The Great Gatsby Summary and characters, it is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan.
The Great Gatsby Book was inspired by a youthful romance Fitzgerald had with socialite Ginevra King, and the riotous parties he attended on Long Island's North Shore in 1922. Following a move to the French Riviera, Fitzgerald completed a rough draft of the novel in 1924. He submitted it to editor Maxwell Perkins, who persuaded Fitzgerald to revise the work over the following winter. After making revisions, Fitzgerald was satisfied with the text, but remained ambivalent about the book's title and considered several alternatives. Painter Francis Cugat's dust jacket art greatly impressed Fitzgerald, and he incorporated its imagery into the novel.
 |
| The Great Gatsby Summary |
The Great Gatsby Summary
The Great Gatsby Chapter 1 Summary : Yale graduate Nick Caraway returns from World War I and becomes a bond salesman, moving to a Long Island suburb called West Egg and renting a small house beside a mansion owned by a man named Jay Gatsby. West Egg is full of newly rich people, but East Egg—across the bay—is where the "old rich" live. After dinner with his cousin Daisy in East Egg one evening, Nick sees Gatsby staring across the bay at a green light.
The Great Gatsby Chapter 2 Summary : Nick goes with Daisy's husband, Tom, to the city. On the way, they stop in a run-down area called the "Valley of Ashes," where Tom visits his mistress Myrtle, and tells her to meet them later. They all get drunk in the city that night, and Tom ends up striking Myrtle in the face because she won't stop talking about Daisy.
The Great Gatsby Chapter 3 Summary : Nick attends a huge party at Gatsby’s mansion, where he hears scandalous rumors about his neighbor. He spends most of the night with Daisy's friend Jordan Baker, wandering through Gatsby's house until they finally fall into conversation with Gatsby himself, who's charming and personable. At one point, Gatsby goes off alone with Jordan and tells her something, but she doesn't tell Nick what he said.
The Great Gatsby Chapter 4 Summary : Nick goes into the city with Gatsby and meets one of his business partners, Meyer Wolfsheim, whose suspicious demeanor makes Nick wonder if Gatsby is involved in organized crime. Later, Jordan reveals that Gatsby told her he has a romantic history with Daisy, whom he wants to see—though it seems Daisy may not want to see him. Gatsby wants Nick to arrange a meeting without telling Daisy he’ll be there.
The Great Gatsby Chapter 5 Summary : Nick agrees to invite Daisy over for tea so Gatsby can see her. At first, Gatsby is debilitatingly nervous when he sees Daisy, but things improve when Nick leaves them alone. Upon returning, Nick sees they’ve rekindled their bond. Gatsby invites Daisy and Nick to his mansion, where he ends up dancing intimately with Daisy, and Nick realizes they’re enraptured with each other.
The Great Gatsby Chapter 6 Summary : Nick learns about his neighbor’s past. Gatsby’s real name used to be James Gatz, and he grew up poor. However, he found a mentor in a wealthy man named Dan Cody, who—upon his death—left him $25,000, though Gatsby was unable to collect it for petty legal reasons. Nick attends another one of Gatsby’s parties with Daisy and Tom, but nobody enjoys themselves.
The Great Gatsby Chapter 7 Summary : Nick and Gatsby have lunch at Tom and Daisy’s. It’s tense, as Tom suspects something between Gatsby and Daisy. The group drives in separate cars to the city, where Tom confronts Gatsby. Daisy admits she loves Gatsby, but Tom reveals that Gatsby is involved in illegal businesses. Gatsby and Daisy drive home together, striking and killing Myrtle Wilson on the way. Gatsby tells Nick that Daisy was driving, but that he’s going to take the blame.
The Great Gatsby Chapter 8 Summary : Gatsby tells Nick that he posed as an affluent man when he first met Daisy because he wanted to be with her. By the time he returned from World War I, she’d married Tom. The day after Myrtle’s death, George Wilson hints that he knows how to find the person who killed his wife. Later, Gatsby is found dead in his pool, and Wilson’s lifeless body is lying in the grass nearby.
The Great Gatsby Chapter 9 Summary : Nick meets Gatsby’s father, Henry Gatz, and has an emotional conversation with him about Gatsby’s potential for greatness. Later, Nick is appalled when hardly anybody shows up to Gatsby’s funeral. He’s even more appalled when he runs into Tom on Fifth Avenue one day and realizes that Tom told George Wilson that Gatsby was responsible for Myrtle’s death.
