What Happens To Daisy At The End Of The Great Gatsby

Question

Just finished Fitzgerald's novel and I'm a bit heartbroken about that final chapter—can't get over Daisy's last scene with Gatsby at the Buchanan house. Anyone else conflicted about her fate?

Love Hm · Answer

After the drama of Gatsby’s tragic death, the downfall of Tom and Nick, and the rest of the characters who have been implicated in the decay of the mighty clique, one person gets to leave unscathed, or relatively so, anyway. It’s Daisy Buchanan who buggers off to another house, with the pair of them, and that’s it. Not very exciting, but a fiercely realistic conclusion to her upscale, affluent life, and a great example of careless, privileged people being utterly, unbeatably and superbly unscathed by anything. The theme of powerful women using their femininity to navigate and to exploit a system while keeping themselves at the center is a subject I have always been fascinated by, and treated well in ‘The Wife Who Walked Away Richer’ where a well to do wife of a wealthy husband uses her finances to plan and execute a clever escape from her stifling gilded cage, and is shown using the very tools of her oppression in order to gain her freedom. Her strategy, and not her love life, is the focus of this short story.

Meli Yana · Answer

I look at it as two tragedies, one active and dramatic, the other passive and slow to unfold. Gatsby got shot, while Daisy got to spend the rest of her life alone in quiet desperation. Of course, she’ll never forget that Gatsby gave his life for her, and that he loved her with a fidelity and purity that she was incapable of. Every time Tom is unfaithful or even cruel, she’ll be reminded of her decision to choose him over the other man. And even though Daisy and Gatsby had the chance to be truly and deeply happy, she chose to stick with Tom, the rich and powerful man, and settle for a dull but morally sound life. Her fate is to be stuck in a gilded cage, strumming the same old song but with no passion or fire, a canary with no song to sing.

Mesir Kuno · Answer

Years from now she will be found in a Parisian drawing room or a large plantation house in Newport, Rhode Island. She will be beautifully dressed with her hair pulled up and her makeup expertly applied. She will laugh at the right times and be completely encompassing to those around her. But in her eyes you will see that she is far, far away. You may bring up Long Island or the yellow car and for a moment she will freeze. And then she will retrieve herself from whatever reverie she has descended into and return to her drink, taking a long sip before launching into a subject that is as bright and beautiful as she is. That will be her. She is the one who got away. And the reason for that is not tragedy but rather that she never had to confront the consequences of her desires. Instead she will grow old to be a beautiful, charming shell of a woman. And she will be haunted by the echo of a phone call that was never made – because she never picked up the receiver to dial her lost love’s number. Her legacy will be the ghost story of a love that never was and a phone that never rang.

Srius Sutara · Answer

Note: There is also a legal dimension to Daisy’s “escape” that the novel virtually ignores. Tom would have used every connection to her service to keep her from being questioned by the police, who would have been on the take. His bribes, plus all sorts of intimidation of the witnesses, would have ensured that she would never have been called before a judge and jury. As it was, she was “too distraught” to be questioned by the police, and her lawyer was always present. And there was always the possibility that Gatsby would be blamed for the accident, a possibility which Tom subtly encouraged George to believe. Daisy’s escape is thus one of legal impunity. Just as in the novel money can get you off a charge, so in this case Daisy is above the law because she is rich. She gets justice, but it is the justice of power, and she gets to keep her liberty because she has the liberty to go where she wants. The novel shows that Myrtle and George and Gatsby are all outside the law because they do not have the right name or the right amount of money. Daisy is within the law.

Quinn · Answer

At the end of The Great Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan is left to her fate, much like another haunting literary ending. Her spectacular life is that of glamour and emptiness of the Jazz Age, and it is her decisions that culminate into tragic consequences. In the end of the novel, after the car accident that killed Myrtle Wilson, Daisy panicked and shifted the blame onto Gatsby. Feeling safe in her marriage to Tom, despite its many imperfections, Daisy was looking for protection and for the security to live her life, as she had always done. And she was provided for. Yet in her flight from responsibility she left chaos and destruction in her wake. We do not see her grieve for Gatsby’s passing, instead she is shown to be returning to her status as a wealthy socialite, going back to her husband, and departing for elsewhere, utterly unaffected by the tragic and destroying circumstances that she had unleashed upon the world.

