Why Do People Do Crazy Things

In class this past week we finished reading "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  By the end we learn a lot about the mysterious Jay Gatsby and his motivations.  The main part of the story is that Gatsby bought his house and throws so many lavish parties all because he hopes to reconnect with his past love, the now Daisy Buchanan.  Nearing the end, after Gatsby and Daisy have reconnected, Gatsby and Daisy are driving a car when Daisy accidentally runs over a woman who ran into the road.  Later, we learn that even though Gatsby didn't do anything, he is going to take the blame for the murder so Daisy does not get in trouble. Even after the incident, Gatsby waits outside her house to make sure that nothing happens to Daisy, even saying that he will wait outside "All night, if necessary.  Anyhow, till they all go to bed" (Fitzgerald 144)  He does this because he loves Daisy, but the love may not have been fully reciprocated because a little later in the novel, Daisy leaves her house in East Egg with Tom and doesn't return any calls related to Gatsby.  Ironically enough, Gatsby dies at the hand of a man named George Wilson who kills Gatsby because he thinks Gatsby is the one who killed the woman that he loved, the woman who Daisy ran over.  However, the woman that George Wilson loved, Myrtle Wilson, also did not love George.  The commonality between these two events is that the men did crazy things for the women they loved even though they did not love the men back.  The reason for their crazy actions is because of love itself.  At an evolutionary standpoint, love is just a human attraction to promote reproduction, but people are willing to go to extreme lengths to attain, preserve, or avenge their love of another person, even if the other person does not feel the same or it ending up with the situation turning out bad for them.