Tom Buchanan, The Great Gatsby, and Destruction

“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, 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…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.”
-The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Brittany made the excellent point in a previous post of the extreme likability of Gatsby.  If there is an extreme likability to Gatsby, there is almost an equaled dislike for Tom Buchanan.  He is the archetypal character who, not necessarily villianous, simply expounds apathetic disinterest in the world around him.  To them the world is not unlike the modern credit card frazzlers who max out their cards.