jay gatsby yacht

• The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Literature Notes
• The Great Gatsby at a Glance
• Book Summary
• About The Great Gatsby
• Character List
• Summary and Analysis
• Character Analysis
• Nick Carraway
• Daisy Buchanan
• Character Map
• F. Scott Fitzgerald Biography
• Critical Essays
• Social Stratification: The Great Gatsby as Social Commentary
• In Praise of Comfort: Displaced Spirituality in The Great Gatsby
• Famous Quotes from The Great Gatsby
• Film Versions of The Great Gatsby
• Full Glossary for The Great Gatsby
• Essay Questions
• Practice Projects
• Cite this Literature Note

Summary and Analysis Chapter 6

Chapter 6 opens with an air of suspicion as a reporter comes to Gatsby, asking him "if he had anything to say." The myth of Gatsby was becoming so great by summer's end that he was rumored to be embroiled in a variety of plots and schemes, inventions that provided a source of satisfaction to Gatsby, who was originally christened James Gatz and hails from North Dakota. Nick fills the reader in on Gatsby's real background, which is in sharp contrast to the fabricated antecedents Gatsby told Nick during their drive to New York. James Gatz became Jay Gatsby on the fateful day when, on the shores of Lake Superior, he saw Dan Cody drop anchor on his yacht. Prior to that time, Gatsby spent part of his young adulthood roaming parts of Minnesota shaping the aspects of the persona he would assume. Nick suspects he had the name ready prior to meeting Cody, but it was Cody who gave Gatsby the opportunity to hone the fiction that would define his life. Cody, fifty years old with a penchant for women, took Gatsby under his wing and prepared him for the yachting life, and they embarked for the West Indies and the Barbary Coast. During their five years together, Cody and Gatsby went around the continent three times; in the end, Cody was mysteriously undone by his lady love.

After many weeks of not seeing Gatsby (largely because Nick was too busy spending time with Jordan), Nick goes to visit. Shortly after his arrival, Tom Buchanan and two others out for a horseback ride show up for a drink. After exchanging social small talk wherein Gatsby is invited to dine with the group, the three riders abruptly leave without him, somewhat taken aback that he accepted what they deem to be a purely rhetorical invitation.

Tom, apparently concerned with Daisy's recent activities, accompanies her to one of Gatsby's parties. Gatsby tries to impress the Buchanans by pointing out all the celebrities present, then makes a point of introducing Tom, much to his unease, as "the polo player." Gatsby and Daisy dance, marking the only time Gatsby really gets involved with one of his own parties. Later, Daisy and Gatsby adjourn to Nick's steps for a half-hour of privacy. They head back to the party and when dinner arrives, Tom remarks he wishes to eat with another group. Daisy, always aware of what Tom is really up to, remarks the girl is "common but pretty" and offers a pencil in case he wants to take down an address. Daisy, aside from the half-hour she spends with Gatsby, finds the party unnerving and appalling. After the Buchanans leave and the party breaks up, Nick and Gatsby review the evening. Gatsby, fearing Daisy did not have a good time, worries about her. When Nick cautions Gatsby that "You can't repeat the past," Gatsby idealistically answers "Why of course you can!" words that strike Nick soundly because of their "appalling sentimentality," which both delights and disgusts him.

If Chapter 5 showed Gatsby achieving his dream, Chapter 6 demonstrates just how deeply his dream runs. Much of the mystery surrounding Gatsby is cleared away in this chapter and the reader learns more about who he really is, where he comes from, and what he believes. After seeing Gatsby and getting to know him, Nick presents the real story of his past. By holding the actual story until Chapter 6, Fitzgerald accomplishes two things: First and most obviously, he builds suspense and piques the reader's curiosity. Second, and of equal importance, Fitzgerald is able to undercut the image of Gatsby. Ever so subtly, Fitzgerald presents, in effect, an exposé. Much as Nick did, one feels led on — Gatsby is not at all the man he claims to be. Fitzgerald wants the readers to feel delighted, glad for someone to succeed by his own ingenuity, while also a little unnerved at the ease in which Gatsby has been able to pull off his charade.

The chapter opens with an increased flurry of suspicion surrounding Gatsby. Much to his delight, the rumors about him are flying as furiously as ever, even bringing a wayward reporter to investigate (although what, precisely, he was investigating he wouldn't say). Rumors about Gatsby's past abound by the end of the summer, making a perfect segue for Nick to tell the real story on his neighbor — James Gatz from North Dakota. Gatsby is, in reality, a creation, a fiction brought to life. He is the fabrication of a young Midwestern dreamer, the son of "shiftless and unsuccessful farm people" who spent his youth planning how he would escape the monotony of his everyday life — a life he never really accepted at all. He craved adventures and the embodiment of the romantic ideal, and so he voluntarily left his family to make his own way. In many senses, Gatsby's story is the rags-to-riches American dream. A young man from the middle of nowhere, through his own ingenuity and resourcefulness, makes it big.

But there is a decided downside to this American dream. For Gatsby, his life began at age seventeen when he met Dan Cody. In the years since, he has traveled the globe, gaining, losing, and regaining his fortune. All of his money, however, doesn't exactly place him within the social strata to which he aspires. His wealth may allow him to enter certain social circles otherwise forbidden, but he is unprepared to function fully in them (just as in Chapter 5 when Gatsby tries to thank Nick for his kindness by offering to bring him into a suspicious, yet lucrative, business arrangement). Although money is a large part of the American dream, through Gatsby one sees that just having money isn't enough. In this chapter in particular, Fitzgerald clearly points out the distinction between "new money" and "old money" and, regardless of the amount of wealth one accumulates, where the money comes from and how long it's been around matters just as much as how much of it there is.

Another downside to Gatsby's American dream is that it has, in essence, stunted his growth, intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally. As noted, James ("Jimmy") Gatz ceased to exist on the day Gatsby was born, the day he rowed out in Lake Superior to meet Dan Cody (whose name alone is meant to evoke images of Daniel Boone and "Buffalo Bill" Cody, two oftentimes romanticized frontier figures). Since that time, he has worked to flesh out a fully dimensional fiction. When the persona he created, Jay Gatsby, fell in love with Daisy Fay, his fate was, in essence, sealed. As Gatsby became fixed on winning Daisy, his whole life became ordered around that goal. And why not? After all, he had willed Jay Gatsby into existence, why couldn't he will Daisy to be with him. It is worth pointing out, too, that there is little growth on Gatsby's part from the time he is seventeen until his death. He remains inexorably tied to his dreams and blindly pursues them at all costs. In one sense, Gatsby's determination is commendable, but there comes a point where living in a fictive world is detrimental to one's self, as Gatsby will find out all too soon. Dreams and goals are good, but not when they consume the dreamer.

After filling in Gatsby's background, Nick tells of a day at Gatsby's when three riders (Tom, Mr. Sloane, and an unnamed young woman) stop in for a drink. Gatsby, ever the good host, receives them warmly, although he knows full well that Tom is Daisy's husband. Although in some sense this may seem a strange interlude lacking in development and purpose, it is, in effect, intricately tied to the story of Dan Cody and the evolution of Jay Gatsby. The riders' visit is in many ways akin to the observations Nick made in Chapter 3 when he experienced his first Gatsby party. Just as at the party Gatsby stood away from the crowd (many of whom didn't even know him), Gatsby stands alone in this smaller setting as well. The three drop by to drink his liquor and little else. Their concern for him is minimal and their purposes mercenary. Under the pretense of sociability, the young woman invites Gatsby to join them for dinner. The three riders know the invitation is rhetorical — just a formality that is not meant to be accepted. Gatsby, however, is unable to sense the invitation's hollowness and agrees to attend. The group, appalled at his behavior, sneaks out without him, marveling at his poor taste.

This scenario contains several valuable messages. First, it gives an example of how shallow and mean-spirited "old money" can be. The trio's behavior is nothing less than appalling. Second, Gatsby takes their words at face value, trusting them to mean what they say. While this is a commendable trait, reflective of Gatsby's good nature and dreamer disposition, it leads to a third realization: that no matter how much Gatsby is living the American dream, the "old money" crowd will never accept him. Try as he might, Gatsby remains outside the inner sanctum and nothing he can do will allow him full access. He will never be accepted by anyone but the nouveaux riches .

The final incident of the chapter is the party at its end, the first and only party Daisy attends, and is, in many ways, unlike any party Gatsby has hosted so far. Up to this point, the purpose of the parties was twofold: to get Daisy's attention or, failing that, to make contact with someone who knows her. Now, for the first time, she's in attendance (with Tom, no less), so the party's purpose must necessarily change. Daisy and Gatsby have become increasingly comfortable with each other and even Tom is beginning to feel somewhat threatened by Daisy's "running around alone." At the party, Gatsby tries his best to impress the Buchanans by pointing out all the famous guests. Tom and Daisy, however, are remarkably unimpressed, although Tom does seem to be having a better time after he finds a woman to pursue and Daisy, not surprisingly, is drawn to the luminescent quality of the movie star (who is, in many ways, a sister to Daisy). By and large, though, Tom and especially Daisy are unimpressed by the West Eggers. The "raw vigor" of the party disgusts them, offending their "old money" sensibilities, providing another example of how the Buchanans and the people they represent discriminate on the basis of social class.

After Tom and Daisy head home, Nick and Gatsby debrief the evening's events. Gatsby, worried that Daisy didn't have a good time (after all, the Daisy in his dream would have a good time), shares his concern with Nick. Carraway, always the gentle voice of reason, reminds his friend that the past is in the past and it can't be resurrected. Most would agree with this, which makes Gatsby's "Why of course you can!" even more striking. There is no mistaking Gatsby's personality: He's like an errant knight, seeking to capture the illusive grail. He is living in the past, something the reader may not have known, had he not realized his dream of reuniting with Daisy. Although it would be going too far to say Gatsby is weak in character, Fitzgerald creates a protagonist who is unable to function in the present. He must continually return to the past, revising it and modifying it until it takes on epic qualities which, sadly, can never be realized in the everyday world. Gatsby, just as he is at his parties and with the social elite, is once again marginalized, forced to the fringes by the vivacity of his dream.

meretricious alluring by false, showy charms; attractive in a flashy way; tawdry.