You may also like to read: Extreme Ownership Book Summary
The Great Gatsby characters
Nick Carraway – a Yale University alumnus from the Midwest, a World War I veteran, and a newly arrived resident of West Egg, age 29 (later 30) who serves as the first-person narrator. He is Gatsby's neighbor and a bond salesman. Carraway is easy-going and optimistic, although this latter quality fades as the novel progresses. He ultimately returns to the Midwest after despairing of the decadence and indifference of the eastern United States.
Jay Gatsby (originally James "Jimmy" Gatz) – a young, mysterious millionaire with shady business connections (later revealed to be a bootlegger), originally from North Dakota. During World War I, when he was a young military officer stationed at the United States Army's Camp Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, Gatsby encountered the love of his life, the debutante Daisy Buchanan. Later, after the war, he studied briefly at Trinity College, Oxford, in England. According to Fitzgerald's wife Zelda, he partly based Gatsby on their enigmatic Long Island neighbor, Max Gerlach. A military veteran, Gerlach became a self-made millionaire due to his bootlegging endeavors and was fond of using the phrase "old sport" in his letters to Fitzgerald.
Daisy Buchanan – a shallow, self-absorbed, and young debutante and socialite from Louisville, Kentucky, identified as a flapper. She is Nick's second cousin, once removed, and the wife of Tom Buchanan. Before marrying Tom, Daisy had a romantic relationship with Gatsby. Her choice between Gatsby and Tom is one of the novel's central conflicts. Fitzgerald's romance and life-long obsession with Ginevra King inspired the character of Daisy.
Thomas "Tom" Buchanan – Daisy's husband, a millionaire who lives in East Egg. Tom is an imposing man of muscular build with a gruff voice and contemptuous demeanor. He was a football star at Yale and is a white supremacist. Among other literary models,[d] Buchanan has certain parallels with William "Bill" Mitchell, the Chicago businessman who married Ginevra King. Buchanan and Mitchell were both Chicagoans with an interest in polo. Also, like Ginevra's father Charles King whom Fitzgerald resented, Buchanan is an imperious Yale man and polo player from Lake Forest, Illinois.
Jordan Baker – an amateur golfer with a sarcastic streak and an aloof attitude, and Daisy's long-time friend. She is Nick Carraway's girlfriend for most of the novel, though they grow apart towards the end. She has a shady reputation because of rumors that she had cheated in a tournament, which harmed her reputation both socially and as a golfer. Fitzgerald based Jordan on Ginevra's friend Edith Cummings, a premier amateur golfer known in the press as "The Fairway Flapper". Unlike Jordan Baker, Cummings was never suspected of cheating. The character's name is a play on the two popular automobile brands, the Jordan Motor Car Company and the Baker Motor Vehicle, both of Cleveland, Ohio, alluding to Jordan's "fast" reputation and the new freedom presented to American women, especially flappers, in the 1920s.
George B. Wilson – a mechanic and owner of a garage. He is disliked by both his wife, Myrtle Wilson, and Tom Buchanan, who describes him as "so dumb he doesn't know he's alive". At the end of the novel, George kills Gatsby, wrongly believing he had been driving the car that killed Myrtle, and then kills himself.
Myrtle Wilson – George's wife and Tom Buchanan's mistress. Myrtle, who possesses a fierce vitality, is desperate to find refuge from her disappointing marriage. She is accidentally killed by Gatsby's car, as she mistakenly thinks Tom is still driving it and runs after it.
You may also like to read: If We Were Villains Summary
 |
| The Great Gatsby synopsis |
 |
| the great gatsby plot summary |
Questions about The Great Gatsby Plot
What is The short summary of Great Gatsby? The Great Gatsby, third novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1925 by Charles Scribner's Sons. Set in Jazz Age New York, the novel tells the tragic story of Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire, and his pursuit of Daisy Buchanan, a wealthy young woman whom he loved in his youth.
What is a good summary of The Great Gatsby? Jay Gatsby—a self-made man who is driven by his love for, and obsession with, Daisy Buchanan. Born a poor farmer, Gatsby becomes materially successful through crime and spends the novel trying to recreate the perfect love he and Daisy had five years before.
What is the main point of The Great Gatsby? The theme of The Great Gatsby is that past cannot be repeated and everybody has to move forward in life. The author of the book F. Scott Fitzgerald was a popular writer in the 1920s and by using plot, style, figurative language, character, and setting he is able to develop the theme.
What is Gatsby's story? The title character of The Great Gatsby is a young man, around thirty years old, who rose from an impoverished childhood in rural North Dakota to become fabulously wealthy. However, he achieved this lofty goal by participating in organized crime, including distributing illegal alcohol and trading in stolen securities.
