Chapter 7 (Part 1)

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Action and heated discussion characterize this chapter as Gatsby and Tom come head to head for the possession of Daisy. Notice that here I do not use the word "love." I don't believe that either Tom or Gatsby truly loves Daisy at this point. Gatsby is chasing after the shadow of what they once were together, ignoring the woman she is now, and Tom only sees this as another match, another football game in which he will be the victor. Tom and Gatsby mudsling like a couple of politicians dangerously close to the prize while Daisy slinks towards the clear winner: her cheating, clever husband. Again and again during the meal we see Gatsby's inability to see reality. When Daisy and Tom's little girl enters the room, Nick notes Gatsby's shocked haze, "Afterward he kept looking at the child with surprise. I don't think he had ever really believed in its existence  before," (Fitzgerald, 117). Gatsby can't let himself accept the child because, in doing so, he is accepting that Daisy is not his, that she had a life without him, that she went so far as to create something that is half Tom's and that she can't leave every part of her new life for him. In Tom's victory in the argument, he rubs one last taunt in Gatsby's face by telling him to drive home with Daisy after their trip to New York.