Gatsby

PLOT

In December 1929, Nick Carraway, a World War I veteran, is receiving treatment at a psychiatric
hospital. He talks about Jay Gatsby, the most hopeful man he had ever met. Nick's doctor suggests that
he write his thoughts down since writing is Nick's passion. Nick then begins to catalog the events to his
doctor.

Seven years previously, in the summer of 1922, Nick moves from the Midwest to New York after
abandoning writing. He rents a small groundskeeper's cottage in the North Shore village of West Egg,
next to the mansion of Gatsby, a mysterious business magnate who often holds extravagant parties.
Nick has dinner with his beautiful but oppressed cousin Daisy Buchanan and her athletic, dominant
husband Tom. Daisy plays matchmaker between Nick and another guest, Jordan Baker, a famous golfer
whom Nick finds attractive. When Nick returns home, he sees Gatsby standing on the harbor, reaching
toward a green light coming from the Buchanan dock.

Jordan tells Nick that Tom has a mistress who lives in the "Valley of Ashes", an industrial dumping site
between West Egg and the City. Tom takes Nick there, stopping at a garage owned by Tom's mistress,
Myrtle Wilson, and her husband George.

Nick receives an invitation to one of Gatsby's parties. Upon arrival, Nick learns he is the only one to
receive an invitation and none of the guests have ever met Gatsby. Nick encounters Jordan, and both
meet Gatsby. Gatsby later takes Nick to Manhattan for lunch. On the way, Gatsby tells Nick he is an
Oxford graduate and war hero from a wealthy Midwestern family. They go to a speakeasy, where Gatsby
introduces Nick to his business partner, Meyer Wolfsheim.

Jordan tells Nick how US Army Captain Gatsby started a relationship with Daisy in 1917, just before the
US entered the war, and is still in love with her; he throws parties hoping that Daisy might attend.
Gatsby asks Nick to invite Daisy to tea. After an awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy begin an affair.
Gatsby is dismayed when Daisy wants to run away with him, preferring that she get a proper divorce. He
asks Nick and Jordan to accompany him to the Buchanan home, where he and Daisy plan to tell Tom
that Daisy is leaving him. During the luncheon, Tom becomes suspicious of Gatsby and Daisy, but Daisy
stops Gatsby from revealing anything to Tom and suggests they all go to the Plaza Hotel. Tom drives Nick
and Jordan in Gatsby's car while Gatsby drives Daisy in Tom's car. Tom stops for gas at George's garage,
where George tells him that he and Myrtle are moving and that he suspects Myrtle is unfaithful.

At the Plaza, Gatsby tells Tom of his affair with Daisy. Tom accuses Gatsby of having never attended
Oxford and having made his fortune through bootlegging with mobsters. Daisy says she loves Gatsby but
cannot bring herself to say she never loved Tom. Eventually, both Gatsby and Daisy leave. After fighting
with George over her infidelity, Myrtle runs into the street and is fatally struck by Gatsby's car after
mistaking it for Tom's. After learning about Myrtle's death, Tom tells George that the car belongs to
Gatsby and that he suspects Gatsby was Myrtle's lover. Nick deduces Daisy was driving when the
accident happened. Nick overhears Daisy accepting Tom's promise to take care of everything, but he
does not tell Gatsby. Gatsby admits to Nick that he was born penniless; his real name is James Gatz, and
he had asked Daisy to wait for him until he had made something of himself after the war; instead, she
married Tom, “America's Wealthiest Bachelor”, just seven months after the war ended. He did, however
attend Oxford, albeit for a brief 5 months on a special program for officers after the Armstice.

The next day, Gatsby hears the phone ringing and thinks it is Daisy. Before he can answer it, he is shot
and killed by a vengeful George, who then commits suicide. Nick is the only person other than reporters,
to attend Gatsby's funeral, as Daisy and Tom are leaving New York. The media paints Gatsby as Myrtle's
lover and killer. This false, negative image of Gatsby's life and death infuriates Nick and from the top of
the stairs at Gatsby's mansion he yells at the reporters and kicks them out of the house. Disgusted with
both the city and its inhabitants, Nick leaves after taking a final walk through Gatsby's deserted mansion
and reflecting on Gatsby's ability to hope. In the sanatorium, Nick finishes typing his memoir and titles it
The Great Gatsby.

