We learn in Chapter I of The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) that Nick and Daisy do not have a close relationship. Daisy is a distant relative, a "second cousin once removed" (10), and Nick shares that he had spent a few days with Daisy and her husband Tom in Chicago right after he came back from World War I. It seems, actually, that he knows Tom far better, having known him when they were in college. With all that is revealed to Nick about Daisy and Tom's marriage and about Daisy's relationship with Gatsby, his front row seat in their dramas, I think it's fair to say that by the end of the novel, they are no closer than they had been in the beginning. Daisy is not capable of being close to anyone, and Nick has his own emotional limitations. Daisy is capable of neither insight nor empathy. Nick is capable of insight, but it is only his experience of Gatsby that shows he is capable of empathy at all. These are hardly cousins who sat together at family dinners as children or who will press for family reunions in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment