The Structure of Plot in “The Great Gatsby”

1. Exposition
As an exposition in this story is begin from: Nick Carraway, a young
man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn
about the bound business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long
Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated by new rich, a group who
made their fortunes too recently to have established social connections and
who are prone to garish displays of wealth. Nick‟s next-door neighbor in West
Egg is a mysterious man, named Jay Gatsby, who lives is gigantic Gothic
mansion and throws extravagant parties every Saturday night.Nick is unlike
the other inhabitants of West Egg; he was educated at Yale and has social
connections in West Egg, a fashionable area of Long Island home to the
established upper class. Nick drives out to East Egg one evening for dinner
with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, an erstwhile
classmate of Nick‟s at Yale. Daisy and Tom introduce Nick to Jordan Backer,
a beautiful, cynical young woman with whom Nick begins a romantic
relationship. Nick also learns a bit about Daisy and Tom‟s marriage. Jordan
tells him that Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the valley of ashes,
a gray industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City with
Tom and Myrtle. At a vulgar, gaudy party in the apartment that Tom keeps for
the affair, Myrtle begins to taunt Tom about Daisy, and Tom responds by
breaking her nose.

2. Complication or Rising
Complication in this story is in Gatsby‟s lavish parties. As the summer
progresses, Nick eventually garners an invitation to one of Gatsby‟s
legendary parties. He encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet
Gatsby himself, a surprisingly young man who affects an English accent, has
a remarkable smile, and calls every one “old sport”. Gatsby asks to speak to
Jordan alone, and, through Jordan, Nick later learns more about his
mysterious neighbor.
Gatsby tells Jordan that he knew Daisy in Louisville in 1917 and is
deeply in love with her. He spends many nights staring at the green light at
the end of her dock, across the bay from his mansion. Gatsby‟s extravagant
lifestyle and wild parties are simply an attemp to impress Daisy.He wants Nick
to arrange a reunion between himslef and Daisy, but he i affraid that Daisy will
refuse to see him if she knows that he still loves her. Nick invites Daisy to
have tea at his house, without telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After
an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy establish their connection.
Their love rekindled, they begin an affair.

3. Climax
The climax of the plot is the confrontation between Gatsby and Tom in
Plaza Hotel in Chapter VII. After a short time, Tom grows increasingly
suspicious of his wife‟s relationship with Gatsby. At a luncheon at the
Buchanan‟s house. Gatsby stares at Daisy with such undisguished passion
that Tom realizes Gatsby is in love with her. Though Tom is himself involved
in an extramarital affairs, he is deeply outraged by the thought that his wife
cold be unfaithful to him. He forces the group to drive into New York City,
where he confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Tom asserts that he
and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could never understand, and he
announces to his wife that Gatsby is a criminal-his fortune comes from
bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities. Daisy realizes that her
allegiance is to Tom, and Tom contemptuously sends her back to East Egg
with Gatsby, attempting to prove that Gatsby cannot hurt him.

4. Falling
The falling action of this story is when Daisy rejects of Gatsby and
Gatsby‟s murder. When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley of
ashes, however, they discover that Gatsby‟s car has stuck and killed Myrtle,
Tom‟s lover. They rush back to Long Island, where Nick learns from Gatsby
that Daisy was driving the car when it stuck Myrtle, but then Gatsby intends to
take the blame.

Jay Gatsby is a young man, around thirty years old, who rose from an
impoverished childhood in rural North Dacota to become fabulously wealthy.
However, he achieved this lofty goal by participating in organized crime,
including distributing illegal alcohol and trading in stolen securities. From his
early youth, Gatsby despised poverty and longed for welath and sophistication
he dropped out of St. Olaf‟s College after only two weeks because he could
not bear the janitorial job with which he was paying his tuition. Though Gatsby
has always wanted to be rich, his main motivation in acquiring his fortune was
his love for Daisy Buchanan, whom he met as a young military officer in
Louisville before leaving to fight in World War in 1917.
Gatsby immediately fell in love with Daisy‟s aura of luxury, grace, and charm,
and lied to her about his own background in order to convince her that he was
good enough for her.