Character

Nick Carraway

The novel’s narrator, Nick is a young man from Minnesota who, after being educated at Yale and fighting
in World War I, goes to New York City to learn the bond business. Honest, tolerant, and inclined to
reserve judgment, Nick often serves as a confidant for those with troubling secrets. After moving to
West Egg, a fictional area of Long Island that is home to the newly rich, Nick quickly befriends his next-
door neighbor, the mysterious Jay Gatsby. As Daisy Buchanan’s cousin, he facilitates the rekindling of
the romance between her and Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is told entirely through Nick’s eyes; his
thoughts and perceptions shape and color the story.

Jay Gatsby

The title character and protagonist of the novel, Gatsby is a fabulously wealthy young man living in a
Gothic mansion in West Egg. He is famous for the lavish parties he throws every Saturday night, but no
one knows where he comes from, what he does, or how he made his fortune. As the novel progresses,
Nick learns that Gatsby was born James Gatz on a farm in North Dakota; working for a millionaire made
him dedicate his life to the achievement of wealth. When he met Daisy while training to be an officer in
Louisville, he fell in love with her. Nick also learns that Gatsby made his fortune through criminal activity,
as he was willing to do anything to gain the social position he thought necessary to win Daisy. Nick views
Gatsby as a deeply flawed man, dishonest and vulgar, whose extraordinary optimism and power to
transform his dreams into reality make him “great” nonetheless.
Daisy Buchanan

Nick’s cousin, and the woman Gatsby loves. As a young woman in Louisville before the war, Daisy was
courted by a number of officers, including Gatsby. She fell in love with Gatsby and promised to wait for
him. However, Daisy harbors a deep need to be loved, and when a wealthy, powerful young man named
Tom Buchanan asked her to marry him, Daisy decided not to wait for Gatsby after all. Now a beautiful
socialite, Daisy lives with Tom across from Gatsby in the fashionable East Egg district of Long Island. She
is sardonic and somewhat cynical, and behaves superficially to mask her pain at her husband’s constant
infidelity.

Tom Buchanan

Daisy’s immensely wealthy husband, once a member of Nick’s social club at Yale. Powerfully built and
hailing from a socially solid old family, Tom is an arrogant, hypocritical bully. His social attitudes are
laced with racism and sexism, and he never even considers trying to live up to the moral standard he
demands from those around him. He has no moral qualms about his own extramarital affair with Myrtle,
but when he begins to suspect Daisy and Gatsby of having an affair, he becomes outraged and forces a
confrontation.

Jordan Baker

Daisy’s friend, a woman with whom Nick becomes romantically involved during the course of the novel.
A competitive golfer, Jordan represents one of the “new women” of the 1920s—cynical, boyish, and
self-centered. Jordan is beautiful, but also dishonest: she cheated in order to win her first golf
tournament and continually bends the truth.

Myrtle Wilson

Tom’s lover, whose lifeless husband George owns a run-down garage in the valley of ashes. Myrtle
herself possesses a fierce vitality and desperately looks for a way to improve her situation.
Unfortunately for her, she chooses Tom, who treats her as a mere object of his desire.

George Wilson

Myrtle’s husband, the lifeless, exhausted owner of a run-down auto shop at the edge of the valley of
ashes. George loves and idealizes Myrtle, and is devastated by her affair with Tom. George is consumed
with grief when Myrtle is killed. George is comparable to Gatsby in that both are dreamers and both are
ruined by their unrequited love for women who love Tom.
Owl Eyes

The eccentric, bespectacled drunk whom Nick meets at the first party he attends at Gatsby’s mansion.
Nick finds Owl Eyes looking through Gatsby’s library, astonished that the books are real.