Madame de Maintenon (1635-1719); second wife of Louis XIV of France. She is often depicted as ambitious, greedy, evil, and narrow-minded.

dilatory inclined to delay; slow or late in doing things.

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Best Summary and Analysis: The Great Gatsby, Chapter 6

Book Guides

Chapter 6 of The Great Gasby  is a major turning point in the novel: after the magical happiness of Gatsby and Daisy's reunion ins Chapter 5, we start too see the cracks that will unravel the whole story. Possibly because of this shift in tone from buildup to letdown, this chapter underwent substantial rewrites late in the editing process , meaning Fitzgerald worked really hard to get it just right because of how key this part of the book is.

So read on to see how it all starts to fall apart in our full The Great Gatsby Chapter 6 summary. Gatsby and Daisy each try to integrate into the other one’s life, and both attempts go terribly. Gatsby can’t hang with the upper crust because he doesn’t understand how to behave despite his years crewing a millionaire’s yacht, and Daisy is repulsed by the vulgar rabble at Gatsby’s latest party. Recipe for eventual disaster? Absolutely.

Quick Note on Our Citations

Our citation format in this guide is (chapter.paragraph). We're using this system since there are many editions of Gatsby, so using page numbers would only work for students with our copy of the book. To find a quotation we cite via chapter and paragraph in your book, you can either eyeball it (Paragraph 1-50: beginning of chapter; 50-100: middle of chapter; 100-on: end of chapter), or use the search function if you're using an online or eReader version of the text.

The Great Gatsby : Chapter 6 Summary

A reporter shows up to interview Gatsby. He is becoming well known enough (and there are enough rumors swirling around him) to become newsworthy. The rumors are now even crazier: that he is involved with a liquor pipeline to Canada, that his mansion is actually a boat.

The narrative suddenly shifts timeframes, and future book-writing Nick interrupts the story to give us some new background details about Gatsby. Jay Gatsby’s real name is James Gatz. His parents were failed farmers. He is an entirely self-made man, so ambitious and convinced of his own success that he transformed himself into his version of the perfect man: Jay Gatsby. Before any of his eventual social and financial success, he spent his nights fantasizing about his future.

James Gatz met Dan Cody, a copper and silver mine millionaire, on Cody’s yacht on Lake Superior. Cody seemed glamorous, and Cody liked Gatz enough to hire him as a kind of jack-of-all-trades for five years. They sailed around, indulged Cody’s alcoholism, and Gatz learned how to be Jay Gatsby. Cody tried to leave him money in his will, but an estranged wife claimed it instead. Nick tells us that Gatsby told him all of these details later, but he wants to dispel the crazy rumors.

The narrative flips back to the summer of 1922. After a few weeks of trying to make nice with Jordan’s aunt (who controls her money and directs her life), Nick returns to Gatsby’s house. 

Tom Buchanan and an East Egg couple who has met Gatsby before stop by while horseback riding. It’s unclear why – for a quick drink maybe? Tom has no idea who Gatsby is, but Gatsby goes out of his way to remind him that they met at a restaurant a few weeks ago ( in Chapter 4 ), and to tell him that he knows Daisy. Gatsby invites them to stay for supper.

The lady of the couple disingenuously invites him over to her dinner party instead. Gatsby agrees. Nick follows the guests out and overhears Tom complaining that Gatsby has clearly misread the social cues – the woman wasn’t really inviting him for real, and in any case, Gatsby doesn’t have a horse to ride.

Tom also wonders how on earth Daisy could have met Gatsby. The three leave without Gatsby, despite the fact that he accepted the invitation to go with them.

The next Saturday, Tom comes with Daisy to Gatsby’s party. Nick notes that with them there, the party suddenly seems oppressive and unpleasant.

Gatsby takes them around and shows them the various celebrities and movie stars that are there. Tom and especially Daisy are somewhat star-struck, but it’s clear that to them this party is like a freak show – where they are coming to stare at the circus, and where they are above what they are looking at.

Gatsby and Daisy dance and talk. Tom makes see-through excuses to pursue other women at the party. Daisy is clearly miserable.

While Gatsby takes a phone call, Daisy and Nick sit at a table of drunk people squabbling about their drunkenness. Daisy is clearly grossed out by the party and the people there.

When the Buchanans are leaving, Tom guesses that Gatsby is a bootlegger, since where else could his money be coming from? Daisy tries to stick up for Gatsby, saying that most of the guests are just party crashers that he is too polite to turn away. Nick tells Tom that Gatsby’s money comes from a chain of drug stores. Daisy seems reluctant to go, worried that some magical party guest will sweep Gatsby off his feet while she’s not there.

Later that night, Gatsby worries that Daisy didn’t like the party. His worry makes him tell Nick his ultimate desire: Gatsby would like to recreate the past he and Daisy had together five years ago. Gatsby is an absolutist about Daisy: he wants her to say that she never loved Tom, to erase her emotional history with him (and with their daughter, probably!). Nick doesn't think that this is possible.

Gatsby tells Nicks about the magical past that he wants to recreate. It was encapsulated in the moment of Gatsby and Daisy’s first kiss. As soon as Gatsby kissed Daisy, all of his fantasies about himself and his future fixated solely on her.

Hearing this description of Gatsby’s love, Nick is close to remembering some related phrase or song, but he can’t quite reach the memory.

Key Chapter 6 Quotes

The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God--a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that--and he must be about His Father's Business, the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty. (6.7)

Here is the clearest connection of Gatsby and the ideal of the independent, individualistic, self-made man – the ultimate symbol of the American Dream . It’s telling that in describing Gatsby this way, Nick also links him to other ideas of perfection.

• First, he references Plato’s philosophical construct of the ideal form – a completely inaccessible perfect object that exists outside of our real existence.
• Second, Nick references various Biblical luminaries like Adam and Jesus who are called “son of God” in the New Testament – again, linking Gatsby to mythic and larger than life beings who are far removed from lived experience. Gatsby’s self-mythologizing is in this way part of a grander tradition of myth-making.

Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy's running around alone, for on the following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby's party. Perhaps his presence gave the evening its peculiar quality of oppressiveness--it stands out in my memory from Gatsby's other parties that summer. There were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same profusion of champagne, the same many-colored, many-keyed commotion, but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn't been there before. Or perhaps I had merely grown used to it, grown to accept West Egg as a world complete in itself, with its own standards and its own great figures, second to nothing because it had no consciousness of being so, and now I was looking at it again, through Daisy's eyes. It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment. (6.60)

What for Nick had been a center of excitement, celebrity, and luxury  is now suddenly a depressing spectacle. It’s interesting that partly this is because Daisy and Tom are in some sense invaders – their presence disturbs the enclosed world of West Egg because it reminds Nick of West Egg’s lower social standing. It’s also key to see that having Tom and Daisy there makes Nick self-aware of the psychic work he has had to do to “adjust” to the vulgarity and different “standards” of behavior he’s been around. Remember that he entered the novel on a social footing similar to that of Tom and Daisy. Now he’s suddenly reminded that by hanging around with Gatsby, he has debased himself.

But the rest offended her--and inarguably, because it wasn't a gesture but an emotion. She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented "place" that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village--appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short cut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand. (6.96)

Just as earlier we were treated to Jordan as a narrator stand-in , now we have a new set of eyes through which to view the story – Daisy’s. Her snobbery is deeply ingrained, and she doesn’t do anything to hide it or overcome it (unlike Nick, for example). Like Jordan, Daisy is judgmental and critical. Unlike Jordan , Daisy expresses this through “emotion” rather than cynical mockery. Either way, what Daisy doesn’t like is that the nouveau riche haven’t learned to hide their wealth under a veneer of gentility – full of the “raw vigor” that has very recently gotten them to this station in life, they are too obviously materialistic. Their “simplicity” is their single-minded devotion to money and status, which in her mind makes the journey from birth to death (“from nothing to nothing”) meaningless.

He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: "I never loved you." (6.125)

Hang on to this piece of information – it will be important later. This is really symptomatic of Gatsby’s absolutist feelings towards Daisy . It’s not enough for her to leave Tom. Instead, Gatsby expects Daisy to repudiate her entire relationship with Tom in order to show that she has always been just as monomaniacally obsessed with him as he has been with her. The problem is that this robs her of her humanity and personhood – she is not exactly like him, and it’s unhealthy that he demands for her to be an identical reflection of his mindset.

"I wouldn't ask too much of her," I ventured. "You can't repeat the past."

"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.

"I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before," he said, nodding determinedly. "She'll see."

He talked a lot about the past and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was. . .  (6.128-132)

This is one of the most famous quotations from the novel. Gatsby’s blind faith in his ability to recreate some quasi-fictional past that he’s been dwelling on for five years is both a tribute to his romantic and idealistic nature ( the thing that Nick eventually decides makes him “great” ) and a clear indication that he just might be a completely delusional fantasist. So far in his life, everything that he’s fantasized about when he first imagined himself as Jay Gatsby has come true. But in that transformation, Gatsby now feels like he has lost a fundamental piece of himself – the thing he “wanted to recover.”

Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something--an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man's, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever. (6.135)

Just as Gatsby is searching for an unrecoverable piece of himself, so Nick also has a moment of wanting to connect with something that seems familiar but is out of reach . In a nice bit of subtle snobbery, Nick dismisses Gatsby’s description of his love for Daisy as treacly nonsense (“appalling sentimentality”), but finds his own attempt to remember a snippet of a love song or poem as a mystically tragic bit of disconnection. This gives us a quick glimpse into Nick the character - a pragmatic man who is quick to judge others (much quicker than his self-assessment as an objective observer would have us believe) and who is far more self-centered than he realizes.

Chapter 6 Analysis

Let's work to connect this chapter to the larger strands of meaning in the novel as a whole.