A Deconstruction to the Past and the Present

To win back Daisy, what Gatsby strives for is not only wealth, but also
social status, in order to gain a sense of identification from the upper class. By
achieving this, Gatsby has to cast aside his disgraceful past and fabricate an
honorable one. He makes up himself into the one born with a silver spoon in
his mouth. He leaves his hometown and changes his name, while changing
his parents from “shiftless and unsuccessful farm people” to the one died but
left him with a great fortune.

After World War One, the economy in the United States boomed and
flourished. People became obsessed with material and thus made money as
their first goal of achievement. The story was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in
the background of the society, which depicted the lives of riches and the
dream of most Americans at the time period. The characters in the story
reflected the ideas prevailed in the society. It illustrated a flourishing society
whose economy was so flourished that every single person wanted more
money to have the things that they want. They believed that with money, they
could do anything. Money can bring them happiness and comfort, pure
pleasure and the ultimate greatness of life. They dressed fashionably just like
French and went to lavish parties till early morning. They chased richness.
 The protagonist in the novel, Gatsby, had a goal of regaining the love
of his first love, Daisy. The story depicted his attempts and wishes as well as
the ways that he used to win Daisy from her current husband, Tom. He had
loved Daisy for many years and his love had never changed. The strong
pursue of his goal of pure love reflected the American dream in the real world.
He was the only character in the book who had a motivation other than money
of pursuing a goal. The goal, Gatsby’s persistence as well as his efforts all
made him great at the time period in the book. But the ego that Fitzgerald
depicted is the main cause of Gatsby’s tragedy. In The Great Gatsby, clothes,
residence and car play significant roles in the protagonists’ lives as the
consumption signs. The fact that Gatsby displays such strong interests in
clothes, residence, and car does not merely indicate that he needs such
things, but more importantly, it demonstrates that clothes, residence and cars
are the consumption signs symbolizing wealth, social status and identity they
have so long pursued. Only through such consumption signs can one’s
wealth, social status and identity become visible. The purpose of the purchase
is to show off wealth, social status and identity one possesses. In The Great
Gatsby, at first, Gatsby is a great and ambitious young man. At first, he
follows faithfully the requirements of the traditional “American Dream”: to
cultivate physical health, learn to make public speeches, master science and
technology, virtues, like reading and respect the elders, etc. Through this,
Gatsby fulfils his dream of winning financial success and entering the wealthy
class hard work. However, after realizing his ambition of getting financial
success, Gatsby doesn’t abide by Franklin’s virtues of “temperance, order,
resolution, frugality, industry,” etc. On the contrary, he follows Fitzgerald’s
lifestyle and participates in the consumerist activities of the “Roaring
Twenties”. He falls in the consumerist trap. Living in consumer society,
Gatsby knows very well that only consumption is the symbol of his success
and the symbolic value of consumption is worth his purchasing. Gatsby’s
traditional “American Dream” begins to emerge with consumerism. In other
words, in the Jazz Age Gatsby’s dream is to become the hero of consumption,
receive social acceptance, so as to catch Daisy’s attention and retrieve his
lost love.

Another reason for Gatsby’s destined failure was that Daisy was not
the girl he had once loved anymore. Although Gatsby was influenced by the
belief in money of the society, he had at least held on to his dream of love.
But Daisy was different. She had completely been washed off all the wishes
or goals or interests apart from money and pure pleasure. Her internal world
was empty as well as her soul. She was deeply affected by the trend of
society to chase money and material. Gatsby’s dream of pure love had
already shattered, like the shattered American dream at that time. It was an
analogy. In the past, the American dream was that someone could achieve
his or her own dream by hard work and devotion and focus on one single
goal. And the dream was to develop a person’s interest and focus on one goal
that can help the person become the best of himself. Gatsby’s past with Daisy
was the reflection of the American dream. He and Daisy had a wonderful time
together and the pure love between them was like the single-minded goal a
person with dream had. However, the ‘dream’ at the time of the story took
place was to gain as much money as one can. People viewed money as
power and the god that could do anything. There was no goal existed at that
time to be called an American dream. For the reason above, Gatsby could not
possibly achieve his goal at the beginning because his ‘goal’ did not actually
exist any more.