Klipspringer

The shallow freeloader who seems almost to live at Gatsby’s mansion, taking advantage of his host’s
money. As soon as Gatsby dies, Klipspringer disappears—he does not attend the funeral, but he does
call Nick about a pair of tennis shoes that he left at Gatsby’s mansion.

Meyer Wolfsheim

Gatsby’s friend, a prominent figure in organized crime. Before the events of the novel take place,
Wolfsheim helped Gatsby to make his fortune bootlegging illegal liquor. His continued acquaintance
with Gatsby suggests that Gatsby is still involved in illegal business.

SETTENG

The action of The Great Gatsby takes place along a corridor stretching from New York City to the
suburbs known as West and East Egg. West and East Egg serve as stand-ins for the real-life locations of
two peninsulas along the northern shore of Long Island. Midway between the Eggs and Manhattan lies
the “valley of ashes,” where Myrtle and George Wilson have a run-down garage. This corridor between
New York and the suburbs encompasses the full range of social class. Whereas the valley of ashes is a
place of evident poverty, both the city and the two suburbs represent bastions of affluence. While both
East and West Egg are wealthy communities, families with inherited wealth, or “old money,” live in the
more fashionable East Egg. In West Egg, by contrast, residents whose wealth is new, like Gatsby,
conspicuously mimic European aristocracy to appear established. Gatsby’s house is modeled on the
Hotel de Ville (French for city hall) in Normandy, France, and was built by a brewer who offered to pay
the neighbors to live in thatched cottages, like peasants. While many of the descriptions of the houses in
the novel seem over the top, they are in fact based on real mansions that existed on Long Island in the
1920s.

CONFLICT

The main conflict that happens in this story is between Jay Gatsby, Daisy and Tom. Daisy and Tom are
married together. Daisy knew Gatsby years before she met Tom and they were madly in love, until
Gatsby had to go away for years. Daisy had then met Tom and they got married. After years later of
never hearing from Gatsby, he came back into the story and they fell madly in love again. This is the
main conflict because Daisy cheats on Tom with Gatsby and Tom cheats on her with his mistress Myrtle.
Gatsby wants Daisy to tell Tom she doesn't love him so they can be together forever.
Gatsby and Daisy were in the car together driving one night when Daisy accidentally hit Tom’s mistress
as she runs into the street after Tom. Daisy kills Tom’s mistress but Gatsby takes the blame for her.
Tom’s mistress’ husband then comes to kill who he thought killed his wife in a hit and run and ends up
killing Gatsby when really it was Daisy.

CLIMAX

The climax of the novel comes when the group is driving back from New York in two cars, and Myrtle,
Tom’s lover, mistakes Gatsby’s car for Tom’s and runs out into the street and is hit and killed. The car
that kills Myrtle belongs to Gatsby, but Daisy is driving. After this, the action resolves quickly. Gatsby
takes the blame in order to protect Daisy, and Myrtle’s husband, George, kills Gatsby (and then himself)
as revenge. Gatsby has already died a symbolic death at this point, when he realizes that Daisy will not
call him and is not going to run away with him after all. His dream is at last obliterated, and he heads
into the morning of his death facing reality for the first time. Nick describes the world as Gatsby now
sees it as unbearably ugly: “he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was
upon the scarcely created grass.” In contrast to the previous obsession with the past, the final passages
of Gatsby’s life are concerned with newness, creation, and the future – one which, lacking his dream of
Daisy, he finds hideous.

POINT OF VIEW

The Great Gatsby is written in first-person limited perspective from Nick’s point of view. This means that
Nick uses the word “I” and describes events as he experienced them. He does not know what other
characters are thinking unless they tell him. Although Nick narrates the book, in many ways he is
incidental to the events involved, except that he facilitates the meeting of Daisy and Gatsby. For the
most part, he remains an observer of the events around him, disappearing into the background when it
comes time to narrate crucial meetings between Gatsby, Tom, and Daisy. In several extended passages
his voice disappears completely, and he relates thoughts and feelings of other characters as though he is
inside their heads. When Gatsby tells Nick about his past with Daisy, Nick writes directly from Gatsby’s
point of view.

