To what extent is Daisy a symbol of America in the jazz age?
             In F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby we are told the story of the lives of Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan and their relationship through the eyes of the narrator, Nick Carraway. Gatsby was once in love with Daisy, but after they became separated Daisy meets and marries Tom, a wealthy stockbroker from West Egg who is placed highly in society. Gatsby spends the next five years forever dreaming of the day when he would once again meet up with Daisy and rekindle his relationship with her. However, his dream is not to play out the way he intends it to, with Daisy finally choosing Tom over him, and leading to Gatsby's death.
             In my coursework I am going to talk about to what extent Daisy is a symbol of America in the jazz age. The Jazz age (a phrase originally coined by Fitzgerald) began as an ideal of non-conformity of attitudes and ideals, Americans who were tired and not concerned to the materialism of the post-war era wanted a way to enjoy the present and express themselves at the same time. People of this period were unique because they abandoned previous traditional standards of living and searched for a new form of self-expression and rebellion. The Jazz Age provided them with this. The Jazz age ended with of the great Wall Street crash of 1929, which left America as an impoverished nation. In New York, which is one of the settings in the Great Gatsby, during the time of the book it was a time when hardly anyone worried about money, "It was in such profusion around you".
             Daisy perfectly fits into this jazz age. On several occasions in the novel as F. Scott Fitzgerald uses Daisy's character to represent the era that she lives in, the 1920's, known as 'Jazz Age'. Her lack of direction and motivation in life,
             'What'll we do today, and tomorrow and the next thirty years',
             can be seen as representative of the dominant attitude of people at the time, and can be s...