Another reason for Gatsby’s failure was that he used the wrong method
to win back Daisy. Another reason for Gatsby’s failure was his self-lost. The
background of the novel was in the 1920s, showing a furious “Jazz Time”. The
amount of wealth became the criterion for judging a person's success. People
began to make money and pursue wealth blindly and irrationally. At the same
time, hedonism, Spencer's theory of evolution and James' pragmatic
philosophy began to prevail.Gatsby was born to be humble with courage and
luck to became a rich man.Gatsby firmly pursued his dream: the material
basis of money, fame and fortune in exchange for the spiritual pursuit of lost
love. When Nick went to his house for the first time, he was arranging a large
party in his house and invited lots of famous people to the party. His goal of
the arrangement was the hope that Daisy would accidentally went in and they
could meet each other. From the description of the food provided for the party,
Gatsby’s richness could be seen easily and knowing his goal of winning back
Daisy, his attitude towards money could also be detected. He believed that
money could bring him many things that he wanted, including Daisy. And he
strongly believed that money was the reason why he could not marry Daisy or
win her love. That’s why he arrange the grand party to show his richness and
thus attract Daisy’s attention back. From Gatsby’s attitude towards money, we
could find out that he was also influenced by the ideas of the society at that
time, which made his tragedy definite and sad. Deep in his mind, Gatsby had
already known that Daisy was poisoned by materialism and that if she went
back to him, it was not for love but for his money. But Gatsby did not care.
Because he himself believe that money could bring back anything that he
wanted, even the wonderful past that had already been shattered and did not
exist any more. The efforts that he made and the persistence that he had
made him great, but the ignorance and the belief in money assured his failure
and his ultimate death. The decline of morality was also implied in his action.
Although the act of winning back the first love back may seemed courageous
and approving, Gatsby was actually making a mistake. No matter Daisy loved
Tom Buchanan or not, she had married him. The fact could not be changed
and that if Gatsby stepped in, he would be the one who was lack of morality.
He thought he was making the right choice of bringing Daisy love and
happiness, but he was actually breaking an exist family from all aspects
viewed.

Daisy’s character in The Great Gatsby serves the purpose of

highlighting the underlying social criticism of the capitalist society, and the
sense of betrayal and abandonment present in Daisy’s character highlights
the idea that money does not necessarily equal happiness.But as she was a
lovely creature, the charming power of hers conceal out the effect of her
words. Her focus was always on trivial things. She did not care about Tom
Buchanan of having another woman apart from her, his wife. She had already
known the fact and did not try to stop Tom, which revealed the fact that she
did not love Tom. So why did she marry him? Daisy’s life was filled with desire
for money and material. As a result, there was only one reason for her act of
marrying Tom Buchanan: money. Also, being Gatsby’s first love and after all
Gatsby had done for her, she approved of Tom’s act of making Gatsby the
cause of the accident of killing Myrtle. The things that she chose was strongly
related to material and money and was also empty.What’s more, because
Daisy did not have any goal for herself, she could only fill her life with the seek
of pure pleasure. But for all the character flaws that she had, Daisy was also a
tragic figure.

Tom Buchanan was Daisy’s husband and a antagonist in the story

because he was the main force that prevented Gatsby from achieving his
goal. He was a harsh and evil person who was lack of morality and proper
virtue. He found another woman who was the wife of Wilson and had secret
relationship with her. Instead of feeling guilty or regret for his action, he even
disdained Wilson when he said that Wilson did not have the faintest idea his
wife had another man and thought she visited her relative every time she went
away train.He viewed himself as a person who was helping a miserable
woman to get away from her dumb husband while he himself was never better
than Wilson in any way of thinking. Furthermore, Tom was a bad racist.
What’s more, he was the direct cause of Gatsby’s death. When Gatsby
admitted the accident that was not done by him, Tom did not had the slightest
feeling of gratitude towards him of saving his wife’s life, instead, Tom told
Wilson secretly that Myrtle was murdered by Gatsby. He did not show respect
to him and did not have any sympathy towards him. As he said “Money is a
toy of luxury life,”[2] Moral corruption, Material desire, Class, racial and
gender discrimination completely occupied all of his mind.

