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 has mad
e their fortunes too recently to have
established social connections. Nick’s next-door neighbor in West Egg is a
mysterious man named Jay Gatsby, who lives in a gigantic Gothic mansion and
throws big 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 dinner with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and
her husband, Tom, a 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 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 wound Tom about Daisy, and Tom responds by breaking her nose.
As the summer progresses, Nick eventully accepts 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 remarkable smile , and calls everyone 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 form 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. Thought 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 loyalty 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 reached 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. He 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 way 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.
