Excesses and Wastes of The Great Gatsby
...to be extravagant, considering the value of a dollar in the 1920s. Tom goes on to display his wasteful nature as we find that he spent the entire afternoon and evening with his mistress and their friends. His total disregard for his family becomes clear as we listen to Jordan Baker recall a time when, in Santa Barbara, “Tom ran into a wagon on Ventura road one night and ripped a front wheel off his car. The girl who was with him got into the papers too because her arm was broken—she was one of the chambermaids in the Santa Barbara Hotel” (Fitzgerald 61). All of this time spent away from his family shows his prescient for wasting his family’s love. This then brings us to Daisy and her excessive retreat into a fantasy world. We are introduced to Daisy at a dinner engagement with Nick. Soon after, Tom is interrupted by a phone call, during dinner. Daisy seizes the moment to relate to Nick a story about the butler’s nose. She goes on about how the butler was not always a butler; he used to be a silver polisher for some people in New York. Apparently, they had a silver service for two hundred people, and he had to polish it from morning till night until finally it began to affect his nose. Soon, the butler returns to retrieve Tom, at which point Daisy says, “I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose” (Fitzgerald 15). Although he is no rose, this seems to show how she jumps from fantasy to fantasy, to remain “a beautiful little fool” in an attempt to escape from the painful truth about Tom’s many affairs (Fitzgerald 17). Daisy, however, is very wasteful in her rejection of Jay Gatsby’s love. She not only rejected his love once, but twice. Five years prior, she promised to wait for Jay and marry him when he returned from the war. Soon after that, she wed Tom. He was, after all, more of a “proper” gentleman for a young lady to wed. Later, she neglects to admit to a crime and allows Jay to take the fall, showing her aloof nature. Jay Gatsby, the namesake for the novel, seems to demonstrate the greatest excess of all of the characters. A prime example of this excess is his regularly scheduled weekend parties. These wildly extravagant parties, though unsuccessful, were intended to attract Daisy’s attention. Although few of the people at the parties were actually invited, it seemed that no one was ever turned away. Furthermore, while he spends an enormous amount of money on these parties, he rarely attends them. However, the most profound excess that he exhibits is his perpetuation of the many half-truths and lies about his background. They range everything from inheriting his fortune from his wealthy family, earning it from drug stores, dividends from oil investments, to bootlegging. They become so over-elaborate, that he has a difficult time keeping all of them straight. It seems that he is ashamed of his past, as well as how he attained his fortune. Jay Gatsby’s wasteful nature can be seen in the very house he lives in; the same house that a Mr. Klipspringer has lived in, for a month, without notice. In addition, Jay says, “I’ve got a man in England who buys m...