Careless People

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and physical abuse.

The title of this book is intended to draw an analogy between the fictional characters of Tom and Daisy Buchanan from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Zuckerberg and Sandberg. In Wynn-Williams’s epigraph, she quotes the book: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (vii).

Like Zuckerberg and Sandberg, the Buchanan couple are spectacularly wealthy. Jay Gatsby, also very wealthy, throws extravagant parties in New York to win the attention of his former lover, Daisy. Both Tom and Daisy fail to accept any responsibility for their actions and care little about the consequences of their behavior. They can retreat back into their comfortable bubble of wealth. Tom conducts an affair with Myrtle Wilson, whom he physically abuses. Daisy, driving Gatsby’s car, accidentally hits and kills Myrtle. Consistent with her character, she flees the scene and accepts no responsibility. Tom tells Myrtle’s husband that Gatsby hit her, and Myrtle’s husband then murders Gatsby.