Overarching Themes

The American Dream . It’s not a coincidence that in the same chapter where we learn about James Gatz’s rebirth as Jay Gatsby, we see several other versions of the same kind of ambition that propelled him:

• A reporter on the make follows a hunch that Gatsby might turn out to be a story.
• Nick spends weeks courting the aunt that controls Jordan’s life and money.
• And in the deep background of the party, a movie star’s producer tries to take their relationship from a professional to a personal level.

Motifs: Alcohol. Despite his idolizing of Dan Cody, Gatsby learns from his mentor’s alcoholism to stay away from drinking – this is why, to this day, he doesn’t participate in his own parties. For him, alcohol is a tool for making money and displaying his wealth and standing.

Society and Class. A very awkward encounter between a couple of West Egg, Tom, and Gatsby highlights the disparity between West Egg money and East Egg money. To Nick, the East Eggers are fundamentally different and mostly terrible:

• For fun, they ride horses, while Gatsby’s main vehicle is a car.
• They issue invitations that they hope will get declined, while Gatsby not only welcomes them into his home, but allows people to crash his parties and stay in his house indefinitely.
• They accept hospitality without so much as a thank you, while Gatsby feels such a sense of gratitude that his thanks are overwhelming (for example, when he offers to go into business with Nick when Nick agreed to ask Daisy to tea).

This also demonstrates the fundamental inability to read people and situations correctly that plagues Gatsby throughout the novel - he can never quite learn how to behave and react correctly.

Immutability of Identity. However far Gatsby has come from the 17-year-old James Gatz, his only way of hanging on to a coherent sense of self has been to fixate on his love for Daisy. Now that he has reached the pinnacle of realizing all his fantasies, Gatsby wants to recapture that past self – the one Daisy was in love with.

Love, Desire, Relationships .   No real life relationship could ever live up to Gatsby’s unrealistic, stylized, ultra-romantic, and absolutist conception of love in general, and his love of Daisy, in particular. Not only that, but he demands nothing less of Daisy as well. His condition for her to be with him is to entirely disavow Tom and any feelings she may have ever had for him. It’s this aspect of their affair that is used to defend Daisy  from the generally negative attitude most readers have towards her character.

Daisy Buchanan's Motivations . Daisy’s reaction to Gatsby’s party is fascinating - especially if we think that Gatsby has been trying to be the “gold-hatted bouncing lover”  for her. She is appalled by the empty, meaningless circus of luxury , snobbishly disgusted by the vulgarity of the people, and worried that Gatsby could be attracted to someone else there. Daisy enjoyed being alone in his mansion with him, but the more he displays what he has attained, the more she is repelled. The gold-hatted routine simply won’t work with her when the Gatsby she fell in love with was an idealistic dreamer who was overwhelmed by simply kissing her - not the seen-it-all keeper of a menagerie of celebrities and weirdos.

Crucial Character Beats

• We find out Gatsby’s real origin story! He was born James Gatz and created a whole new persona for the future successful version of himself. When he was 17, Gatsby met a millionaire named Dan Cody, who taught him how to actually be Jay Gatsby.
• Tom and Gatsby exchange words for the first time (they met once for a hot second in Chapter 3 , but didn’t speak)! They meet by coincidence when Tom’s friends bring him to Gatsby’s house in the middle of a horseback ride.
• Tom and Daisy come to one of Gatsby’s parties, where Daisy is disgusted by the vulgar excess and Tom goes off to womanize.
• Gatsby and Nick discuss the possibility of recreating the past, which Gatsby is apparently trying to do in order to be with Daisy. Gatsby thinks that reliving the past is definitely a completely real thing that normal people are able to do.

What’s Next?

Compare the description of this downer of a party with the much more fun-sounding one in Chapter 3 , and think about what changes when the party is seen through Daisy’s eyes rather than Nick and Jordan’s.

Check out  the novel’s timeline   to get the hang of what happens when in this chapter’s flashback.

Evaluate the Tom and Gatsby face to face matchup by contrasting these two seemingly opposite characters .

Move on to the summary of Chapter 7 , or revisit the summary of Chapter 5 .

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The Great Gatsby: Characters

The main characters in The Great Gatsby are: Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway, Daisy Buchanan, Tom Buchanan, Jordan Baker, Myrtle Wilson, and George Wilson.

Welcome to The Great Gatsby characters page prepared by our editorial team! Read about the main figures in the story and comprehensive analysis of their roles in the book. You will see Jay Gadsby’s, Nick Carraway’s, and Daisy Buchanan’s character traits explored in detail. The list is also expanded by a few more minor characters that contributed to the development of the novel. Altogether, they create a complex but rather accurate image of the American higher class that lacks morality and worships money.

But first, let’s consider The Great Gatsby character map.

• 🌎 Character Map

🤑 Jay Gatsby

👦 nick carraway, 🌼 daisy buchanan, 👿 tom buchanan, ⛳ jordan baker.

• 🎭 Other Characters
• 🗺️ Navigation

🎓 References

🌎 the great gatsby: character map.

Fitzgerald based his characters on the classic image of high society in the 1920s – aristocratic pleasure seekers. There is no evidence proving that the story is real. However, it was Long Island’s clash between elite classes that inspired the author. Moreover, some of the characters are based on some of Fitzgerald’s acquaintances. For example, Daisy is none other than an old flame of Fitzgerald’s Ginevra King, and Gatsby’s persona is created based on the famous bootlegger of the Jazz Age.

Below you’ll find a character map that contains all the main characters in The Great Gatsby as well as their relationships.

Who Is Jay Gatsby?

Jay Gatsby is the main character of the novel . He appears as the neighbor of the narrator of the story. There is no detailed description of Jay Gatsby’s appearance, but he is undoubtedly a handsome young man who is crazy rich. Gatsby’s first name is Jay; still, everybody calls him by his surname.

What is Gatsby’s Real Name?

Gatsby’s real name is James Gatz , or “Jimmy,” as his father calls him. His character remains mysterious, and no one knows the truth about his secret past until the middle of the book. James Gatz is Gatsby’s real identity that he is trying to get rid of. He eventually becomes the reason behind his failure.

How Old Is Jay Gatsby?

By the time Nick meets Gatsby, the latter one is in his early thirties . According to the story, he was born in 1890, and since the main events take place in 1922, Jay Gatsby is 32 years old. In comparison, Daisy is only 23, and the age gap may be one of the obstacles in their relationship.

Where Is Gatsby Born?

Gatsby was born and raised in North Dakota . When he tells Nick some facts about his life, he mentions that he’s from the Middle West. However, when Nick asks about the city, Gatsby replies, “San Francisco.” It is clear that he is trying to hide his background, but it only makes him sound suspicious.

What is Gatsby’s Background?

Gatsby’s real background is far from what he wants people to believe in. He was born in the family of a poor farmer. At the end of the novel, his father shows Nick a notebook that young Gatsby was keeping for self-improvement. It is a piece of significant evidence that Gatsby has been ambitious and hard-working from his childhood.

When Does James Gatz Change His Name?

James Gatz changed his name when he turned 17. At the time, he earned a place on the yacht of Dan Cody, a millionaire who eventually gave James the idea to adopt a new name and taught him the art of behaving rich. That’s when Jay Gatsby’s identity was born, and it was the first step towards his dream.

How Did Gatsby Get His Money?

When Dan Cody died, there was a chance for Gatsby to get his money, but it never happened. Gatsby had to find another way to become wealthy. Eventually, he cooperates with Meyer Wolfsheim and sells alcohol behind the counters of the drug stores . Those drug stores which Daisy believes are the real source of Gatsby’s fortune.

How Does Gatsby Die?

Gatsby dies in his pool from the gun of George Wilson. He becomes a victim of a misunderstanding. He is not the only one who dies in The Great Gatsby . Daisy killed Myrtle in the car accident, and George believed that Gatsby did it. Therefore, Wilson went to shoot him and then killed himself.

Jay Gatsby: Character Analysis

The first impression of Gatsby makes Nick think that he’s a rich party guy and maybe a prominent figure. However, it is only a mask, and everything appears to be more complicated than that. Jay Gatsby’s character analysis gives the idea of how he is related to the novel’s central theme and presents him as a protagonist.

What Makes Gatsby Great?

Jay is an example of a rags-to-riches man, but what makes Gatsby great is his talent to visualize and dream. Even though it almost makes him lose his mind, he still believes that there is nothing impossible. His unbelievable persistence and belief in a better life could have helped him to “build up the country,” as his father says.

Gatsby represents the American Dream as his talent led him from poor to wealthy. He only needed a loving family to have a perfect American life. However, his example shows that trying to get rich by wrongful means leads to failure. In a way, it’s a warning for people who take a shortcut on their way to the American Dream.

Jay Gatsby as the Novel’s Protagonist

Even though Nick doesn’t particularly like him, Jay Gatsby is the protagonist in The Great Gatsby . Every single event in the novel, from parties to the tragic death, is one way or another connected to Gatsby. He is a rather distinct character. All the rich prefer to be viewers, not bothering themselves to look for the purpose of life. Unlike them, Gatsby has a dream, which essentially becomes the sense of his life. After Gatsby met Daisy for the first time, his every decision has been made with the only purpose – to be with her. When they meet again, he’s so determined to get Daisy back that he doesn’t care about the consequences of his actions.

“Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!” ( The Great Gatsby , Chapter 6 )

For instance, the impulsive expression of his feelings for Daisy in front of everybody serves as a sign of their love, which leads to Tom getting angry and wanting revenge. All that, on some level, also causes the car accident and ends up with Wilson killing Gatsby and himself.

The influence of Gatsby’s actions doesn’t end with these three deaths. Even after the funeral, he continues changing the lives of people who knew him. For example, Nick and the Buchanans decide to move out of Long Island after the events. Therefore, one of the hidden powers of Gatsby is being able to change the reality around him . Still, he had never won his dream girl back, while Daisy and Tom even seem to become closer.

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…”s ( The Great Gatsby , chapter 9 )

It is essential to understand that even though Gatsby is technically a criminal, he remains the protagonist of the novel . He may have made some poor choices, but it is all in the name of love. This world appeared to be too cruel for his pure dream. People surrounding Gatsby are driven by lust, greed, and revenge. There has been no chance of a happy ending, but he kept on. Gatsby’s persistence might symbolize hope for people of all times. Till the very last moment of his life, he didn’t lose hope that Daisy would change her mind and was waiting for her call.

