Careless Characters and How Their Choices Affect Them in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

October 4, 2010
Honors English 11
Dr. Lane To be careless is to be free from anxiety or to not pay attention to what one does. There are several characters throughout the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald that could be labeled as careless. Nick Carraway witnesses these careless people and the choices they make while he is living in New York. It is because of these people that Nick ultimately realizes that he is one of the most honest people that he knows. Careless characters in The Great Gatsby make the decisions they do because they are blinded from reality due to wealth, drunkenness, or selfishness. Jordan Baker
“You see, I think everything's terrible anyhow... And I know. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything." (Fitzgerald 17). Daisy thinks she knows about everything, but she has been sheltered and spoiled her whole life. When Daisy is confronted with both Tom and Gatsby vying for her love instead of picking the one she truly wants to be with she acts helpless and stays with what she’s known her whole life not caring about Gatsby’s feelings. Both Daisy and Tom Buchanan are even careless as a whole. By the end of the novel Nick thinks "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made" (179). The Buchanan’s believe that wealth can buy them happiness when in reality wealth just blinds them from the harsh reality that it can’t. Gatsby is another careless character in The Great Gatsby. Gatsby built his fortune on hope that one day Daisy might come back to him. He thinks his new found wealth is going to be able to buy him happiness. Gatsby isn’t careless as to the choices he makes as much as he is from his actions and feelings. Trying to repeat the past was one of Gatsby’s most harmful decisions in the long run. Nick’s advice to him was you can’t repeat the past but he refused to listen and insisted he could. In the end Daisy didn’t live up to Gatsby’s