The Great Gatsby illustrated a world filled with the chase for enjoyment
and material, and it seemed that the goal for many people, like Wilson in the
story, was to gain more money. The poor was working hard and the rich was
showing off. The society showed an air of prosperity and lives of people
seemed dissipated. The reason behind the prosperity of the society in the
book could be find in the world in which the writer Fitzgerald lived, and that
was the time period after World War One.

New ideas also went in America all over the world and challenged the
traditional ideas. The diligence, thrift and abstinence advocated by the pre-
war traditional Puritanism values gradually turned into a consumption-
centered form.[1] Girls began to wear short skirts above their knees instead of
long trousers that could cover their legs entirely. And because of the bloody
war, many people who firmly carried the traditional ideas died, and the
obstacles toward new lives were moved. People’s lives, new ideas about
consuming goods or the ways of living also changed dramatically. New kinds
of entertainment appeared, like radio and movie. People from different parts
of the country could listen to the same programs on videos, such as sports
event, operas and comedies. And going to watch movies had became a
national habit in cities, suburbs and small towns. These emerging popular
cultures have reshaped American urban culture, lifestyle and family values.[1]
The booming economy as well as the introduction and invention of new things
took Americans to an age of enjoyment and the strong belief of money.
Money became the sole goal for many people in the United States, and
material became the seek. However, it was a period that the rich people
became richer, and the poor men became poorer. Business men were making
considerable amounts of money and farmers were living hard lives because
the price of goods dropped. The huge gap existed between the two kinds of
people. The Americans could not achieve the dream of gaining status and
money through hard work any more, which was one of the theme in the Great
Gatsby. The Great Gatsby depicted the real tragedy of the lost characters in
the feast and luxury world. The characters and dreams under the distorted
social and moral values inevitably shattered in the cold and cruel reality.

The American Dream has its long history in this new land, “it exists with
the history of America” (James, 1931, p. 404). This American Dream, in its
widest implication, can be dated back to the very beginning of the exploration
of American civilization, to the time when first settlers came. They were
religious refugees from Europe and were forced to flee home by persecution
and hoped to find a peaceful place. The new land offered them a heaven for
their religion. Later on, more immigrants came to the New World in the hope
of improving their living standard and social status. To those people, America
represented a new life of freedom, holding a promise of spiritual and material
happiness, and most important, with infinite possibilities. There they could be
free from all of the repressive hierarchies of the Old World, free from the
system of control by kings, priests and great landowners. With the
development of the country, the content of the American Dream has
experienced “the dream of exploitation”, “the dream of freedom and
democracy” and “the dream of being strong and rich” (F. Wang, 2001, pp. 88-
99) besides its original emphasis on both spiritual and material improvement.
The new United States became a vast laboratory in which ideas formed in
Europe were put into practice without being obstructed by rigid customs of the
feudal society. Things that once could only be thought now could be done.
Developing to the time of Jazz Age in the 1920s, the American Dream of
freedom and opportunity gradually became a dream of material advancement.
The desire for wealth and status became almost virtuous pursuit. Most
Americans were born with the American Dream. They dreamed of making
personal achievement, enjoying popular fame, or getting great wealth through
their hard work. And any failure in achievement could lead to keen
disappointment. And this encouraged a spirit of mutual suspicion of the
motives of others and led to cases where obtaining of wealth began to
outweigh all other moral considerations. As the United States entered the
consumer society, the social morality was no longer the traditional one that
emphasized hard work, saving, patience and temperance, but the
consumption ethics that focused on the purchase of happiness and material
satisfaction.

American people are proud of their Dream. When the country was
fighting for its independence, when its inhabitants were struggling for a better
tomorrow on a new continent, this dream backed up people to go on and on.
However, during the time of the Jazz Age, the American Dream was doomed
to fail, and this tragedy of failure was to a great extent happened to a
consumer society. When they still get endless desires of improving the living
standards even though life is abundant, when they develop a fashion of
conspicuous consumption, when they regard wealth as a gauge of happiness,
this dream becomes a burden. In The Great Gatsby consumerism is a strong
force that pushes the American Dream far away from its original meaning.