“Well, there I was, way off my ambitions, getting deeper in love every minute, and all of a sudden I didn’t care. What was the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do?” ( The Great Gatsby , chapter 8 )

Who Is Nick Carraway?

Nick Carraway is the narrator of the story who comes from Minnesota to New York to get into the bond business. He appears to be Daisy’s cousin and Gatsby’s neighbor in West Egg, which makes him some sort of a link between the two lovers. Nick Carraway’s description also includes his traits, which are the primary tool of his.

Nick Carraway: Physical Description

Even though there’s no word about Nick Carraway’s physical description, it would be fair to say that he’s a handsome young guy , just like Gatsby is. His appearance might be kept in secret, but in The Great Gatsby , Nick himself says that he has turned thirty on the day of their improvised party in Tom’s apartment in New York.

Nick Carraway: Character Traits

Nick Carraway’s character traits appear to be a great addition to his role as a narrator. He describes himself as non-judgemental, tolerant, and “one of the few honest people” there. Altogether, it makes him trustworthy, and people tend to share their secrets with him. That’s how Nick ends up in the middle of all the drama.

Nick Carraway: Character Analysis

It may seem that Gatsby should attract all the readers’ attention since he is the title character of The Great Gatsby . However, the character analysis of Nick Carraway is here to introduce the narrator as the most captivating persona in the book. Some hidden aspects of his character will appear more evident than they seem.

Nick Carraway & Jay Gatsby

Throughout the whole novel, Nick keeps saying how he despises everything Gatsby does. At the same time, he almost adores him. Nick’s description of Gatsby reminds more of a passage from a romantic novel than a tragedy. What if Nick is actually in love with “one of those rare smiles” Gatsby has?

“He smiled understandingly – much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you might come across four or five times in life.” ( The Great Gatsby , Chapter 3 )

One of the signs that Nick Carraway prefers men is his impressions of the main female characters. For example, Daisy is an idol of fantastic beauty for Gatsby, and she even becomes an American Dream for him. It would be silly to suggest that he would fall in love with someone unattractive. In contrast, the only thing Nick finds cute about her, apart from her “sad and lovely” face, is her voice. Later on, even this trait becomes “indiscreet.” Then, there is Jordan, who Nick is dating during the summer. The best thing he can tell about her is that she is a “small-breasted” fit and sporty girl with a wan face. It is almost impossible to find any other evidence confirming Nick is attracted to her. And finally, Myrtle, who is the embodiment of sensuality for Tom Buchanan. Nick notes that she is much livelier than others but has “no facet or gleam of beauty.” Overall, it is hard to believe that Carraway is interested in any of the beautiful women around him .

In Chapter 2 , Nick engages in the party in Tom’s apartment in New York. Myrtle invites her sister, Catherine, who doesn’t impress Nick enough to pay attention to her either. Then, however, the McKees arrive. The first bell rings when the narrator describes Mr. McKee as a “pale, feminine man,” when Mrs. McKee is “handsome and horrible.” At the end of the party, Tom hits Myrtle, and everybody is leaving. Nick walks Mr. McKee home and finds himself “standing beside his bed” as McKee “was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.” The next scene is Nick waiting for a train. Isn’t there something missing? Fitzgerald left some room for imagination, though strongly implying that there is some action happening between the two men .

Later, Nick meets Gatsby in person, and it seems like it is love from first sight. Gatsby becomes the most special person for him as he confesses that he will probably never find anyone quite like Gatsby again. Nick’s decision to take care of the funeral at the end of the novel is another sign of deep feelings.

Of course, Fitzgerald doesn’t provide any straightforward evidence that Nick Carrays is gay; however, it is not hard to tell that he seems more interested in Gatsby than in his girlfriend.

Why Does Gatsby Call Nick Old Sport?

How Gatsby calls Nick “ old sport ” all the time may be showing that he has some warm feelings towards Nick too. On the other hand, Gatsby always plays the role of an aristocrat. “Old sport” is the phrase that the English high class used referring to dear friends. Using it, Gatsby keeps pretending that he attended Oxford.

Daisy Buchanan’s description is rather short – she is a young and beautiful woman that comes from a wealthy family in Louisville, Kentucky . After a brief romance with Gatsby, she married Tom Buchanan and moved to East Egg in Long Island. Gatsby has still loved and praised her until his death. She is also a cousin of Nick Carraway.

Daisy Buchanan: Physical Description

In The Great Gatsby , Daisy is presented as extraordinary beauty . When she was living in Louisville, no wonder all the soldiers stationed there fancied her. Gatsby was one of them, of course. Even though he idolizes her, there is no word about Daisy’s appearance.

Nick describes her as a “golden girl” whose face “was sad and lovely with bright things in it.” Also, in Chapter 8, he dropped a detail about her hair color: “he kissed her dark shining hair.” Daisy’s voice is “indiscreet” and “full of money,” according to Nick and Gatsby. Except for that, Nick focuses on describing her character traits.

Daisy Buchanan: Character Analysis

Daisy is a dream that Gatsby never achieves. She seems to have a shallow personality, and her careless behavior at the end of the book confirms it. Her actions may seem to be contradicting, and it’s hard to read her motives. Daisy Buchanan’s character analysis introduces her as a victim of her times.

Daisy’s Personality & Her Role in the Novel

Jay Gatsby loves Daisy with such devotion and even risks everything for her that she must be an angel on Earth. But is she worth it? Since Gatsby confesses that he is chasing Daisy’s wealth, it is hard to tell whether her personality alone would attract as much attention as her physics does.

It appears that Daisy is a shallow, indecisive, and careless person. First of all, she is worried that Tom is cheating on her. However, she never does anything about it. The reason is his money, luxury, and power. Daisy doesn’t want to lose it all and even wants her daughter to have the same attitude.

“I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” ( The Great Gatsby , Chapter 1 )

Moreover, when her daughter Pammy appears in the scene, Daisy doesn’t pay much attention to her and just shows her off. She is more concerned about how much money she has than about her family. After all, status has been her choice from the very beginning when she preferred Tom over Gatsby.

The best scene that represents the attitude of Tom and Daisy Buchanan towards the new rich is when they are invited to one of Gatsby’s parties. Since his mansion is in West Egg, there are mainly nouveaux riches there. Daisy does not enjoy it at all as she finds those people vulgar and lacking manners. She is not an exception – she is an aristocrat who despises the new rich .

Finally, after the accident, it is clear that Daisy is not worth even thinking about, but Gatsby still can’t see her shallowness. She drives away from Myrtle’s dead body and then casually has dinner with Tom the same night. From the next day, Daisy acts like she never knew Gatsby. She moves to another city with Tom and probably has the same life as she did. Unlike Gatsby, Daisy seems to have never had any dream in her life, yet she is the one who ends up living carelessly.

Tom Buchanan is a wealthy husband of Daisy . He comes from an old and incredibly wealthy family. Just like other aristocrats, he doesn’t have any American Dream or goal to achieve. His primary interest is Myrtle Wilson, his mistress from the Valley of Ashes. The description of Tom Buchanan’s personality clearly shows how he opposes Gatsby.

Tom Buchanan: Physical Description

Tom Buchanan’s physical description comes down to the fact that he is a big bully. All his appearance is screaming about his arrogance and brutality. Nick describes him as a strong and muscular man with imposing posture, thanks to doing sports at college. His “arrogant eyes” give him “the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward.”

Tom Buchanan: Character Analysis

Tom’s aristocratic manners can barely hide his hypocrisy and cruelty. Probably, Daisy gives the best description of Tom, calling him “brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen.” All the negative traits make him so different from Gatsby that leads to the hidden opposition between them, which is illustrated in Tom Buchanan’s character analysis.

Tom as The Great Gatsby’s Antagonist

While Gatsby is the protagonist, there is no doubt that Tom is the antagonist in The Great Gatsby . It wasn’t uncommon for women to have little rights back then, but Tom Buchanan treats them as they are worth nothing. Not only does he abuse his wife and mistress, Myrtle, physically, but he doesn’t consider their feelings at all. Tom is an egocentric sexist and racist who only looks for a profit for himself.

“Have you read ‘The Rise of the Coloured Empires’ by this man Goddard?.. Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.” ( The Great Gatsby , Chapter 1)

Just the fact of how upset he was when he lost Myrtle shows how possessive he is. Although he is having an affair himself, he cannot allow Gatsby to take Daisy because she is his woman. However, there is one more point of view on this issue as well. Tom feels that Gatsby’s background can threaten his privileged aristocratic life, so he tries to get rid of him. He would somehow accept Daisy cheating with another high-status wealthy guy, but he wouldn’t allow her to leave for the new rich.

The Great Gatsby , Tom has one of the most controversial personalities. While he is trying to look educated, it is impossible to hide how narrow-minded his point of view is. In Chapter 1, Tom recommends to everyone a book he recently read. Being so shocked by the ideas it presents, he doesn’t notice how extremely racist his speech sounds. Also, Tom doesn’t see any problem in his relationship with Daisy. Even when everybody finds out that they are cheating on each other, Tom believes that their love and marriage are unbreakable.

After all, Tom is a dominant man who doesn’t want to see any changes in the life he finds comfortable. He is impulsive and aggressive, so he uses violence to protect his beliefs. All in all, Tom is presented as the exact opposite of Gatsby.

Who Is Jordan Baker?

There is no wonder about who Jordan Baker is since her character is rather straightforward. She is a friend of Daisy and plays golf professionally . Also, Nick starts a romantic relationship with her. However, at the end of the novel, she revealed one secret: she is engaged to another man though Nick doesn’t believe her.

Jordan Baker: Physical Description

Nick presents a somewhat detailed physical description of Jordan Baker. She appears to be a very fit girl with an athletic posture . Her body type fits her profession quite well, but, at the same time, she remains a charming lady with “autumn-leaf yellow” hair and “grey sun-strained eyes.” Despite the alleged sexuality of Nick, he seems to find Jordan attractive.

