Tom Buchanan - Tumblr Posts

See, I've already read The Great Gatsby (before I saw the Broadway musical so I could have some background on the show) and I love that my class is reading The Great Gatsby this year and I'm just like:

"Yes... join me and my brainrot"

Like I'm starting some kind of fucking cult.

Gatsby: If I die, my funeral will be the biggest party ever and you’re all invited.

Nick: If?

Tom: Great, the only party I’ve ever been invited to and he might not even die.

Gatsby should have just fucking married Nick and then been incredibly petty to Tom.

"Yes, well, you also married into the family"

"How does it feel to be second choice for absolutely everyone."

"At least people enjoy my personality"

Just being a little bitch to Tom because yes he might have loved Daisy, but goddamn I am CONVINCED the latter half of the book he just wanted to be an ass to Tom.

Yes, yes, I'm aware that the Great Gatsby is supposed to be a tragedy, a commentary on the unssustainability of the American Dream and it ruins it if Gatsby moves on because the point is he CAN'T

But also Nick x Gatsby would be funny and I wish I could have seen the Buchanan's and everybody else in high society be absolutely HORRIFIED that those two disaster gays are being incredibly open about it.

There is something so very interesting about Gatsby. You love a girl when you're poor and she loves you back. You build a life around this girl, she is the foundation of your heart, and you are just a summer romance. You throw grand parties as a way of saying "look, look, i'm here, I became all this for you" and she never comes. Her husband actively disdains you. Her cousin is one of your closest friends and you've only known him for a summer. You finally get a chance to talk to her and beg her to leave with you, and she allows her husband to frame you for murder. Her cousin is the only one that seems to care about you, but you are wrapped up in memories of her. When you finally start to let go and focus on her cousin, the husband of her husband's mistress(bare with us, it's very complicated) shoots you dead in a pool at the end of summer.

Her cousin remembers you years later and scorns his inlaws for you even when you're dead and gone. He wrote a story about you. He is the only one besides your father to show up at your funeral.

Something about wanting to let go and never getting the chance to. There's just something so compelling about watching a man realise that he built his life around a woman, and just when he starts to untangle what he is from what he thought she wanted, her husband doesn't let him go.

oh the irony

there is something deeply wrong with nick carraway in gatsby. motherfucker has been disassocating probably since the end of the war. he watches a marriage almost implode in front of him and in the stunned silence afterwards tells the awful husband, "oh yeah i just remembered today's my birthday"

i dont think casual and high school level discussions focus on how deeply weird nick must be in person and how that affects scenes? i vaguely remember analyses usually focusing on daisy and tom and gatsby but they all use nick as a barely functioning soundboard for horrible behavior and when he doesn't say anything are probably thinking "well nick seems so chill he would stop me if this was Truly Weird" and nick is meanwhile staring off into the distance thinking about what he ate last tuesday and that green eyed bilboard

edit: right and the accident literally happens next page so the weirdness of nick is probably skipped over by most readers

i’m sure i’m not the first to say something like this, but let me tell you about my poc-passing-as-white jay gatsby headcanon!!

for some background, in the 1920s there was an interesting shift regarding (white) skin tones. previously, tans were viewed as a sign that a person worked out in the fields, and therefore a trademark of the lower class. however, slowly after the industrial revolution, it increasingly became a representation of luxury, since the rich upper class would have the time to lounge about and sunbathe at their leisure.

i say all this to show that a poc gatsby would have the ostensible class and wealth for a tan, which would ‘excuse’ a slightly browner skin tone in the public eye.

