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...
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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.
Do Daisy and Nick have a close relationship in The Great Gatsby?
I would argue Daisy and Nick do not have a close relationship. Daisy is Nick's "second cousin once removed" (Fitzgerald 10), hardly a close relative. There is no reference to anything like their having spent time together in their childhood or in their teens. Nick refers to spending a few days with Tom and Nick after World War I when the couple was in Chicago, but as the book opens, it appears Nick barely knows Daisy. He actually seems to know Daisy's husband Tom much better, having been in college with him. As he discusses Daisy and Tom and why they might have moved east, he says, "I had no sight into Daisy's heart" (10). Nick's relationship with Daisy is about to become closer; his presence as their neighbor exposes him to them a great deal, and he learns about their marital difficulties, Daisy's past with Gatsby, and what kind of person Daisy is now. Still, there is no great intimacy between them. Nick is an observer, not at all engaged in being close to Daisy or Tom, or really, anyone in the book, with the exception of Gatsby, the only person who truly engages him at all.