Jordan Baker: Character Analysis

Jordan makes an impression of a girl bored with absolutely everything happening around her from the very beginning. She is not even that excited about Nick. However, later on, the readers find out that she is much livelier when it comes to the personal dramas of others. Jordan Baker’s character analysis reveals her real role in the book.

Jordan’s Role in The Great Gatsby

Since Jordan is a friend of the Buchanans, it is evident that she is from the upper class. She has quickly become successful in golf after moving to New York from the Midwest . However, it is not purely her talent that helps her win. It appears that she cheated during her first big competition.

Nick finds her very dishonest and says that she tries to protect herself from the troubles of the world this way. Whether she lied about being engaged or not, it only shows that she doesn’t want to deal with serious relationships. Jordan in The Great Gatsby is even more passive than Daisy.

She was incurably dishonest. She wasn’t able to endure being at a disadvantage… It made no difference to me. Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply—I was casually sorry, and then I forgot. ( The Great Gatsby , Chapter 3)

One of Jordan’s roles is to keep the drama going in the book. In the beginning, it is she who is spreading the word about Tom’s mistress. Later, she tells Nick the story of Gatsby and Daisy.

In The Great Gatsby , Jordan Baker also plays the role of a modern woman of her time. Having an egocentric and cynical personality, Jordan is one of the new women of the 1920s. She is single with no kids, openly drinks alcohol, smokes, and pursues a career in a usually male sport.

Women like her were breaking the social rules and standards, since typically, they would be expected to have a husband, children, and no job. Besides, it seems like Jordan doesn’t mind investigating her sexuality as she spends some nights in the hotels with other women.

🎭 Other Characters in The Great Gatsby

Myrtle wilson.

In The Great Gatsby , Myrtle is married to George Wilson, an owner of a garage in the Valley of Ashes. She is eager to have a better life, to become one of the upper-class riches. In Tom, she sees a chance to achieve her dream and, unfortunately, doesn’t realize that he uses her for entertainment as a toy.

How Does Myrtle Die?

Myrtle dies in Chapter 7 when she runs out to meet Tom and gets hit by a car. It is Gatsby’s car, but Myrtle thinks Tom is driving it because she saw him in it earlier that day. She associates Tom with her future wealthy life, so he’s her savior. But an unfortunate misunderstanding eventually leads to Myrtle Wilson’s death.

Myrtle Wilson: Character Analysis

In The Great Gatsby Myrtle’s character probably has the most tragic fate. She is full of hope that becoming a mistress of fantastically rich Tom Buchanan will save her from rotting in the Valley of Ashes. All the expensive gifts give her the illusion that their relationship will last forever. However, everybody understands that it is doubtful that Tom will leave Daisy to marry Myrtle. For him, she is one of his possessions. The fact that he uses physical violence proves that he has no emotional attachment to her.

Myrtle feels imprisoned in the way of life and marriage she doesn’t want to have . Later on, it becomes literal when George finds out about her infidelity and locks her in the room. She may be naive, but her vitality and unbreakable hope are the traits she shares with Gatsby. After all, they are the only two characters who dare to dream and hope, and both of them meet such a tragic fate.

George Wilson

In The Great Gatsby , George Wilson is not the main character, but he plays a fatal role in Gatsby’s destiny by the end of the book. Wilson owns a garage and a gas station on the edge of the Valley of Ashes.

There is not much description of George’s looks or personality. Nick introduces him as a “blonde, spiritless man, anemic, and faintly handsome.” A single glance is enough for Nick to understand that George is lifeless and stuck in the Valley of Ashes forever, pretty much like the other people living there.

George Wilson: Character Analysis

From what Nick observes, it seems like George B. Wilson is a hard-working man with moral values who wants his family to be happy. Nevertheless, he is beaten up by life and acts submissive when Tom comes for business issues to his garage. George is also very God-fearing, so when he finds out Myrtle is cheating, he says that “God sees everything.” He believes that she will not be left unpunished.

However, after Myrtle’s death, George supposedly receives another divine message – to revenge on her killer . He comes to the conclusion that it must have been her lover driving the car since she ran out to meet him. Thanks to Tom, Wilson finds the owner of the yellow car and comes straight to Gatsby’s mansion to shoot him. Essentially, it becomes George’s primary role in the novel. After that, he commits suicide because he doesn’t have the money to cover up what he did. In The Great Gatsby , Mr. Wilson represents the hopelessness and despair of the lower class, who appear to be victims of life circumstances.

George Wilson & Tom Buchanan: Compare & Contrast

It is useful to compare and contrast George Wilson and Tom Buchanan to understand their characters better. When Nick meets George, he realizes that despite their class difference, they have much in common. Wilson is just like Tom but poor and sick. Deep inside, they are both lifeless and stuck in a life without happiness.

Who is Catherine in The Great Gatsby?

In The Great Gatsby , Catherine is a sister of Myrtle Wison. She is portrayed as a young woman, wearing a bob hairstyle, a lot of makeup, and accessories. Catherine lives in New York, and Nick meets her at the party in Tom’s apartment in Chapter 2. They have a little chat, which helps Nick understand her personality better.

Character Analysis

Catherine is viewed as a fashionable and independent girl of the Roaring Twenties. She lives in a hotel room, sharing it with another woman. Her bold style suggests that she is one of the flapper girls who were change-makers at the time. Catherine’s conversation with Nick reveals her life-views. It appears that she wants to work on a fashionable Long Island.

Moreover, she doesn’t see anything wrong with Tom and Myrtle getting divorced from their spouses and living together if they enjoy it so much.

Catherine stays loyal to her sister throughout the novel. She covers up Tom and Myrtle’s meetings in New York. Even after the accident, she never said a word about their affair while testifying. However, Tom might have bribed her to save his reputation. Therefore, in The Great Gatsby , Catherine doesn’t play any significant role. Still, she contributes to the overall image of sinful people of the 1920s.

Who is Dan Cody in The Great Gatsby?

In The Great Gatsby , Dan Cody is pictured as an older self-made millionaire who owns a yacht on which Gatsby spends some years as an assistant. By the time Nick meets Gatsby, Cody is already dead. However, the older man left a significant impact on young Jay Gatsby and contributed to his development.

Dan Cody was around 50 years old when he met Gatsby. He took a 17-year-old as a personal assistant on the board of his yacht. He had that luxurious life and unimaginable wealth that Gatsby was dreaming about. Even though Dan wasn’t a source of Gatsby’s money, he helped to create and develop his new identity.

The first step was the adoption of the new name, which appeared to be Cody’s idea. Then, Gatsby spent the next five years on the yacht learning all the details and tricks of the millionaire’s life. He got used to luxury so much that he just couldn’t come back to the life of the lower class he used to have. It pushed Gatsby to connect to the criminals since it was a fast way from rags to riches. Therefore, the significance of the role that Dan plays in Gatsby’s life cannot be underestimated.

Who is Klipspringer in The Great Gatsby?

“The boarder” is what they call Klipspringer in The Great Gatsby . He earned this nickname because he attends every single Gatsby’s party, and later Nick finds out that Klipspringer just lives in the mansion. Despite the fact that he only appears a few times in the novel, he brings a critical symbolism considering the people surrounding Gatsby.

Nick introduces Ewing Klipspringer as the most frequent guest in Gatsby’s mansion. In fact, he is there not only for parties. When Daisy and Nick come over, they find there Klipspringer wearing his pajamas and looking quite disoriented. No wonder everybody calls him “the boarder.” His motives become quite clear when he refuses to come to Gatsby’s funeral. He is supposedly busy and only needs the tennis shoes back that he left in the mansion.

Klipspringer was only using Gatsby for free housing and didn’t care much about him as a person. That is why “the boarder” in The Great Gatsby represents all the guests who attended the parties for free food and entertainment, though they are not even invited.

Moreover, none of them knows the truth about Gatsby, and only a few met him in person. They care about him even less on the day of his funeral.

Who is Henry C. Gatz in The Great Gatsby?

Henry C. Gatz is a poor humble farmer and Gatsby’s birth father. He arrives all the way from Minnesota to his son’s funeral. Except for Nick, Henry appears to be the only person who is devastated by the tragedy. Thanks to him, Nick finds out more about Gatsby’s background.

When Mr. Gatz arrives, it becomes clear that he is crushed by Gatsby’s death. At the same time, the success of his son makes him feel proud. He starts wondering what other great things he could have done. According to him, Gatsby could have been someone like James J. Hill and “helped build up the country.” Mr. Gatz shows a self-improvement plan that Gatsby kept in childhood. It helps to understand that his dedication and hard work were a part of his mindset for a long time.

Moreover, Henry says that Gatsby bought a house for him in the Midwest, which proves that Jay didn’t cut off his past completely. The arrival of Henry Gatz also brings up a moral issue. It highlights the fact that his son sacrificed his potential friendships for the pursuit of money. Is the wealth worth dying alone?

Who is Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby?

Meyer Wolfsheim is Gatsby’s business partner, who also appears to be his underground connection. It was he who helped Gatsby get rich by selling illegal alcohol. Nick includes a short physical description saying that he is “a small, flat-nosed Jew.” Wolfsheim is a famous gambler who is rumored to have fixed the 1919 World Series.

Wolfsheim is the leading gangster in the book and possesses all the traits of the criminal, which makes Nick want to avoid him. It can also be said that he represents the negative side of Gatsby. However, aside from their underground business, there is a crucial role Meyer Wolfsheim plays in the novel. First of all, he gives some more details about Gatsby’s past and even ironically says that Gatsby would “never so much as look at a friend’s wife.” He also mentions how poor Jay was when he came back from the war.

For Gatsby, Wolfsheim has not only become his business partner but his friend and, most importantly, a mentor. Just like Dan Cody, the criminal has contributed to Gatsby’s identity, but with one difference – Dan couldn’t give him a stable source of wealth. Despite their connection, the Jew refuses to attend Gatsby’s funeral protecting his status.

Who is Mr. McKee in The Great Gatsby?

