Jealousy leads to death and destruction through Jay Gatsby
...by’s “greatness” Tom talks about Gatsby’s money. Tom says arrogantly, “I found out what your ‘drug stores’ were. He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That’s one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him and I wasn’t far wrong (Fitzgerald 141). Here, Tom shows how his jealousy due to Gatsby’s glamour negatively affects his relationship with Daisy and could totally destroy it. Tom’s comment about Gatsby also shows his reluctant obsession over wealth, and his immediate response to make himself withstand a near perfect reputation. Throughout the novel, Tom shows that other people’s wealth is “fake” and not equal to his. At the same time, Tom uses this aspect of his personality to destroy people’s greatness and overall power by using force or verbal abuse through crude language. A blatant example of how jealousy leads to destruction in The Great Gatsby, is when Tom holds a grudge over Gatsby because of material possessions and an overall better life, when being told that Gatsby is an “Oxford man” (Fitzgerald 128-129). Tom says “An Oxford man!” “Like hell he is! He wears a pink suit!” (Fitzgerald 128-129). By saying this, Tom shows how he can make Gatsby seem stupid, but he will always be jealous of him in his heart. A major example of Tom Buchanan being jealous of Jay Gatsby is when Tom gets tremendously fearful of Gatsby’s relationship with his wife Daisy. “The most painful thing that Gatsby learns in his confrontation with Tom Buchanan is that “you can’t go home again,” to borrow a phrase from Fitzgerald’s contemporary fellow novelist Thomas Wolfe, because home is not there any more. What was once home has now changed into something else. Daisy cannot say she never loved her husband, as much antagonism as she may feel toward him. She has been married to a physically vital, sexually attractive man. She had a child by him. As her husband says, there are experiences between him and Daisy that Gatsby will never know about” (Gross 11). Daisy’s love for Gatsby is explained thoroughly in Understanding the Great Gatsby, “It is dou...