Theme of Choices in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

One choice can ruin your dreams. A tiny word or sentence can taker away what you wanted most in life. One second could make you lose everything you wanted and your chances of ever getting everything you wanted. You could be one step away from getting to your dreams but a small thing could make that crumble.  Like Jay Gatsby, for example, he was so close to getting his dream girl, Daisy, but one thing he did, one choice he made or one thing he said ruined his dream. Those choices Gatsby made made everything slowly crumble for Daisy until everything just fell apart. Jay tried and tried to get closer to Daisy by making money and doing extravagant things for her but all of that work pushed her away. Gatsby's search for the American dream had brought him so close to his dreams but has also brought him so far away because of the way he tried to accomplish them. The choices Gatsby made in his life ruined his dreams like the choice to live on west egg or the choice to become a bootlegger.

While Jay is making more and more money for Daisy, she gets farther and farther from him. Jay became a bootlegger so he could get money to be with Daisy. He did illegal things for his money and that scared Daisy and made her think twice about loving him. Him making the money the ¨wrong way¨ according to Daisy's morals made her fear Gatsby and make her retreat back to her husband Tom. Jay trying to achieve his dreams made him lose Daisy in the end. He was so close but in the end lost her and made her go away. He was at the closest place in his life to achieving his dream but when Daisy learned of his bootlegging he was at the farthest point to achieving his dream to be with daisy.  ¨I found out what your ´drug stores´ were.¨ He turned to us and spoke rapidly. ¨He and Wolfshiem brought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here in  Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter.¨(118) It passed, and he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything, defending his name against accusations that had not been made. But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, despairingly, toward that lost voice across the room.¨(119)  While Tom exposed his way of making money for Daisy’s love she is panicking at the fact that what he is doing is illegal and wrong. She grew up in a home where they have always had their money and made it the proper way. 

Gatsby’s Extravagant parties and trying to reach Daisy with those parties ended up pushing her away. The craziness of all the new money Gatsby made made Daisy uncomfortable. She didn't enjoy herself at this event even though every one of Gatsby's parties was thrown to attract her to Gatsby’s house. Gatsby's plan failed and even though he got to spend some alone time with Daisy it still made her enjoy him less. She also does not like the informalities of his world. His parties have people just walking in partying, breaking his things, and tearing up his house.

 Plainly she's disgusted and has a distaste for what she sees. That distaste can also fall on to Gatsby and why he has chosen to throw this party and why he was chosen to live here.

Another reason why Gatbys tried to follow his dreams but ultimately failed is because he chose to live across from daisy. His trying to be close to her and trying to be near her makes Daisy want to be with Gatsby less because he chose to live in West Egg to accomplish that goal. Daisy has a distaste for West Egg and does not enjoy her time there. She hates the place and that's the place Gatsby is trying to get her to stay and be with her in. “She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented ¨place¨ that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village--appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along with a shortcut from nothing to nothing.”(98) she didn’t like where gatsby lived any way would she ever move in with him and get married and be with him there if she hated it. That mistake from Gadsby made her think if she really wanted to be with him. She didn’t want to live there but Gatsby insisted upon it. Just choosing west egg as a place to live could have made her not want to be with him anymore and could have pulled them farther apart.

In the end all the choices he made for her backfired and are the same reason why she does like him. He chose being a bootlegger for her to get money quickly for Daisy but the way he got the money affected Daisy and she no longer wanted to be with him. Another choice he made for her was to throw parties to attract her but when she came to the parties she didn't even like them and didn't like that he lived on West egg. She thought it was a vile place and a distasteful party. All the choices he made eventually pushed Daisy away until she went away with Tom. She left Gatsby because of these choices which were supposed to attract her but in the end it pushed her towards Tom and away from Gatsby.