The Last Dance

America is the land of strict social classes.

In the Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby needed to show off wealth in order to obtain his goal-- Daisy. Gatsby “bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay” (78). He threw magnificent parties with hundreds of people because he “half expected her to wander in” (79). Everything Gatbsy does, he does for Daisy. He wanted her to “wander” in, lured by the mansion because that would be the only way for them to be together.

 Gatsby knows that Daisy will not leave her husband for someone with less money than him.  Daisy “married Tom Buchanan of Chicago, with more pomp and circumstance than Louisville ever knew before. He came down with a hundred people in four private cars, and hired a whole floor of the Seelbach Hotel and the day before the wedding he gave her a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars” (75). Daisy married Tom for what he represented, wealth and power in the 1920s. She knew she would be secure in her life with Tom, and she wouldn't have to worry about her social class, she would always be the highest. Tom has more “pomp” than anyone else, and this is the thing that mattered to her the most. In order for Gatsby to even have a chance with Daisy, he needed to first prove to her that he was “worthy”.   Gatsby did not care about how long this took, he “had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths-- so that he could ‘come over’ some afternoon to a stranger’s garden” (78). Gatsby had built up this casual meeting with Daisy for five years, and he thought that they would finally be able to be together once she saw his mansion and all that he had accomplished. 

But the effects of social class in America soon came into full effect when Daisy was almost ready to leave Tom. However, Daisy will never leave Tom for another man because by doing so she would be joining a lower social class. When Gatsby confronts Tom about Daisy wanting to leave him, he responded with “‘She's not leaving me. . . certainly not for a common swindler who’d have to steal the ring he put on her finger’” (113).  Tom thinks that he is secure in his marriage with Daisy because no one else could provide for her the way he does. And he is correct-- Daisy loved Gatsby more than Tom, she “loved [Tom} once, but [she] loved [Gatsby] too” (132). The entire time she was falling in love with Tom, Gatsby was still on her mind. Even though Daisy loved Gatsby more than Tom, she still chose Tom because he was the wealthier of the two. In America, people are constantly pushing to be the best and richest they can be. Daisy wanted to be the richest she could be, and in order to do this, she needed to stay with Tom. 

The idea of money and success is still prevalent in our world today. In Starfood, Dade’s dad told him he is “going to end up on one of those curbs” (38) whereas his mom told him he “was going to be a man of limited fame” (39). His dad has the ideals of doing work so that he can make money in the future, and while Dade’s mom doesn't explicitly state it to her son, she wanted him to discover something so that he could be rich and successful one day, just like she had once dreamed of. Daisy had to choose which man to marry based on his social class, but Dade has to choose which job to pursue based on which social class he would end up in.

America was built on morals of success and power, everyone striving to be the wealthiest and most powerful. We still see this in our world today, many Americans will choose a job based on the salary and not their interests, but we also see it in the stark contrast of our social classes. People don't want to be in the lower class, so those in higher classes tend to marry those up there with them. The Great Gatsby is a tragedy by definition, but it also perfectly explains the idea of America’s class system.