How does Gatsby create such wealth to capture Daisy’s attention? Froehlich suggests that Gatsby’s mentors Dan Cody and Meyer Wolfsheim had a lot to do with it. He first met Dan Cody on Little Girl Bay, where he transforms from a boy of seventeen to a man as a commodity to an agent of exchange (217). Gatsby recognized Dan’s wealth and power and serviced Cody “in a vague personal capacity” (Fitzgerald). He prostitutes himself to Cody, even though Gatsby is straight. He accepts Dan’s friendship, which is equivalent to being a slave in exchange for money. However, when Dan dies, Ella Kay, who is secretly married to Dan contests the will, so Gatsby is left with nothing. He meets a second mentor, Meyer Wolfsheim, who mirrors a mentorship with his protégé, but is heterosexual. Wolfsheim is a member of organized crime, yet their organization is seen as a family with underworld logic of patriarchal capitalism. They gather their wealth through father-son …show more content…
Wolfsheim mentored Gatsby to riches without having to prostitute himself. Froehlich comments that Daisy realizes what Gatsby had to do to gain his riches for she felt just as powerless as he did. She knows what it’s like to be in a loveless relationship and wants out her marriage with Tom. She understand the parallelism between the patriarchal capitalism where she had to prostitute herself as a commodity to Tom, much like Gatsby was a commodity to Dan Cody. When Gatsby is throwing the silk shirts at her, she sees the pictures of Dan Cody and begins to cry, not for herself, but for him because he is a victim of patriarchal capitalism and she knows what he had to do to gain his position (222). Foucault claims “there is a distinction between being homosexual and being straight-the sense that you are one or the other, and the sense that who you are is defined by