The Great Gatsby Summary
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Setting
The Great Gatsby is set on long island, New York
Main Characters
Nick Caraway- he is the narrator, a thirty-year-old moralist who lives next door to Jay Gatsby and becomes Gatsby’s link to his cousin, daisy.
Jay Gatsby- is a romantic idealist who devotes his life to accumulating wealth which he believes will win Daisy and thus fulfill his dream.
Daisy Buchanan- she is Nick’s cousin, Tom’s wife, and Gatsby’s dream girl. Incapable of love, she represents the idolized upper class.
Tom Buchanan- he is daisy’s husband. Incapable of feeling guilt or any other emotion, he represents brutality, the moral carelessness of the rich, and racism.
Jordan Baker- she is daisy’s friend from Louisville. A young and compulsively dishonest professional golfer,
George Wilson- he is the proprietor of a garage in the Valley of Ashes.
Myrtle Wilson- she is George’s wife.
Plot Summary
Nick Carraway, the narrator of the story, has just returned from war. During the summer of 1922, Nick Carraway moves from Minnesota to work as a bond salesman in New York. Nick rents a house in West Egg, a suburb of New York on Long Island full of the "new rich" who have made their fortunes too recently to have built strong social connections. Nick graduated from Yale and has connections in East Egg. One night Nick drives to East Egg to have dinner with his cousin, Daisy, and her husband Tom Buchanan, who was his classmate Yale. While there, Nick meets Jordan Baker, Daisy’s friend from Louisville, who reveals that Tom is having an affair with Myrtle Wilson, the wife of a garage owner in the Valley of Ashes. Nick is shocked at the lack of morality on every level.
A few days later, Tom invites Nick to a party in New York City. On the way, Tom picks up his mistress, Myrtle Wilson, the wife of George Wilson. At the party, Myrtle gets drunk and makes fun of Daisy. Tom punches her and breaks her nose. Nick also attends one of Gatsby's extravagant Saturday night parties. He runs into Jordan there and meets Gatsby for the first time. Gatsby privately tells Jordan a story she describes as the most "amazing thing." After going to lunch with Gatsby and a shady business partner of Gatsby's named Meyer Wolfsheim, Nick meets with Jordan and learns the "amazing" story. Gatsby met and fell in love with Daisy before World War I, and bought his West Egg mansion just to be near her and impress her. At Gatsby's request, Nick arranges a meeting between Gatsby and Daisy. The two soon rekindle their love.
Daisy invites Nick and Gatsby to lunch with her, Tom, and Jordan. During the lunch, Tom realizes Daisy and Gatsby are having an affair. He insists they all go to New York City. This gives Tom the opportunity to confront Gatsby about his obsession with Daisy and Gatsby’s alleged underworld activities. Tom and Gatsby get into an argument about Daisy where Gatsby tells Tom that Daisy never loved Tom and has only ever loved him. But Daisy can only admit that she loved them both, leaving Gatsby surprised. Tom then reveals that Gatsby made his fortune by bootlegging alcohol and other illegal means. Tom then tells Daisy to go home with Gatsby and they leave in Gatsby's car, while Tom, Nick, and Jordan follow later.
On their way home, Tom, Nick, and Jordan come across an accident. Tom realizes that it must have been Gatsby's car that struck Myrtle, and he curses Gatsby as a coward for driving off. Later that night, Nick learns from Gatsby that Daisy was actually behind the wheel. George Wilson is convinced that the driver of the yellow car that hit Myrtle is also her lover. While at work that day, Nick fights on the phone with Jordan. In the afternoon, Nick has a kind of intuition and finds Gatsby shot to death in his pool. Wilson's dead body is a few yards away. Nick organizes a funeral, but none of Gatsby's supposed friends come apart from Gatsby's father and one other man.
Nick and Jordan end their relationship and Nick runs into Tom soon after. He learns that Tom told Wilson that Gatsby had run over Myrtle. Nick does not tell Tom that Daisy was the one behind the wheel. Disgusted by the corrupt emptiness of life on the East Coast, Nick moves back to Minnesota. He walks down to Gatsby's beach and looks out over Long Island Sound the night before he leaves. He thinks about Gatsby and compares him to the first settlers to America. Like Gatsby, Nick says, all people must move forward with their arms outstretched toward the future, like boats traveling upstream against the current of the past.
Themes
- The American dream. The Great Gatsby shows the tide turning east, as hordes flock to New York City seeking stock market fortunes. The Great Gatsby portrays this shift to symbolize the American Dream's corruption. It is no longer a vision of building a life, only about getting rich.
- Class. The Great Gatsby portrays three different social classes: "old money" represented by Tom and Daisy Buchanan, "new money" represented by Gatsby, and a class that might be called "no money" represented by George and Myrtle Wilson.
- Love. Gatsby met and fell in love with Daisy before World War I, and went ahead and bought his West Egg mansion just to be near her and impress her.