Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven – a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anticlimax.
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby. Chapter 1. Nick’s description of Daisy’s husband, Tom Buchanan. From early on Tom is depicted as restless and bored, having peaked too early in life, with the threat of physical aggression lurking behind that restlessness.