American Dream as the dream of a land in which life should be better

and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according
to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper
classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have
grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and
high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and
each woman can be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are
innately capable, and be recognised by others for what they are,
regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.

In Tom Buchanan he voices strong criticism of the wealthy aristocracy

and its inherited money through the character’s narrow-minded conservatism.
His immorality stands in contrast to the ideals of the American Dream, and
thus emphasise their significance. Fitzgerald expressed his satisfaction with
the character in a letter to his editor: “I suppose he’s the best character I’ve
ever done“ (cited in Lena 29). Similarly, Tom’s wife also functions as a
contradictory force to the American Dream. The questionable link between
wealth and personal fulfilment is personified in the beautiful yet indifferent
Daisy, who comes to represent the fact that money cannot buy happiness. In
stark contrast to Daisy stands Gatsby, a man who in the end “… paid a high
price for living too long with a single dream” (Fitzgerald 168), allowing his
romantic convictions to cloud his vision of reality. Fitzgerald’s depiction of
Gatsby shows how even the purest of dreams can become corrupt, and the
duality of his character is representative of the duality of the American Dream
- the corrupted notion that money equaled happiness, a lesson harshly
learned by Gatsby in the end.

Gatsby is a social climber who has reached from rages to riches by his
illegal acts. Gatsby, who has abandoned “his parents named “shiftless and
unsuccessful farm people”, tries to become a gentleman in the social milieu of
New York. Gatsby’s whole interest and motivation for gaining much money
and constructing a chateau in the West Egg is only for drawing Daisy’s
attention to his new lifestyle. Gatsby’s great problem comes from his origin as
a person of the lower class. In the first meeting of Gatsby and Daisy which
has taken place in Daisy’s home, Gatsby understands that his style of life as a
penniless soldier is not enough for attaining Daisy’s love. He is absorbed in
the luxury and wealth of the household and tries to change his lifestyle.
Gatsby’s encounter with Daisy is intermingled with the complete sense of
inferiority complex. Gatsby is not rich and this is a boundary impossible to
cross in a capitalist society. Because of the inferiority complex that the
capitalist society imposes on him, Gatsby should enter the competition of
gaining money. This competition, however, is not fair. He should move from
the low levels of austerity to high levels of affluence. Stitching of the
abstraction of love to the reality of money is impossible for Gatsby. He gains
money in order to win Daisy’s heart but in a catastrophic climax Tom
Buchanan in Hotel Plaza's room succeeds to ruin Gatsby’s reputation very
easily. By calling Gatsby “Mr. Nobody from Nowhere” and considering his car
“a circus wagon” Tom tries to prove that Gatsby is not noble and high born.

The love relation between Tom Buchanan and Myrtle is also based on
capitalist ideology which is hidden in Myrtle’s assumptions about material
living in America and especially in New York society. In the apartment, which
is provided by Tom for her, Myrtle explains the reasons of her absorption to
Tom. She explains to Nick that in her trip from the valley of ashes to New York
for spending the night with her sister, she sees Tom in the train and becomes
infatuated with him. The reasons of Myrtle’s infatuation are Tom’s expensive
clothes and his capitalist social position. Myrtle considers this sort of
infatuation as a gate for attaining happiness and a weapon for coming upon
transiency of life.Gatsby’s act of drawing Daisy’s attention to himself is parallel
with Tom Buchanan’s secret relation with Myrtle, and Daisy’s act of being
infatuated with Gatsby is parallel with Myrtle’s infatuation. Both Gatsby and
Tom are unwelcome intruders that destroy the others’ family lives.

At the end of the novel you can only understand that the difference
between Gatsby and the others is not his piety or moralistic actions; his only
difference is that he cannot understand that he has walked into the trap of
capitalism. And, when he springs the trap, he does not try to escape. In other
words, instead of rejecting the whole game of capitalism, Gatsby starts
playing the game and when Daisy and Tom give the game away Gatsby’s
whole idealism smashes.