The Jazz Age was a young person’s rebellion, the men were returning from the war and women were acting out of their comfort zone. It was a time of experiments and is best described as “the roaring twenties”. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays the Jazz Age as an exciting and seductive lifestyle. Tom and Daisy Buchanan are a couple in Fitzgerald’s novel who, portray the moral emptiness and hypocrisy of the times.
Daisy is a beautiful young woman from Kentucky. She was popular among the military officers stationed near her home in her youth. One officer, Jay Gatsby stole her heart and she promised to wait for him after he left to fight the war. But while waiting she met Tom Buchanan, a wealthy young man from a “proper” family who could provide her with a luxurious lifestyle. Daisy married Tom and broke her promise to Gatsby not because she loved Tom more but because Tom could provide her with more money. During a conversation Gatsby says to Daisy ““Just tell [Tom] the truth – that you never loved him…” She looked at him blindly. “Why, - how could I love him – possibly?”” (139). During the Jazz Age money was important and Daisy chose money over love. Gatsby understands this when he tells Tom “She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting…” (137).
Daisy is not the only one in the relationship with wrong intentions; Tom did not marry Daisy for love but for a new lifestyle. Tom constantly cheats on Daisy and does not feel remorse about it. His affairs are public and during a dinner party Myrtle, his mistress, calls and one of the guest says, “she might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time…?”; the guest does not show disgrace about him having an affair but about his lover calling during dinner (20). Tom has no moral qualms about his extramarital affair with Myrtle. During this period men were not faithful and their morals were not high.
Tom and Daisy have arrogant attitudes laced with racism and...