How did Gatsby get his money? We are told that Gatsby came up from essentially nothing, and that the first time he met Daisy Buchanan, he was “a penniless young man.” His fortune, we are told, was the result of a bootlegging business – he “bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago” and sold illegal alcohol over the counter.
How did The Great Gatsby end? Although the main events of the novel end with Gatsby's murder and George's suicide, The Great Gatsby concludes with a chapter in which Nick reflects on the aftermath of Gatsby's death. This final chapter furnishes Nick with more information about the mysterious Gatsby and his struggle to climb the social ladder.
What are 3 reasons Gatsby is great? Gatsby is considered 'great' by the measurement of dreams, his wealth, his larger-than-life personality, the festivities and joviality that, to others in the novel, mark him as a man of high stature and almost god-like in personal proportions.
Does Daisy love Gatsby? Although Daisy may have loved Gatsby once, she does not love him more than the wealth, status, and freedom that she has with Tom.
What does Daisy symbolize in The Great Gatsby? Daisy Buchannan is made to represent the lack of virtue and morality that was present during the 1920s. She is the absolute center of Gatsby's world right up to his death, but she is shown to be uncaring and fickle throughout the novel.
Why was Gatsby killed? The most famous murder in American literature is that of the titular hero in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, published in 1925. Jay Gatsby is shot to death in the swimming pool of his mansion by George Wilson, a gas-station owner who believes Gatsby to be the hit-and-run driver who killed his wife, Myrtle.
What sin does Gatsby represent? Gatsby is made from envy and exists to inspire envy in others — he crafts for himself an image that begs to be desired just as he once desired it.
Why didn t Daisy marry Gatsby? Daisy chose to marry Tom over Gatsby because Tom was wealthier and more powerful than Gatsby. Gatsby grew up poor and never had money as Tom did. Daisy promised he would wait for Gatsby while he went to war, but she knew her mother would never let her marry a poor man.
Is Gatsby a millionaire or billionaire? The character is an enigmatic nouveau riche millionaire who lives in a luxurious mansion on Long Island where he often hosts extravagant parties and who allegedly gained his vast fortune by illicit bootlegging during prohibition in the United States.
Why did Daisy leave Gatsby? At the end, she's left with a man who thinks too much of her and a man who thinks too little of her. She chooses the latter, since she can't measure up to the former. Once again, we see her make the weaker choice—a choice many people would've made.
Who called Gatsby at the end? In both book and movie, Gatsby is waiting for a phone call from Daisy, but in the film, Nick calls, and Gatsby gets out of the pool when he hears the phone ring. He's then shot, and he dies believing that Daisy was going to ditch Tom and go way with him.
What happens after Gatsby is killed? Wilson shoots Gatsby, killing him instantly, then shoots himself. Nick hurries back to West Egg and finds Gatsby floating dead in his pool. Nick imagines Gatsby's final thoughts, and pictures him disillusioned by the meaninglessness and emptiness of life without Daisy, without his dream.
What is Gatsby's famous line? "Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!" He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand. This is probably Gatsby's single most famous quote.
Why is Gatsby obsessed with Daisy? The analyzes of the novel shows that it is through Daisy Buchanan's influence that Gatsby is transformed into the man we meet in the novel. It is Gatsby's longing for the American dream that will lead him into the arms of Daisy Buchanan, who symbolizes both wealth and social standing, a woman beyond Gatsby's reach.
Why is The Great Gatsby so loved? The Great Gatsby speaks to the disparity between rich and poor in a poignant way. We love it because it makes us grieve for how little has changed from the decadence of the Roaring Twenties to our modern age.
Does Gatsby sleep with Daisy? Gatsby reveals details of his and Daisy's long ago courtship. He was enthralled by her wealth, her big house, and the idea of men loving her. To be with Daisy, he pretended to be of the same social standing as her. One night, they slept together, and he felt like they were married
Is Nick in love with Gatsby? This is at the very end of the novel. Of the late Gatsby, Tom says, “That fellow had it coming to him. He threw dust in your eyes just like he did in Daisy's….” And that's why it matters that Nick is gay and in love with Gatsby: because Tom's assessment is spot-on, but Nick will never admit it.
What is the moral lesson of the Daisy? This story of the little flower points to what is really important in life: love, humility, gratitude and consideration for everything around us. The little daisy doesn't mind not being counted among the favourite flowers in the garden.
What is the message of Daisy? Innocence and purity: The daisy is often associated with purity, innocence, and new beginnings. Love and loyalty: In some cultures, the daisy is a symbol of love and loyalty, often given as a gift to represent fidelity in relationships.