Whenever a novel is narrated in the first person by one of the characters, a key question for the reader
is how much faith we should put in the narrator’s reliability. When a story is told from one person’s
perspective, the narrator will almost always be unreliable in some way, simply because the narrator
brings his or her own biases to bear on the situation. Some narrators deliberately lie to the reader. We
call these narrators, or any narrator whose words can largely not be trusted, “unreliable narrators.” Nick
Carraway is not a classically unreliable narrator, because Fitzgerald gives no indications that Nick is lying
to the reader or that his version of events directly contradicts anyone else’s. He apparently tries to be as
truthful as possible. He tells us right away that he has an uncanny ability to reserve judgment and get
people to trust him, which encourages us to see him as a reliable narrator. At the same time, he also
says “I am one of the few honest people I have ever known.” His very need to describe himself this way
makes the reader question how much Nick can actually be trusted.
ENDING

Gatsby dies blissfully with infinite hope which also leads us to believe that no matter who is on our side
or what happens to us, we live clinging on to hope. It gives us immense pleasure and happiness to seek
something that we desire and all our love we chase it relentlessly thinking it as our destination. We do
miss on the little joys, but the joy of reaching the destination could never equate the same. Daisy was a
destination to Gatsby rest everything was either vanity fair or Apollo ( the giant) to him. He did not
believe in being distracted and knew exactly what to achieve. Daisy leads him on until the very end and
leaves him to die. He did not believe in this failure and was content sticking to his make-believe world.
He believed what he had to, oblivious of the reality, which made him die a happy man. Nick remains
and comes in term with the reality that Daisy never called or send a flower at the news of his death. He
saw that there was no one by his side when he died. Not one single person that came to his parties.
Daisy moves on with her life and family leaving the ‘vacation’ behind, but Nick remains shocked at her
insensitivity. He was taken aback by the reality that the person who lived and died for Daisy, did not
deserve her reverence even in the last moments. The man who loved, validated and gave her everything
she always wanted was dying alone, and she refused to take any calls. It was distressing, and it was the
truth that Nick could not face.

Nick is the only character who witnesses the ebb and flow of the entire story and thereafter went on to
write it out as a part of his therapy. He is depicted as the only unselfish and non-judgmental person in
the movie. He witnesses the spree Tom Buchanan entertains. He also sees the love the Daisy craves and
observes Gatsby’s passion for his sister. She tries to unite the lovers without asking anything in return,
with the belief that they deserved each other. He is the only person who could see through the human
Gatsby when others accepted the illusory version of him. He sticks to him until the very end. Though he
is a very practical man yet his bond with Gatsby reiterates the core idea – Fantasy versus Reality. Also,
despite being so well acquainted with how the ordinary world works he could not come in terms with
the fact that people like Daisy and Tom could retreat back to normal lives despite destroying other
people. Nick realizes that chasing a dream ends up disrupting our lives because we fail to look through
people who value us and who does n’t. By chasing a mirage, Gatsby ends up destroying himself, and
Nick remains sole witness to it. Nick realizes that he is the only one Jay Gatsby had and only one who
cared and that broke him. His one beloved “Golden Shimmering” New York now made him repulsive. He
hated it and hated the “huge incoherent” house of Gatsby even more. It was no longer the make-believe
world of illusion. It was a palace of broken dreams and a hardcore reality. The ugly one. The one he did
not prepare himself for.

In the book Nick says (Which was even depicted in the film):

“And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first
picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his
dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was
already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the
republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us
then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.

Nick was deeply affected by the in-sensitiveness and the inhumanity. He is traumatized to realize that it
was that easy to flee the truth for some while it was everything for others. He ponders on the days that
the palace would be filled with an unknown frenzy and made it look like an amusement park. The place
was filled with party freaks, but not a single mourner turned up to pay reverence. The frugal mindset of
people made him sick and thus the city that promised him dreams was no longer a favorite. He no
longer wished to dream but lived to tell the story of a dreamer who was perished.