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Why is it tragic that Gatsby chooses Daisy to embody his dream?

I'm not sure I can agree with this claim. We may find that the real tragedy lies elsewhere. It is possible that we can identify the source of Gatsby's tragedy as his own greed, rather than his "choosing" of Daisy. Nick describes the way Gatsby felt when he was first courting Daisy, how he knew that it was a "colossal accident" that he was in her home, that he was "penniless" and had nothing like...

I'm not sure I can agree with this claim. We may find that the real tragedy lies elsewhere. It is possible that we can identify the source of Gatsby's tragedy as his own greed, rather than his "choosing" of Daisy. Nick describes the way Gatsby felt when he was first courting Daisy, how he knew that it was a "colossal accident" that he was in her home, that he was "penniless" and had nothing like what she already had. However,



"He took what he could get, ravenously and unscrupulously -- eventually he took Daisy one still October night, took her because he had no real right to touch her hand."



Gatsby lied to Daisy, allowed her to believe that he came from a family like hers, that he could offer her a life like the one she knew, and "he had deliberately given [her] a sense of security."  It was only after he had already committed himself to her that he began to actually love her.  


If Gatsby had not behaved in such an unscrupulous way, deliberately deceiving a young woman who didn't know any better than to be trusting, then his life wouldn't have ended tragically. It was his greed, his own flaws that started him down this path, and so I think it is necessary that we fault him, at least in part, for his sad end.  He used her, or he tried to, and so we cannot let him completely off the hook and blame Daisy alone.

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