The Great Gatsby

In the spring of 1922, Nick Carraway leaves the Midwest for New York to work in the bond business and rents a small house in West Egg, Long Island, beside the mansion of Jay Gatsby. Across the bay in East Egg live Nick's cousin Daisy Buchanan and her husband Tom. During Nick's first dinner with them, Jordan Baker tells him that Tom has a woman in New York. Nick soon sees the consequences of that affair when Tom takes him to George Wilson's garage in the valley of ashes, introduces him to George's wife Myrtle, and then brings Myrtle to the Manhattan apartment he keeps for their meetings. At a drunken gathering there, Tom breaks Myrtle's nose after she repeatedly says Daisy's name.

Gatsby is initially known to Nick mostly through his mansion, his crowded parties, and the rumors of his guests. When Nick finally meets him, Gatsby proves more restrained than the revelers around him. Gatsby later gives Nick a partly self-dramatizing account of his background, introduces him to Meyer Wolfshiem, and uses Jordan to make a request. Jordan recounts seeing Daisy and Gatsby together in Louisville in 1917, Daisy's later distress before her wedding to Tom, and Daisy's strong attachment to Tom after the marriage. Jordan also explains that Gatsby deliberately placed himself across the bay from Daisy and wants Nick to arrange a reunion. Nick agrees to invite Daisy to tea without telling her Gatsby will be present. Their awkward reunion becomes intimate, and Gatsby shows Daisy his mansion and points out the green light at the end of her dock.

Nick subsequently supplies more of Gatsby's history. Born James Gatz to unsuccessful farm people in North Dakota, Gatsby created a new identity for himself at seventeen and spent five formative years with the wealthy Dan Cody. Gatsby's pursuit of Daisy becomes another part of that larger effort to shape his life around an imagined future. He wants not merely a renewed affair but a restoration of the past in which Daisy will tell Tom she never loved him. The conflict becomes explicit on a brutally hot day when Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, Jordan, and Nick go to New York. At the Plaza Hotel, Gatsby declares that Daisy has never loved Tom. Daisy first repeats the claim but then admits that she did love Tom once. Tom attacks Gatsby's social standing and accuses Gatsby and Wolfshiem of illegal liquor sales and other criminal activity. Daisy withdraws from Gatsby, and Tom sends Daisy and Gatsby back to Long Island together in Gatsby's yellow car.

Earlier that day, George Wilson has discovered that Myrtle has some sort of life apart from him and tells Tom that he intends to take her west. Myrtle also sees Tom driving Gatsby's yellow car with Jordan and mistakes Jordan for Tom's wife. That evening Myrtle runs into the road and is struck and killed by the yellow car returning from New York. At the garage afterward, Tom tells Wilson that the yellow car he drove earlier was not his. Tom does not identify its owner at that point. Gatsby later tells Nick that Daisy was driving when Myrtle was hit and that he intends to say he was driving. Nick then sees Tom and Daisy sitting together inside their house while Gatsby waits outside for Daisy.

The next morning Gatsby refuses Nick's advice to leave, still waiting to learn what Daisy will do. He tells Nick more about their earlier relationship: he had allowed Daisy to believe he came from circumstances comparable to hers, fell in love with her, went overseas, and after the war was sent to Oxford while Daisy moved toward an immediate decision and eventually married Tom. Before leaving for work, Nick gives Gatsby his only direct compliment. Later that day Nick and Jordan have a strained telephone conversation that ends abruptly after Nick declines to meet her. The narrative then returns to Wilson. Wilson believes the man in the yellow car murdered Myrtle and says he has a way to discover who owns it. His movements are later only partly reconstructed; the police suppose he spent missing hours asking about the yellow car, but no garage witness comes forward and the source does not establish how he learned Gatsby's name. Wilson reaches West Egg, Gatsby goes to his pool while waiting for a telephone call, no message arrives, shots are heard, and Nick and the servants later find Gatsby dead in the pool and Wilson dead nearby.

After the deaths, Nick assumes responsibility for Gatsby's affairs because almost everyone else withdraws. Daisy and Tom leave without an address, Wolfshiem refuses to attend the funeral, and Klipspringer calls only about belongings he left at Gatsby's house. Gatsby's father, Henry C. Gatz, arrives from Minnesota and proudly shows Nick a childhood schedule and resolutions that reveal Gatsby's long-standing drive toward self-improvement. The funeral is sparsely attended, with Owl Eyes the only former party guest to appear. Nick decides to return to the Midwest. In a final meeting, Jordan says Nick had already thrown her over by telephone, and they part. Later, Tom admits that Wilson came to the Buchanan house and that Tom told him who owned the yellow car; Tom still believes Gatsby himself killed Myrtle. Nick knows that belief is false and judges Tom and Daisy as people who cause damage and retreat into their money and carelessness. Before leaving West Egg, Nick returns to Gatsby's empty property. Looking across the water, he connects Gatsby's hope in the green light with a broader human impulse to reach toward the future even as the past continues to pull backward. The novel ends with that tension unresolved: people continue striving forward while being carried back toward what has already been lost.