Nick Carraway, a young man from
Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to
learn about the bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg
district of Long Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated
by the new rich, a group who have 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 in a 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 East 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 Baker, 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. Not long after this revelation, Nick travels to 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.
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 everyone
“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 attempt to
impress Daisy. Gatsby now wants Nick to arrange a reunion between
himself and Daisy, but he is afraid 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 reestablish
their connection. Their love rekindled, they begin an affair.
After a short time, Tom grows increasingly suspicious
of his wife’s relationship with Gatsby. At a luncheon at the Buchanans’ house,
Gatsby stares at Daisy with such undisguised passion that Tom realizes
Gatsby is in love with her. Though Tom is himself involved in an
extramarital affair, he is deeply outraged by the thought that his
wife could 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.
When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley of
ashes, however, they discover that Gatsby’s car has struck 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 struck Myrtle, but
that Gatsby intends to take the blame. The next day, Tom tells Myrtle’s
husband, George, that Gatsby was the driver of the car. George,
who has leapt to the conclusion that the driver of the car that
killed Myrtle must have been her lover, finds Gatsby in the pool at
his mansion and shoots him dead. He then fatally shoots himself.
Nick stages a small funeral for Gatsby, ends his relationship
with Jordan, and moves back to the Midwest to escape the disgust
he feels for the people surrounding Gatsby’s life and for the emptiness and
moral decay of life among the wealthy on the East Coast. Nick reflects
that just as Gatsby’s dream of Daisy was corrupted by money and
dishonesty, the American dream of happiness and individualism has
disintegrated into the mere pursuit of wealth. Though Gatsby’s power
to transform his dreams into reality is what makes him “great,”
Nick reflects that the era of dreaming—both Gatsby’s dream and the
American dream—is over.