In The Great Gatsby , Mr. McKee is a photographer, one of the guests invited to the improvised party at Tom’s apartment in New York. Nick describes him as a “pale, feminine man from the flat below.”

Mr. McKee comes with his wife, and both of them seem to be very gossipy. This couple is nothing more than an addition to the long list of rotten and shallow people in the novel. However, Mr. McKee gets involved in a scene that gets a lot of critiques. After he leaves the party, he ends up half-naked in his bedroom with Nick, which suggests that they had sexual intercourse.

Who is Michaelis in The Great Gatsby?

Michaelis is the Greek owner of a coffee shop next to Wilson’s garage in the Valley of Ashes. In The Great Gatsby , Michaelis is probably the only genuinely kind person. Whether it is because of his ethnicity or just his personality, he plays the role of a caring helper to George Wilson after Myrtle’s death.

Michaelis’ coffee shop is near George Wilson’s garage, so the young Greek unwillingly becomes a witness of Myrtle’s murder. Nick finds everything about the accident from him. Moreover, Michaelis stays with George so that he doesn’t stay alone with his grief.

They spend the whole night talking, and it proves that the Greek truly cares about Wilson’s state, even though it is unknown whether they are friends or not. There is also a special meaning of his name, which derives from Michael, the archangel. It makes the night scene when George sees the eyes of God even more religious.

Who Is Owl-Eyes in The Great Gatsby?

Owl-Eyes is a guest at the party who Nick and Jordan meet in Gatsby’s library. His real name is unknown, but Nick pictures him as a “stout, middle-aged man, with enormous owl-eyed spectacles,” which is where he gets this nickname. Owl-Eyes is slightly drunk and fascinated by the “realism” of the books.

Nick finds Owl Eyes going through the books in Gatsby’s library and exclaiming. The man thought that they would be fake, just pieces of the cupboard to create an illusion of a vast collection. However, the pages of the books are not even cut, which means no one has ever read them. At this moment, Owl Eyes discovers that Gatsby created this library just for the show, much like he does with the parties and this enormous mansion.

The man in glasses also compares Gatsby to Belasco , who was a director and playwright, which is essentially one of Gatsby’s alter ego since he is good at setting a stage for his play. Owl Eyes is also the only party guest who has the decency to come to the funeral at the end of the novel. Obviously, he and Nick could see and appreciate the real Gatsby.

• What makes The Great Gatsby great? | Books | The Guardian
• Five reasons ‘Gatsby’ is the great American novel – USA Today
• The Great Gatsby I Summary, Context, Reception, & Analysis
• Was the Great Gatsby Broke? – New York Magazine
• Jay Gatsby: A Dreamer Doomed to Be Excluded
• Nick Carraway | fictional character | Britannica
• ‘The Great Gatsby’ Characters: Descriptions, Significance
• Jay Gatsby – Characters – Higher English Revision – BBC
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Study Guide Menu

• Short Summary
• Summary (Chapter 1)
• Summary (Chapter 2)
• Summary (Chapter 3)
• Summary (Chapter 4)
• Summary (Chapter 5)
• Summary (Chapter 6)
• Summary (Chapter 7)
• Summary (Chapter 8)
• Summary (Chapter 9)
• Symbolism & Style
• Quotes Explained
• Questions & Answers
• Essay Topics & Examples
• F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Biography
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Bibliography

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ARTS & CULTURE

Will the real great gatsby please stand up.

F. Scott Fitzgerald couldn’t resist putting his own life into his novels, but where’s the line between truth and fiction?

Sarah Laskow

Years after he wrote The Great Gatsby , in the back leaf of another book, F. Scott Fitzgerald scribbled a list of his most famous novel’s nine chapters. Next to each one, he wrote down his sources. There were the old-money, polo-playing Rumsies and Hitchcocks and the impressive parties thrown by movie director Allan Dwan and by Herbert Bayard Swope, the editor of the New York World . There were his own memories, of the ash heaps, of days spent in New York City, and, in particular, of one wedding—the wedding of Ginevra King, his first love. Out of the whole book, he marked only three chapters as “an invention,” “inv” or “all an invention.”

Fitzgerald did not mean for The Great Gatsby to draw heavily from his own life. His first book, This Side of Paradise , had lifted from his days as a Princeton student, and his second, The Beautiful and the Damned, from his relationship with his wife, Zelda. As he was beginning to start work on the novel that would become The Great Gatsby , Fitzgerald wrote to his editor, Max Perkins, complaining that, at 27, he had dumped more of his personal experiences into his fiction than anyone else he knew. This next novel, his new novel, would be different. “In my new novel I'm thrown directly on purely creative work,“ he wrote, “not trashy imaginings as in my stories but the sustained imagination of a sincere and yet radiant world.” 

But as he wrote his book, he ended up drawing on the rowdy elegance of the Roaring Twenties milieu in which he lived to recreate that radiant world.

"He's borrowing from various kinds of sources to get his story across,“ says Scott Donaldson, the author of the Fitzgerald biography Fool for Love . "But he's really writing about himself in the book. And that's why it's so intimate and why it still resonates, I think."

To create Jay Gatsby, though, Fitzgerald also borrowed from the lives of other men, and devotees have been trying to pin down his real-life inspirations for decades. “The search for Gatsby has been one that preoccupied and eluded scholars and continues to,” says Bryant Mangum, a professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University and the editor of F. Scott Fitzgerald in Context. “There are many, many models for Gatsby.” 

It’s pretty well agreed upon that Fitzgerald took Gatsby’s backstory from his friend Robert Kerr. In the novel, Gatsby’s rise to riches begins when, out rowing on Lake Superior, he meets a yacht owner and winds up working on the boat as a body man and confidante. As a young man, Kerr had rowed out to warn a “mysterious yachtsman” of a dangerous tide and had signed on to his service. Like Gatsby’s yacht owner, Dan Cody, Kerr's yachtsman had a saucy, famous journalist for a mistress—Nellie Bly.

But this is just the beginning of Gatsby’s career, a story he keeps secret. By the time the novel begins, the man who rowed out to the yacht, the young, striving James Gatz, has already transformed into Jay Gatsby—the mansion dweller who throws lavish parties, the businessman whose business dealings are not clearly honest, the bootlegger who’s obsessed with winning Daisy back.

The Great Gatsby is set in “West Egg” and “East Egg”—Long Island communities based, respectively, on Manhasset and Great Neck, where the Fitzgeralds had moved with their newborn daughter in 1922. As they got to know their fun-loving Great Neck neighbors, they met more than one man who might have served as the model for this Gatsby. "I have unearthed some of the choicest bootleggers," Zelda wrote to a friend not long after the move. One of Fitzgerald’s closest friends, Edmund “Bunny” Wilson, wrote a play in which a character who very much resembles Fitzgerald describes his new novel’s protagonist: "He's a gentleman bootlegger; his name is Max Fleischman. He lives like a millionaire." In the margins of his copy of the play, Fitzgerald wrote, “I had told Bunny my plan for Gatsby.”

Later in his life, Fitzgerald wrote to his friend John Peale Bishop that Gatsby "started out as one man I knew and then changed into myself." There are a couple of other clues, however, that a certain bootlegger, Max Gerlach, was the “one man” Gatsby began as. Arthur Mizener, a Fitzgerald biographer, wrote that Zelda, later in her life, said that a man named “von Gerlach” was the model for Gatsby. And in 1923 Gerlach wrote a note to the author, which Fitzgerald’s daughter, Scottie, kept. It ends with Gatsby’s signature phrase, which appears 45 times in the novel: “Enroute from the coast—Here for a few days on business—How are you and the family old sport?”

But playing this game gets frustrating. Matthew Bruccoli, the leading Fitzgerald scholar for decades, was convinced that there was more to find out about the connection between Gerlach and Gatsby. At one point, he hired a private investigator to track down more of Gerlach’s history. Around the same time, another Fitzgerald scholar, Horst Kruse, was digging into the connections between Gerlach and Fitzgerald as well.

But although these scholars (and the private detective) learned more about Gerlach’s life, the more details they turned up, the less likely it seemed that Fitzgerald modeled Gatsby directly on Gerlach, who was not just a bootlegger, but spent many less glamorous years as a car dealer.

This is where this game starts to lose its charm: the more you try to match Fitzgerald’s fiction up with his life, the more tenuous the connections become.

“When I began to study Fitzgerald, it looked very easy,“ says Fitzgerald scholar James L.W. West, III, who has written most extensively about Ginevra King, Fitzgerald's own first love. “You read about his life and you read his novels, and you said oh”—that person becomes that character. “The further you go with Fitzgerald, the more complicated it becomes.”

Some characters do seem to have straightforward inspirations. The golfer Jordan Baker, a close friend of Gatsby's long-lost love, Daisy Buchanan, is based on golfer Edith Cummings, the first female athlete to appear on the cover of  Time  magazine and a close friend of Ginevra. Meyer Wolfsheim, the underworld connection who, Fitzgerald intimates, is one source of Gatsby’s mysterious fortune, fixed the 1919 World Series—just like Chicago gambler Arnold Rothstein was rumored to have done.

But Daisy’s husband, Tom, could have been one or all of the pack of wealthy and imposing men that Fitzgerald knew: Tommy Hitchcock, who, like Tom Buchanan, owned polo ponies and a beautiful house on Long Island, or Ginevra’s father, Charles King (also the owner of a string of polo ponies), or her husband, who came from Chicago’s uppermost social stratum, like Tom.

Daisy herself takes bits from Zelda: she holds the same hope for her daughter that Zelda had for hers—that she’ll be “a beautiful little fool.” But Daisy also resembles Ginevra—she's willing to flirt with a suitor who's not born into money but decides to marry a man of her own class, just as Ginevra did. Ginevra certainly served as a beginning point for Daisy—and many other of the wealthy, unattainable women who Fitzgerald wrote about. In Ginevra's letters, though, West says, he found a kind-hearted, irreverent girl quite distinct from the cold-hearted little rich girl that Daisy can be. The woman who stole Gatsby's heart was, in the end, one that Fitzgerald dreamed up, a puzzle almost a complicated as Gatsby himself.

