The Great Gatsby Group

Question:

duders
duders
Student
High School - 11th Grade

In Chapter 7, what is the significance of Daisy's question about what they will do with the rest of their lives?

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Posted by duders on Friday January 18, 2008 at 6:18 PM and tagged with chapter 7, daisy, great gatsby, the great gatsby, theme, time.

Answers:


  1. jeff-hauge Teacher
    High School - 11th Grade

    eNotes Editor

    Daisy is so flippant about planning for the future that she shows her desire for only immediate gratification. Her greatest concern is always for only that moment. All things she wishes for have value; all things she owns and tires of will be discarded. This just may include the love of Jay Gatsby. We see she is the picture of the neglectful mother. She has a life that requires no planning, no forethought and no need to attribute value in her life. This should be a foreshadowing clue for Gatsby. He may be too smitten to catch it.

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    Posted by jeff-hauge on Saturday January 19, 2008 at 11:05 AM


  2. sagetrieb Teacher
    Doctorate

    This question of Daisy’s reflects back to her question in Chapter One.  “What’ll we plan?” she asks; “What do people plan”? Living in the present, vacuous to a fault, she has no ideas as to how to fill up her time.  While in general a condition of modern life is that it goes much too fast to understand, for Daisy it goes much too slow because she is unable to perceive its movement. Significantly, immediately before Daisy makes this comment in Chapter Seven, as he stands on Daisy’s veranda with Tom and Gatsby and looks onto the “green Sound, stagnant in the heat,” Nick sees “one small sail crawl[ing] toward the fresher sea” (124). This boat provides a direct contrast to Daisy for it seems to have more direction in life than she, for she is without any goals whatsoever.

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/great-gatsby

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    Posted by sagetrieb on Tuesday January 22, 2008 at 5:29 PM