"Go on. He won't annoy you. I think he realizes that his presumptuous little flirtation is over."
Chapter 7 · Tom Buchanan
Context
After winning the confrontation, Tom sends Daisy home in Gatsby's car with Gatsby—a gesture of contemptuous confidence that demonstrates how thoroughly he believes he has reasserted control. He dismisses Gatsby's five-year obsession as a 'little flirtation.'
Analysis
The situational irony is devastating in retrospect: Tom's gesture of supremacy—sending his wife alone with his rival—directly enables Myrtle Wilson's death, since it is during this drive that Daisy strikes Myrtle with Gatsby's car. The diminishing language of 'presumptuous little flirtation' also reveals Tom's class-based contempt: he cannot conceive that a man of Gatsby's origins could represent a genuine threat, which is precisely the arrogance that has nearly cost him his wife.
How to Use in Essay
Effective for essays on how Tom's class arrogance generates the conditions for tragedy, or for analyzing the ironic consequences of his dismissive confidence in sending Daisy and Gatsby away together.