hello everybody and welcome back to another episode from yours truly quickly today we'll be looking at the great gatsby and love in the great gatsby and don't forget give this video a thumbs up be sure to share it with all your friends and family and hit the bell icon for more books beards and beyond also don't forget the quiglet guarantee if you have a question or any advice suggestions we welcome all here on wigley feel free to drop a comment below and i will reply to every single one i receive that is the quick lick guarantee so without further ado let's look into love in the great gatsby when you think of the idea of love and how it is presented in the great gatsby it is often far easier to think of the opposite how love isn't in fact presented or the general absence of love itself the characters are for the most part deeply self-obsessed deeply unlovable and detached from those around them constantly seeking escape from the confines of their own loveless lives to quote the novel's unreliable narrator nick carraway in chapter four there are only the pursued the pursuing the busy and the tired in this quote the range of verbs and adjectives indicate that far from being in love there is at best a pursuit of an unattainable love seen most clearly in the novel's titular character jay gatsby however i would argue that love is indeed present or at the very least in the sense that it is discussed and influences the lives of a number of characters in the novel in a number of different ways firstly love is seen in the form of mania the idea of obsessive and all-consuming love this is seen most clearly in the character of jay gatsby who wants to literally cheat time in order to attain the sole focus of all his ambitions and dreams daisy buchanan when nick carraway throws doubt on gatsby's aspirations gatsby replies can't repeat the past he cried incredulously why of course you can first of all note the adverb incredulously that this doubt of caraways is not just wrong but plain ridiculous also the tone of the entire quote from gatsby is one of shock and surprise that someone would possibly think differently to him further demonstrating how deeply into his fantasy with daisy he's fallen as well as this love is presented as something that is subliminal and unspoken in certain parts of the text particularly between gatsby and the focus of his attentions daisy buchanan when in chapter seven nick remarks how their eyes met and they stared together at each other alone in space with an effort she glanced down at the table you always look so cool she repeated she had told him that she loved him and tom buchanan saw notice here how the narration focuses on the subtleties of love how it manifests in a look beyond words itself the adverbial phrase of with an effort reveals the pull daisy's love for gatsby has on her but also the fusion of different sensory language and how tom buchanan had saw that she had quote told him in her physical interactions further exemplifies how fitzgerald makes love something that is as unspoken as it is literally declared in the story beyond this however love is also something that is feared by some characters an emotion that is to be treated with mistrust and caution towards the novel's opening daisy makes a rare comment about her daughter pami saying how i hope she'll be a fool that's the best thing a girl can be in this world a beautiful little fool here daisy's sad dream for her daughter is one that demonstrates how she feels about the complexity of life and love itself to wish her to be quote a fool is to wish her to be ignorant of life's struggles and conflicts the central one to daisy's life being that of her loveless marriage to tom buchanan however most prevalent and all-consuming in the novel is the connection between love and greatness how the pursuit of love amplifies the qualities of people to unreachable heights as well as how gatsby's own ego is torn between greatness love and identity in chapter five nick carraway remarks how there must have been moments even that afternoon when daisy tumbled short of his dreams not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion it had gone beyond her beyond everything he had thrown himself into it with a creative passion notice in particular the repetition of beyond that what daisy represents to gatsby is love and so much more so much that she will not be able to make real also notice how carraway deliberately uses the word it instead of the pronoun her in the passage subtly implying how the pursuit of daisy is a small part of a bigger picture the pursuit of the excess and greatness of a life of old money in gatsby's eyes this struggle between love and identity is further shown in the novel and probably one of the most important quotes in the entire text here in chapter six in the retelling of when gatsby kisses daisy for the first time all those years prior he knew that when he kissed this girl and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath his mind would never romp again like the mind of god here notice how that gatsby's love for daisy is not only linked to extreme visions of grandeur how his god-like ambitions would end in kissing her but also how love is seen as devotion that his visions will become quote forever wed to her and her identity what this quote and the novel as a whole doesn't fully decide upon however is the extent to which gatsby is in love with daisy as a person or in love with daisy as a manifestation of a wider dream and goal that erasing the old james gats the self-proclaimed nobody to transform into the dan cody inspired glory of exuberant wealth and exorbitant riches there are other manifestations of love in a novel but today i've chosen to pick out the key ones if you'd like to know more please let me know in the comments below and if you'd like more videos also please let me know as per the quick lit guarantee all comments to reply to today's 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