Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald uses direct presentation of the character Tom Buchanan to describe openly who he is as a person. Fitzgerald characterizes Tom as, "a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward [...] you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage--a cruel body" (7). Tom is a very flat character. He is always distinguished by his brute strength, intolerant racism, and his need to be in control.
Whenever Tom interacts with another character, his large arms are mentioned such as when he is showing Nick around the estate and turns him around with one arm. He often uses his barbaric strength to force others to obey him. During the dinner party in the city, Tom becomes furious with his mistress, Myrtle Wilson, for mentioning his wife, although he had just recently been mocking Mr. Wilson. When Myrtle refuses to stop saying Daisy's name, Nick narrates, "making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand" (Fitzgerald 37). Tom was not below using physical violence to make sure other people respected his authority.
During Nick's first visit to the Buchanan home, Tom goes off on a rant about a novel titled
The Rise of the Colored Empires, and then goes on to say, "It's up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things [...] This idea is that we are Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, [...] and we've produced all these things that go to make civilization--oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?" (Fitzgerald 13). Tom is very obviously a racist and who believes his race to be superior to all others.
Throughout the novel, Tom proves that he wants to be in control of every situation. One hot day during a trip into the city, Tom learns that not only is his wife having an affair with Gatsby, but his mistress and her husband are planning to move away across the country. Tom suddenly realizes that these two women who he had once believed were completely under his control, had their own lives and would make their own decisions. This infuriates Tom, and he immediately begins to lash out at Gatsby, trying to make the other man look bad in order to destroy the relationship and gain Daisy's favor.
Tom proves to be a static character, or almost exactly the same at the end of the story as he had been at the beginning. One late afternoon in October, Nick runs into Tom again and they speak about what had happened to Gatsby. Nick claims, "I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people [...] I shook hands with him; it seemed silly not to, for I felt suddenly as though I were talking to a child. Then he went into the jewelry store to buy a pearl necklace--or perhaps only a pair of cuff buttons--rid of my provincial squeamishness forever" (Fitzgerald 179). It is apparent that even though Tom's actions had caused three people to lose their lives, he felt very little remorse or guilt. The author leaves the reasoning behind why Tom is going into the jewelry store open-ended, allowing for readers to assume that he is buying these superficial gifts for either his mistress or Daisy, implying that his morals have not changed from the events that just recently transpired. Tom still places greater value in materialistic items, rather than the people in his life.