(the 20s was also the setting of passing by nella larsen, so that’s neat.)

in my vision, he’s biracial (maybe his mother was black & his father was a german immigrant) with skin light enough to pass for white.

the fact that nick states that gatsby keeps his hair neatly groomed and cut might be to prevent it from curling up.

additionally, i think it could contrast tom’s white supremacy & his fear of poc social progress.

it would also create a deeper divide between gatsby and daisy, and once again the contrast between him and tom. in my mind, daisy wouldn’t know about it until the point where tom reveals everything about gatsby’s bootlegging etc. with jay revealing it to her in the car ride back (oops then she hits myrtle).

then, when she chooses tom and the life of comfort, wealth, status, etc that their marriage offers, she also rejects not only gatsby’s new money but also his race.

it’s a lot more thematically significant for the american dream as well—it’s still unattainable and essentially tainted by capitalism, and it also emphasizes that it’s restricted to the white upper class. social mobility only becomes available to gatsby when he disguises his racial identity.

similarly, it fits with gatsby’s identity reconstruction—the quintessential american is white, rich, and educated.

daisy and tom have that ticket into society because they have that inherent thing that he will never have—pedigree, in both class and race. that’s something that even nick has.

(in my mind, he tells nick all about it the night before he dies & nick understands as best he can and doesn’t think less of him, because it further highlights the differences between his & gatsby’s relationship v. gatsby’s relationship with daisy; namely, the transparency -> acceptance give-and-take that he and daisy never had. because of having to hide himself from daisy in order to maintain her affection, he builds an expectation that he must be someone that he is not as well as developing a transactional definition of love (he gives, and people love him as long as he can continue to give) in order to be loved. therefore, nick’s immediate curiosity and fascination with who he truly is is foreign to him. not to get too into their dynamic lmao i just think it’s really interesting.)

finally, the very last part where nick is sitting and looking at the bay and thinking about the first immigrants and their dreams and how gatsby embodied the purity and naivety of those dreams is further exemplified by his racial ‘otherness.’

and there’s,,, technically nothing in the book to explicitly refute this from what i remember!

(n.b.: it has been a hot second since i’ve read tgg, so lmk if i’ve got anything wrong!)

The Great Gatsby + Tumblr Text Posts Part 8

The Great Gatsby Read Through #2

So Many Thoughts

• You can tell Nick is a unreliable narrator lol because he said “I don’t judge” and IMMEDIATELY was like Tom Judger #1

• Uh Nick sleeps with a man in Chapter 2? Are we all gonna breeze past that??

• Nick’s first description of Gatsby’s smile?? Y’all just met, man, calm down.

• Nick and Gatsby said goodnight to each other FIVE (5) times after their first meeting!

• I love reading stories like foreshadowing doesn’t exist because that would mean Nick just spent forever taking special interests in a minor car accident.

• I love Nick’s brief interlude where he breaks the fourth wall and goes “I promise this isn’t all I think about, here’s other stuff I do..”

• Nick, I feel like a man who likes women wouldn’t break up with his gf because “her brother looks at me funny”.

• He just said this isn’t all I think about and then preceded to list everyone who goes to Gatsby’s parties? That’s dedication, sir

• Gatsby shows up and says “You’re having lunch with me” and Nick was very agreeable about it. I would argue a little tbh

• NVM I love foreshadowing “Where in the Midwest are you from?” “San Francisco” Gatsby, you liar

The Great Gatsby Name Thoughts

- Obviously everyone talks about Daisy’s name, but I’ll say it again. Daisies represent several things in flower language such as purity, innocence, new beginnings, joy, and cheerfulness. Also daisies are white, green, and yellow, which are the main color motifs in the book. White (Innocence/Purity), Green (Hope/Envy), and Yellow (Wealth/Corruption)

- Nobody ever talk’s about Nick’s flower name. Caraways are flowers that represent faithfulness, maturity, and rationality.

- Jays are birds that represent strength, confidence, and communication, which is maybe why James Gatz adopted the name.

- Jordan and Baker were both car brands at the time, representing freedom.

- Tom’s family name is ironic because despite his boasting about being a “proud Nordic”, Buchanan is a Scottish surname. Hypocrisy of rich people, anyone?

Anyways, I’m not F. Scott Fitzgerald so maybe some of these are coincidental, idk.

I appreciate Nick’s commitment (and the fandom’s) to DRAGGING Tom. It was like pages after being all “I don’t judge people” and Nick is there like “Tom peaked in college”. So funny of him.

Nick: I’m not a judgmental person. I understand that everyone has different circumstances and I’m inclined to reserve all judgements. 

Tom: *Opens his mouth*

Nick: