Dear Mr. Fitzgerald,
 

Your story The Great Gatsby is a novel I admire greatly.

And ever since I read it, I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you that you’ve got it all wrong.

My favorite English teacher brought your flaw to my attention during my junior year of high school, and at the time even he was unaware that there had been a huge mistake.

“Daisy Buchanan is a weak character,” he explained. “She is incapable of independence, adaptation, or strength. Her only purpose is to sit there and look pretty - kind of like a flower.”  I remember a few pairs of eyes turned to peek at my rosy cheeks, pink with frustration.

You see, Mr. Fitzgerald, I have a hard time associating Mrs. Buchanan with any flower for many reasons. The first being I don’t think you understand anything about what it takes to be one.

Flowers are self-reliant. Flowers form their own energy and food through photosynthesis, as it is not given. They have to supply their own sustainability, and throughout my entire life I have had to do the same. Living most of my life with a mother who didn’t take much interest in being a parent taught me to keep blooming every spring despite the harsh winters. Relapse after relapse, disappointment after disappointment, I did my best to put my brother on the school bus for her, heat up some pancakes for dinner, and apply myself in school. In the same way that a flower operates, I molded my independence in order to push forward and take charge of my own life. Mrs. Buchanan, whose character relies solely on the men around her, wouldn’t know the first thing about how to be self sustaining.

Flowers can thrive no matter how many times they are replanted. The ability to be moved from different environments and continue to mature is a unique strength. My first three years of high school required that exact kind of perseverance. Constantly being uprooted and replanted between my mom’s, my dad’s, and my uncle’s houses challenged me to bloom in different soils. But it was in those different environments that I learned to adapt and focus on my future, instead of being limited by a change of scenery. To no surprise, your Mrs. Buchanan was shaken by her move from the city to East Egg, unable to adjust and move forward.

A flower’s growth should not be limited or contained. A plant can wither if it is never moved from a small pot into a bigger growing space, such as a garden. In the same way, my potential to flourish and expand exceeded the small flower pot that was my home town for 18 years. I worked to replant myself in the large flowerbed of college, nearly 800 miles away, finally moving onto the next chapter of my life. And let me tell you - I am blooming. In contrast, Mrs. Buchanan was a self-limiting character, who confined herself to one idea of life and never allowed herself develop into anything more than just being somebody’s wife.

As a person who identifies closely with the symbol used to describe your feeble character, I felt the need to write this letter. Mrs. Buchanan never embodied a true floral metaphor, but rather you wrote a character so weak that she is undeserving of the name Daisy.
 

A daisy is so much more than Mrs. Buchanan could ever be, and this flower is sure of it.

Sincerely Yours,
 

Lily K.