What is most impactful and real about Daisy Buchanan’s fate is that she experiences no conflict or change for having participated in and contributed to the tragedy of the novel. In fact, she is returned to her status as the golden girl, the object of Jay Gatsby’s fantasy, in that she is returned to Tom. She is left alone, to be sure, but it is an emotional solitude that is filled with her wealth and status. Her fate is left open to the reader in that she will continue to exist in the manner in which she had existed before. Her shallowness, which has been so painfully exposed throughout the novel, is the sole source of her later emptiness, and it is not conflicted or redeemed by her love for Gatsby. He too had been in love with an illusion of Daisy. She lives on, forever trapped in her gilded cage.

Daisy is another matter in terms of the themes of the novel. Her escape with Tom to wherever it is they are going is another example of the moral decay of the very rich and how they are able to avoid responsibility because of their wealth. It is notable that Fitzgerald does not portray Daisy in a wholly negative light. Rather he shows the ways in which her privilege has led her to avoid taking responsibility for her actions, even when they involve others. Although Daisy may have had real feelings for Gatsby at times, they were never enough to overcome her fear of losing status. The image of Daisy left at the end of the novel is of someone who has chosen comfort over redemption. In this way she is another symbol of the hollowness of the American Dream.

Kerri-Ann Pinnock-Robinson · Answer

This moment on the phone can serve as a summary of Daisy’s entire role in the novel as she awaits the phone call from Gatsby that will never come. Of course, she doesn’t have to condemn Gatsby in order to abandon him; he’s let down by her silence, by her absence from his side in his time of need. He’d like her to be more forceful, to act more decisively than Tom has throughout the novel. Her failure to do so allows events to take their course and for her to be quietly forgotten by the man who loved her above all else. Her fate is to be the woman who didn’t call, who didn’t come, who remained standing while others did the hard work of living. She is the unattainable object of Gatsby’s desire, the corrupted grail that, once he’s been destroyed by his quest for her, is revealed to be nothing more than a fancy cup, which is packed away in a crate and sent to a warehouse of other such treasures.

Anita · Answer

I’m stuck in Isekai manga mode right now, reading through all these amazing in-depth analyses of classic literature, but they keep referencing Daisy or whatever her name is. Carry on, you all can discuss the classics at this party.

Jihanna Yvonne · Answer

Although from a storytelling perspective it would be wrong to give Daisy an ending in the form of closure after all she has done to create hope in Nick’s life of a real dream and then to destroy it, her sudden, unexplained disappearance is the perfect formal ending to her character as elusive, unsatisfactory and unimportant as a person in herself as opposed to a symbol. Once the symbol has inspired the dream and brought it crashing down the story can do no more with it. The symbol is packed away and we never follow the symbols of our stories home. They are left where they have been, perhaps glittering, perhaps empty. The formal ending to Daisy’s symbol is for her to be left in the narrative past as a beautiful and terrible memory for Nick. She is a ghost in the text.

Omar F. Aucapiña · Answer

Yes, she’s the biggest ghost of them all. After becoming the center of Gatsby’s universe of hope and light one day, she’s never seen or heard of again. Gatsby is left to drown in his swimming pool, alone, and she doesn’t even bother to attend his funeral. She and her boyfriend Tom are off, packing their bags and traveling from one big party to another, to another huge house. But in between these two events, Gatsby sacrifices his life and his fortune for a dream that she is not strong enough to support. And her fate? To be forever adored and left empty in a gilded cage of her own making. She’s never going to have the courage to try and open a door somewhere. The cage is so darn comfortable.

What Happens To Daisy At The End Of The Great Gatsby

9 Answers

Related Books

Daisy Hunter

At the end of love

Devils Daisy

I Married the Richest Man Instead

The Day the Don Married His First Love, I Faked My Death

The Husband She Loved Too Late

Related Questions

What happens at the end of 'Gone with the Wind'?

What happens at the end of The Great Cleric (Light Novel): Volume 1?

How does Gutenberg's The Great Gatsby differ from the original?

How does the catcher in the rye end?

How does 'A Great Deliverance' end?

How does Autumn in New York end?

What happens in the ending of Lackadaisy: Volume #1?

How does The Great White Hope end?

what happens at the end of the yellow wallpaper

How does 'What Happens in Paradise' end?