Gatsby and Daisy's romantic relationship

Gatsby and Daisy's romantic relationship is the central emotional and narrative engine of The Great Gatsby, a love affair that begins in Louisville in 1917, is interrupted by World War I and Gatsby's poverty, and is obsessively revived five years later when Gatsby buys a mansion in West Egg to be near her. The relationship is defined by Gatsby's idealized, almost religious devotion to Daisy as a symbol of wealth and social grace, and by Daisy's ultimate inability to match his dream with reality, leading to tragedy.

Origins and First Love

The relationship began in Louisville in 1917, when Daisy Fay was eighteen and the most popular young girl in the city. Jay Gatsby, then a young lieutenant from Camp Taylor, was introduced to her by Jordan Baker, who remembered them as "so engrossed in each other" that Daisy did not notice Jordan until she was five feet away. Gatsby was a penniless young man without a past, but he deliberately gave Daisy a sense of security, letting her believe he was from the same social stratum as herself. He took her one still October night, knowing he had no real right to touch her hand. For Gatsby, Daisy was the first "nice" girl he had ever known, and her house—with its hint of beautiful bedrooms and fresh romances—amazed him. He felt that many men had already loved her, which increased her value in his eyes. Daisy, for her part, was flattered by his attention and fell in love with him too. On the last afternoon before Gatsby went abroad, they sat together in a cold fall day with fire in the room, her cheeks flushed, and he kissed her dark shining hair. They had never been closer than in that silent communion.

Separation and Daisy's Marriage

Gatsby did extraordinarily well in the war, becoming a captain before the front and later a major after the Argonne battles. After the Armistice, he was sent to Oxford instead of being allowed to return home immediately. Daisy's letters grew nervous and desperate; she felt the pressure of the world outside and wanted to be reassured. Through the twilight universe of the 1919 social season, Daisy began moving again with the season, keeping half a dozen dates a day with half a dozen men. The force that shaped her decision arrived in the spring with Tom Buchanan, whose wholesome bulkiness and position flattered her. She married Tom in June 1919, with more pomp and circumstance than Louisville had ever known. The night before the wedding, Jordan Baker found Daisy lying on her bed, drunk, clutching a letter—Gatsby's letter—and a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Daisy muttered, "Take 'em down-stairs and give 'em back to whoever they belong to. Tell 'em all Daisy's change' her mine!" She cried and cried, took the letter into the bath with her, and squeezed it into a wet ball. But the next day at five o'clock she married Tom without so much as a shiver, and started off on a three-month trip to the South Seas.

Gatsby's Obsession and the Green Light

Gatsby never accepted the loss. After the war, he made a miserable journey to Louisville on the last of his army pay, walking the streets where their footsteps had clicked together through the November night. He left feeling that if he had searched harder, he might have found her. He began to accumulate wealth through illegal means, working with Meyer Wolfsheim to fix the 1919 World's Series and running a chain of drugstores that sold grain alcohol. His ultimate goal was Daisy. He bought a mansion in West Egg, directly across the bay from Daisy's house in East Egg, so that she would be "just across the bay." On the first night Nick Carraway saw him, Gatsby was standing on his lawn, stretching out his arms toward the dark water, trembling, toward a single green light at the end of Daisy's dock. That green light became the symbol of his entire dream. He had waited five years, and he began giving lavish parties in the hope that Daisy might wander into one of them. When she did not, he enlisted Jordan Baker to arrange a meeting through Nick Carraway.

The Reunion and the Illusion

The reunion took place at Nick's house on a rainy afternoon. Gatsby was pale as death, with dark signs of sleeplessness beneath his eyes, and he nearly knocked over a defunct mantelpiece clock in his nervousness. He had prepared meticulously—sending a man to cut Nick's grass, a greenhouse of flowers, and twelve lemon cakes. The first moments were agonizingly awkward, but after Nick left them alone, the embarrassment vanished. When Nick returned, Daisy's face was smeared with tears, and Gatsby literally glowed with a new well-being. He showed her his mansion, leading her through Marie Antoinette music-rooms and Restoration salons, and finally to his bedroom, where he began throwing shirts before her—shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, in stripes and scrolls and plaids of coral, apple-green, lavender, and faint orange. Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily. "They're such beautiful shirts," she sobbed. "It makes me sad because I've never seen such—such beautiful shirts before." For Gatsby, the shirts were proof that he had become the man worthy of her. But even as he stood with her, looking out at the rain, he realized that the colossal significance of the green light had vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy, it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.

The Confrontation and the Collapse

The relationship reached its crisis at the Plaza Hotel on the hottest day of the summer. Gatsby confronted Tom Buchanan, insisting that Daisy never loved Tom and that she loved only him. Daisy, under pressure, admitted she had loved Tom once but loved Gatsby too. Gatsby's face showed a look of "unfamiliar yet recognizable" expression, as if he had "killed a man." Tom exposed Gatsby's criminal background—the drugstores, the bootlegging, the connection to Meyer Wolfsheim—and Daisy, terrified, drew further into herself. The dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible. Daisy agreed to leave with Tom, and Gatsby waited outside the Buchanan house all night, watching over nothing. He told Nick, "I'm just going to wait here and see if he tries to bother her about that unpleasantness this afternoon." But when Nick looked through the kitchen window, he saw Daisy and Tom sitting opposite each other at the table, Tom's hand covering hers, an unmistakable air of natural intimacy between them. They were conspiring together.

The Aftermath and the End

On the way back from New York, Daisy, driving Gatsby's yellow car, struck and killed Myrtle Wilson. Gatsby took the blame, telling Nick, "of course I'll say I was." He waited for Daisy to call, but she never did. The next day, George Wilson, believing Gatsby was the driver and the man having an affair with his wife, shot and killed Gatsby in his swimming pool. Daisy did not send a message or a flower to the funeral. Nick Carraway, reflecting on the entire affair, concluded that Gatsby had thrown himself into his love for Daisy with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness could challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart. The relationship was, from the beginning, a collision between Gatsby's impossible dream and Daisy's real, limited humanity. She was a "nice" girl, but she was also a product of her class, and when the choice came between Gatsby's dangerous love and Tom's secure wealth, she chose the latter. Gatsby's dream was not just of Daisy, but of a past he believed he could repeat, a past in which he was worthy of her. He died still believing that he could have fixed everything just the way it was before.