Not all novels are as playfully resistant to this type of autobiographical analysis. In Ernest Hemingway’s first novel,  The Sun Also Rises , published in 1926, just a year after  Gatsby , the characters closely resemble the people in his life, one to one. “Brett Ashley is Duff Twysden,” says Donaldson, who’s also extensively studied Hemingway. “There's a whole book about tracking the origins of the novelistic figures to actual people that's extremely persuasive. I don't think that you can do that to  Gatsby . There's more distance and more invention going on than in Hemingway's novel.”

But that doesn’t mean that learning about the people in Fitzgerald’s life and the place where he lived won’t help  Gatsby  fans better understand the book. “He may not be writing directly about his own experiences,” says Donaldson, “but he's writing directly about his emotional connection to what's going on in the world and to the lost, unsuccessful love affair, which is always the one that's most poignant.”

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Sarah Laskow | | READ MORE

Sarah Laskow is a Brooklyn-based writer and editor of Smart News. Her work has appeared in print and online for Grist , GOOD ,  Salon , The American Prospect , Newsweek , New York among other publications.

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History Hit Story of England: Making of a Nation

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald – Chapter 6 with Summary

Full chapter of f. scott fitzgerald's iconic novel set in 1920s america..

Lucy Davidson

02 jan 2022, @lucejuiceluce.

Chapter 6 Summary

By the end of the summer, rumours about Gatsby’s supposed involvement in various plots and schemes are so severe that a reporter approaches Gatsby, asking if he has ‘anything to say’. This is privately satisfying to Gatsby, since his real name is James Gatz, and he really hails from North Dakota. Nick expands upon Gatsby’s reinvention of himself.

He became Jay Gatsby one day when, watching from the shore of Lake Superior, he saw Dan Cody drop anchor on his yacht. The 50-years-older Cody then took Gatsby under his wing, allowing him to reinvent himself as they embarked on a 5-year journey around the West Indies and Barbary Coast, until Cody is mysteriously ‘undone’ by his lady love. Before that, Gatsby had spent his youth wandering around Minnesota.

Nick spends so much time with Jordan that he doesn’t see Gatsby for weeks. When he does go and visit, Tom Buchanan and two others turn up a short time later on horseback for a drink. They invite Gatsby for dinner and he accepts, which slightly surprises the group, who leave a short time later.

Tom is increasingly concerned about Daisy’s recent activities, so accompanies her to one of Gatsby’s parties. Gatsby attempts to impress them by pointing out all of the celebrities present and, much to his irritation, introduces Tom as ‘the polo player’. Gatsby and Daisy dance, which is the marked sole occurrence when Gatsby becomes involved in one of his own parties. Daisy and Gatsby later head to Nick’s steps for privacy before heading back to the party before dinner arrives.

Tom states that he wants to dine with another group. Understanding his real meaning, Daisy remarks that the girl is ‘common but pretty’ and offers him a pencil in case he wants to write down her contact details. Outside of her time spent with Gatsby, Daisy finds the party distasteful and unnerving. After the Buchanans leave, Gatsby tells Nick that he’s worried Daisy didn’t have a good time. Nick warns Gatsby that you can’t repeat the past. To Nick’s simultaneous surprise and disgust, Gatsby replies, “Why of course you can!”

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 6 Full Text

About this time an ambitious young reporter from New York arrived one morning at Gatsby’s door and asked him if he had anything to say.

“Anything to say about what?” inquired Gatsby politely.

“Why,—any statement to give out.”

It transpired after a confused five minutes that the man had heard Gatsby’s name around his office in a connection which he either wouldn’t reveal or didn’t fully understand. This was his day off and with laudable initiative he had hurried out “to see.”

It was a random shot, and yet the reporter’s instinct was right. Gatsby’s notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his hospitality and so become authorities on his past, had increased all summer until he fell just short of being news. Contemporary legends such as the “underground pipe-line to Canada” attached themselves to him, and there was one persistent story that he didn’t live in a house at all, but in a boat that looked like a house and was moved secretly up and down the Long Island shore. Just why these inventions were a source of satisfaction to James Gatz of North Dakota, isn’t easy to say.

James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career—when he saw Dan Cody’s yacht drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior. It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon in a torn green jersey and a pair of canvas pants, but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a row-boat, pulled out to the Tuolomee and informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour.

I suppose he’d had the name ready for a long time, even then. His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people—his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s Business, the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.

For over a year he had been beating his way along the south shore of Lake Superior as a clam digger and a salmon fisher or in any other capacity that brought him food and bed. His brown, hardening body lived naturally through the half fierce, half lazy work of the bracing days. He knew women early and since they spoiled him he became contemptuous of them, of young virgins because they were ignorant, of the others because they were hysterical about things which in his overwhelming self-absorption he took for granted.

But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the wash-stand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace. For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing.

An instinct toward his future glory had led him, some months before, to the small Lutheran college of St. Olaf in southern Minnesota. He stayed there two weeks, dismayed at its ferocious indifference to the drums of his destiny, to destiny itself, and despising the janitor’s work with which he was to pay his way through. Then he drifted back to Lake Superior, and he was still searching for something to do on the day that Dan Cody’s yacht dropped anchor in the shallows along shore.

Cody was fifty years old then, a product of the Nevada silver fields, of the Yukon, of every rush for metal since Seventy-five. The transactions in Montana copper that made him many times a millionaire found him physically robust but on the verge of soft-mindedness, and, suspecting this an infinite number of women tried to separate him from his money. The none too savory ramifications by which Ella Kaye, the newspaper woman, played Madame de Maintenon to his weakness and sent him to sea in a yacht, were common knowledge to the turgid journalism of 1902. He had been coasting along all too hospitable shores for five years when he turned up as James Gatz’s destiny at Little Girl Bay.

To the young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the railed deck, the yacht represented all the beauty and glamor in the world. I suppose he smiled at Cody—he had probably discovered that people liked him when he smiled. At any rate Cody asked him a few questions (one of them elicited the brand new name) and found that he was quick, and extravagantly ambitious. A few days later he took him to Duluth and bought him a blue coat, six pair of white duck trousers and a yachting cap. And when the Tuolomee left for the West Indies and the Barbary Coast Gatsby left too.

He was employed in a vague personal capacity—while he remained with Cody he was in turn steward, mate, skipper, secretary, and even jailor, for Dan Cody sober knew what lavish doings Dan Cody drunk might soon be about and he provided for such contingencies by reposing more and more trust in Gatsby. The arrangement lasted five years during which the boat went three times around the continent. It might have lasted indefinitely except for the fact that Ella Kaye came on board one night in Boston and a week later Dan Cody inhospitably died.

I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsby’s bedroom, a grey, florid man with a hard empty face—the pioneer debauchee who during one phase of American life brought back to the eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon. It was indirectly due to Cody that Gatsby drank so little. Sometimes in the course of gay parties women used to rub champagne into his hair; for himself he formed the habit of letting liquor alone.

And it was from Cody that he inherited money—a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars. He didn’t get it. He never understood the legal device that was used against him but what remained of the millions went intact to Ella Kaye. He was left with his singularly appropriate education; the vague contour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to the substantiality of a man.

He told me all this very much later, but I’ve put it down here with the idea of exploding those first wild rumors about his antecedents, which weren’t even faintly true. Moreover he told it to me at a time of confusion, when I had reached the point of believing everything and nothing about him. So I take advantage of this short halt, while Gatsby, so to speak, caught his breath, to clear this set of misconceptions away.

It was a halt, too, in my association with his affairs. For several weeks I didn’t see him or hear his voice on the phone—mostly I was in New York, trotting around with Jordan and trying to ingratiate myself with her senile aunt—but finally I went over to his house one Sunday afternoon. I hadn’t been there two minutes when somebody brought Tom Buchanan in for a drink. I was startled, naturally, but the really surprising thing was that it hadn’t happened before.

They were a party of three on horseback—Tom and a man named Sloane and a pretty woman in a brown riding habit who had been there previously.

“I’m delighted to see you,” said Gatsby standing on his porch. “I’m delighted that you dropped in.”

As though they cared!

“Sit right down. Have a cigarette or a cigar.” He walked around the room quickly, ringing bells. “I’ll have something to drink for you in just a minute.”

He was profoundly affected by the fact that Tom was there. But he would be uneasy anyhow until he had given them something, realizing in a vague way that that was all they came for. Mr. Sloane wanted nothing. A lemonade? No, thanks. A little champagne? Nothing at all, thanks…I’m sorry—

“Did you have a nice ride?”

“Very good roads around here.”

“I suppose the automobiles—”

“Yeah.”

Moved by an irresistible impulse, Gatsby turned to Tom who had accepted the introduction as a stranger.

“I believe we’ve met somewhere before, Mr. Buchanan.”

“Oh, yes,” said Tom, gruffly polite but obviously not remembering. “So we did. I remember very well.”

“About two weeks ago.”

“That’s right. You were with Nick here.”

“I know your wife,” continued Gatsby, almost aggressively.

“That so?”

Tom turned to me.

“You live near here, Nick?”

“Next door.”

Mr. Sloane didn’t enter into the conversation but lounged back haughtily in his chair; the woman said nothing either—until unexpectedly, after two highballs, she became cordial.

“We’ll all come over to your next party, Mr. Gatsby,” she suggested. “What do you say?”

“Certainly. I’d be delighted to have you.”

“Be ver’ nice,” said Mr. Sloane, without gratitude. “Well—think ought to be starting home.”

“Please don’t hurry,” Gatsby urged them. He had control of himself now and he wanted to see more of Tom. “Why don’t you—why don’t you stay for supper? I wouldn’t be surprised if some other people dropped in from New York.”

“You come to supper with me,” said the lady enthusiastically. “Both of you.”

This included me. Mr. Sloane got to his feet.

“Come along,” he said—but to her only.

“I mean it,” she insisted. “I’d love to have you. Lots of room.”

Gatsby looked at me questioningly. He wanted to go and he didn’t see that Mr. Sloane had determined he shouldn’t.

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to,” I said.

“Well, you come,” she urged, concentrating on Gatsby.

