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Evelyn Arambula

Storer

English 3 Honors Block 5

March 2, 2020

Love in Relationships

Love is a tricky subject that people cannot fully understand. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The

Great Gatsby, Tom Buchanan is a wealthy ex-polo player who is married to golden girl Daisy

Buchanan, yet involved in an affair with Myrtle Wilson, the poor wife of an auto mechanic. A

foil is a character that is purposefully written to have qualities that oppose the qualities of

another character. Daisy and Myrtle serve as foils to each other because while Tom loves both

these women, Daisy survives the novel and continues her relationship with Tom whereas Myrtle

ends up dead with Tom pretending he never knew her. This demonstrates that love is not the lone

influence when it comes to maintaining relationships.

Tom loves both Daisy and Myrtle. When Tom enters Wilson’s garage and finds Myrtle’s

dead body staring back at him, he is visibly shaken: “Presently Tom lifted his head with a jerk

and after staring around the garage with glazed eyes addressed a mumbled incoherent remark to

the policeman” (Fitzgerald 139). Seeing that Tom’s eyes are “glazed”, and his remark is

“incoherent” the reader can see the pain that he is in because he just lost his lover. When

comparing Tom’s reaction to her death to that of Jordan and Nick’s, his affection for her is

evident. Nick and Jordan do not know Myrtle Wilson well, thus while they feel pity towards her

for having such a violent death, they are not personally affected. However, Tom has such an

intimate relationship with Myrtle that he is barely able to contain his tears. Myrtle is not the only

woman that brings Tom to the verge of tears. In the midst of the argument between Daisy,
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Gatsby, and Tom, Gatsby forces Daisy to say she never loved Tom, to which Tom asks her “Not

that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes dry?” There was a husky

tenderness in his tone “...Daisy?” (Fitzgerald 132). Tom’s final “Daisy” illustrates his pain when

Daisy says she never loved him because that means she never reciprocated his love for her,

implying that their five years of marriage were nothing more than a waste of time. While some

may argue that because Tom cheats on Daisy with Myrtle, he does not love Daisy, they are

failing to acknowledge that love is not limited to one person. Comparable to how Daisy loves

Tom and Gatsby, Tom loves Daisy and Myrtle. Love is not just black and white as people try to

make it seem, instead it is grey for it is too complicated to conform to a single aspect, as it can

easily get entangled and influenced by outside factors. Even though Tom loves both these

women, he decides to stand by one of them.

By the end of the novel, Tom sticks by Daisy and never acknowledges Myrtle’s existence

again. When Daisy questions Tom’s love for her during their debate with Gatsby, Tom replies,

“Of course it matters. I’m going to take better care of you from now on” (Fitzgerald 133). The

reader can infer that Gatsby’s pursuit of Daisy has made Tom reevaluate his marriage with Daisy

and realize where he has failed her. Tom’s love towards Daisy is strengthened when he sees how

close he is to losing her. He could have easily let Daisy run away with Gatsby and then married

Myrtle, instead, he sticks by his wife and fights to win her back. When Myrtle dies, Tom is hurt

but he decides to hide his pain in order to protect himself. While comforting Wilson about

Myrtle’s murder, Tom is approached by a police officer asking what he is doing to which he only

says, “I’m a friend of his [Wilson]” (Fitzgerald 140). Tom is lying here because, in reality, he is

not a friend of Wilson’s he only pretended to be in order to sleep with his wife. Throughout the

entirety of the time Tom is in Wilson’s garage after the incident, he never mentions or brings up
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Myrtle or her death. It is not until he is in the car with Jordan and Nick, who both knew of his

and Myrtle’s affair, that he references her death. Tom spends his time in the garage clearing his

name of anything that could connect him to her death. By never mentioning Myrtle again and

going back to Daisy, Tom shows how love does not guarantee a man will stay.

Love is not the only defining factor in determining whether one abandons a relationship

or sticks by it. At the end of the novel, Nick runs into Tom and it is during his discussion with

him that Nick realizes the type of people Tom and Daisy are: “They were careless people, Tom

and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or

their vast carelessness…” (Fitzgerald 179). Nick is speaking negatively about Tom and Daisy’s

way of being, but it is this that provides insight as to why Tom and Daisy remain together. Tom

and Daisy are not by any means good people, they are both materialistic and shallow. However,

Daisy and Tom’s materialism stems from their old money roots. They are from the same world,

and no matter how hard Myrtle or Gatsby tried, they could never be a part of it. It is evident that

these class differences made Tom chose Daisy over Myrtle. It is this similar upper-class

background that makes Tom feel the societal pressure to stay with Daisy. While in New York

talking with Myrtle’s sister, Catherine, Nick learns Catherine’s opinion on the affair between her

sister and Tom: “What I say is, why go on living with them if they can’t stand them? If I was

them I’d get a divorce and get married to each other right away… Its really his wife that’s

keeping them apart. She’s a Catholic and they don’t believe in divorce” (Fitzgerald 33). Daisy is

not a Catholic, so Tom lied to Myrtle about what is keeping them apart. Tom lied to Myrtle about

Daisy’s religion so she would believe that is why they are not making anything official. The real

reason Tom is lying to her is because of how it would ruin his image if he left Daisy. Tom is

someone who needs to be constantly validated and cares deeply about how people view him, he
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wants to be liked by everyone. Thus, he understands the negative effect that deserting Daisy, the

“golden girl” whom every man wanted, for Myrtle would have on how people view him. Love

cannot be limited to only one person, just as love cannot be the only factor someone considers

when choosing who to stay with.

Tom loves Daisy and Myrtle nevertheless he remains with Daisy highlighting the

different elements involved in relationships. Daisy and Myrtle are foils of each other because

Tom loves them both but since Daisy has wealth and status whereas Myrtle has nothing Tom

sticks with Daisy, showing that love is not the only variable in relationships. In a world where

there is a growing amount of people who care more about their image than their relationships,

love is becoming nothing more than a tool used for one’s own gain.
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Works Cited

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Penguin Books, 2019.