felt didn’t really change at all i felt like he set himself a dream as a teenager (around 17) and has stuck to that throughout his life. Gatsby’s dream that he held onto was to be wealthy and to be high in society the certain age he became this rich was unclear but we as the readers know and understand that he has definitely achieved this dream he set himself at a young age.
Hi Maye,
This is an interesting take on the characters.
I think you are right about Gatsby. There is not a lot of change that happens for him. I disagree about Nick though. He states in the book that “When I came back from the East last autumn, I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention for ever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.”
I think Nick’s understanding of himself and (as you have said above) his understanding of other people changes. I don’t think he can come to the second conclusion without first considering the first though. He realises that his tolerance has a limit, that he cannot be part of the immoral world of the rich and this is a large change for him from the beginning, even the middle of the book. At many stages, he feels part of their circle and it is not until the end that he realises this place (New York and the Egg’s) are not the sort of places he wants to create his life in.
Let me know what you think.
Mrs. P