Mr. Sloane murmured something close to her ear.

“We won’t be late if we start now,” she insisted aloud.

“I haven’t got a horse,” said Gatsby. “I used to ride in the army but I’ve never bought a horse. I’ll have to follow you in my car. Excuse me for just a minute.”

The rest of us walked out on the porch, where Sloane and the lady began an impassioned conversation aside.

“My God, I believe the man’s coming,” said Tom. “Doesn’t he know she doesn’t want him?”

“She says she does want him.”

“She has a big dinner party and he won’t know a soul there.” He frowned. “I wonder where in the devil he met Daisy. By God, I may be old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days to suit me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish.”

Suddenly Mr. Sloane and the lady walked down the steps and mounted their horses.

“Come on,” said Mr. Sloane to Tom, “we’re late. We’ve got to go.” And then to me: “Tell him we couldn’t wait, will you?”

Tom and I shook hands, the rest of us exchanged a cool nod and they trotted quickly down the drive, disappearing under the August foliage just as Gatsby with hat and light overcoat in hand came out the front door.

Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy’s running around alone, for on the following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby’s party. Perhaps his presence gave the evening its peculiar quality of oppressiveness—it stands out in my memory from Gatsby’s other parties that summer. There were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same profusion of champagne, the same many-colored, many-keyed commotion, but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn’t been there before. Or perhaps I had merely grown used to it, grown to accept West Egg as a world complete in itself, with its own standards and its own great figures, second to nothing because it had no consciousness of being so, and now I was looking at it again, through Daisy’s eyes. It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment.

They arrived at twilight and as we strolled out among the sparkling hundreds Daisy’s voice was playing murmurous tricks in her throat.

“These things excite me so,” she whispered. “If you want to kiss me any time during the evening, Nick, just let me know and I’ll be glad to arrange it for you. Just mention my name. Or present a green card. I’m giving out green—”

“Look around,” suggested Gatsby.

“I’m looking around. I’m having a marvelous—”

“You must see the faces of many people you’ve heard about.”

Tom’s arrogant eyes roamed the crowd.

“We don’t go around very much,” he said. “In fact I was just thinking I don’t know a soul here.”

“Perhaps you know that lady.” Gatsby indicated a gorgeous, scarcely human orchid of a woman who sat in state under a white plum tree. Tom and Daisy stared, with that peculiarly unreal feeling that accompanies the recognition of a hitherto ghostly celebrity of the movies.

“She’s lovely,” said Daisy.

“The man bending over her is her director.”

He took them ceremoniously from group to group:

“Mrs. Buchanan…and Mr. Buchanan—” After an instant’s hesitation he added: “the polo player.”

“Oh no,” objected Tom quickly, “Not me.”

But evidently the sound of it pleased Gatsby for Tom remained “the polo player” for the rest of the evening.

“I’ve never met so many celebrities!” Daisy exclaimed. “I liked that man—what was his name?—with the sort of blue nose.”

Gatsby identified him, adding that he was a small producer.

“Well, I liked him anyhow.”

“I’d a little rather not be the polo player,” said Tom pleasantly, “I’d rather look at all these famous people in—in oblivion.”

Daisy and Gatsby danced. I remember being surprised by his graceful, conservative fox-trot—I had never seen him dance before. Then they sauntered over to my house and sat on the steps for half an hour while at her request I remained watchfully in the garden: “In case there’s a fire or a flood,” she explained, “or any act of God.”

Tom appeared from his oblivion as we were sitting down to supper together. “Do you mind if I eat with some people over here?” he said. “A fellow’s getting off some funny stuff.”

“Go ahead,” answered Daisy genially, “And if you want to take down any addresses here’s my little gold pencil…” She looked around after a moment and told me the girl was “common but pretty,” and I knew that except for the half hour she’d been alone with Gatsby she wasn’t having a good time.

We were at a particularly tipsy table. That was my fault—Gatsby had been called to the phone and I’d enjoyed these same people only two weeks before. But what had amused me then turned septic on the air now.

“How do you feel, Miss Baedeker?”

The girl addressed was trying, unsuccessfully, to slump against my shoulder. At this inquiry she sat up and opened her eyes.

“Wha?”

A massive and lethargic woman, who had been urging Daisy to play golf with her at the local club tomorrow, spoke in Miss Baedeker’s defence:

“Oh, she’s all right now. When she’s had five or six cocktails she always starts screaming like that. I tell her she ought to leave it alone.”

“I do leave it alone,” affirmed the accused hollowly.

“We heard you yelling, so I said to Doc Civet here: ‘There’s somebody that needs your help, Doc.’ ”

“She’s much obliged, I’m sure,” said another friend, without gratitude. “But you got her dress all wet when you stuck her head in the pool.”

“Anything I hate is to get my head stuck in a pool,” mumbled Miss Baedeker. “They almost drowned me once over in New Jersey.”

“Then you ought to leave it alone,” countered Doctor Civet.

“Speak for yourself!” cried Miss Baedeker violently. “Your hand shakes. I wouldn’t let you operate on me!”

It was like that. Almost the last thing I remember was standing with Daisy and watching the moving picture director and his Star. They were still under the white plum tree and their faces were touching except for a pale thin ray of moonlight between. It occurred to me that he had been very slowly bending toward her all evening to attain this proximity, and even while I watched I saw him stoop one ultimate degree and kiss at her cheek.

“I like her,” said Daisy, “I think she’s lovely.”

But the rest offended her—and inarguably, because it wasn’t a gesture but an emotion. She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented “place” that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village—appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short cut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand.

I sat on the front steps with them while they waited for their car. It was dark here in front: only the bright door sent ten square feet of light volleying out into the soft black morning. Sometimes a shadow moved against a dressing-room blind above, gave way to another shadow, an indefinite procession of shadows, who rouged and powdered in an invisible glass.

“Who is this Gatsby anyhow?” demanded Tom suddenly. “Some big bootlegger?”

“Where’d you hear that?” I inquired.

“I didn’t hear it. I imagined it. A lot of these newly rich people are just big bootleggers, you know.”

“Not Gatsby,” I said shortly.

He was silent for a moment. The pebbles of the drive crunched under his feet.

“Well, he certainly must have strained himself to get this menagerie together.”

A breeze stirred the grey haze of Daisy’s fur collar.

“At least they’re more interesting than the people we know,” she said with an effort.

“You didn’t look so interested.”

“Well, I was.”

Tom laughed and turned to me.

“Did you notice Daisy’s face when that girl asked her to put her under a cold shower?”

Daisy began to sing with the music in a husky, rhythmic whisper, bringing out a meaning in each word that it had never had before and would never have again. When the melody rose, her voice broke up sweetly, following it, in a way contralto voices have, and each change tipped out a little of her warm human magic upon the air.

“Lots of people come who haven’t been invited,” she said suddenly. “That girl hadn’t been invited. They simply force their way in and he’s too polite to object.”

“I’d like to know who he is and what he does,” insisted Tom. “And I think I’ll make a point of finding out.”

“I can tell you right now,” she answered. “He owned some drug stores, a lot of drug stores. He built them up himself.”

The dilatory limousine came rolling up the drive.

“Good night, Nick,” said Daisy.

Her glance left me and sought the lighted top of the steps where “Three o’Clock in the Morning,” a neat, sad little waltz of that year, was drifting out the open door. After all, in the very casualness of Gatsby’s party there were romantic possibilities totally absent from her world. What was it up there in the song that seemed to be calling her back inside? What would happen now in the dim incalculable hours? Perhaps some unbelievable guest would arrive, a person infinitely rare and to be marvelled at, some authentically radiant young girl who with one fresh glance at Gatsby, one moment of magical encounter, would blot out those five years of unwavering devotion.

I stayed late that night. Gatsby asked me to wait until he was free and I lingered in the garden until the inevitable swimming party had run up, chilled and exalted, from the black beach, until the lights were extinguished in the guest rooms overhead. When he came down the steps at last the tanned skin was drawn unusually tight on his face, and his eyes were bright and tired.

“She didn’t like it,” he said immediately.

“Of course she did.”

“She didn’t like it,” he insisted. “She didn’t have a good time.”

He was silent and I guessed at his unutterable depression.

“I feel far away from her,” he said. “It’s hard to make her understand.”

“You mean about the dance?”

“The dance?” He dismissed all the dances he had given with a snap of his fingers. “Old sport, the dance is unimportant.”

He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: “I never loved you.” After she had obliterated three years with that sentence they could decide upon the more practical measures to be taken. One of them was that, after she was free, they were to go back to Louisville and be married from her house—just as if it were five years ago.

“And she doesn’t understand,” he said. “She used to be able to understand. We’d sit for hours—”

He broke off and began to walk up and down a desolate path of fruit rinds and discarded favors and crushed flowers.

“I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ventured. “You can’t repeat the past.”

“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.

“I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,” he said, nodding determinedly. “She’ll see.”

He talked a lot about the past and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was…

…One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalk really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees—he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.

Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something—an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.

Read more of The Great Gatsby on History Hit

The Great Gatsby – Chapter 1 with Summary The Great Gatsby – Chapter 2 with Summary The Great Gatsby – Chapter 3 with Summary The Great Gatsby – Chapter 4 with Summary The Great Gatsby – Chapter 5 with Summary The Great Gatsby – Chapter 6 with Summary The Great Gatsby – Chapter 7 with Summary The Great Gatsby – Chapter 8 with Summary The Great Gatsby – Chapter 9 with Summary

For a broad summary of the novel and an analysis of its key themes, click here . For an overview of the novel’s key characters and what they represent, click here .

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The Hidden Devil in ‘The Great Gatsby’: Review of ‘Dan Cody’s Yacht’

In ‘Dan Cody’s Yacht,’ a symbol of wealth and aspiration from ‘The Great Gatsby’ becomes something similar for a teacher in modern-day Boston. Will she hit paydirt, or a hard wall?

Senior Editor and Writer

Joan Marcus

Whatever else, playwright and author Anthony Giardina should be congratulated for his brave attempt to shift our attention from the most popularly cited symbol within The Great Gatsby —that damn green light at the end of the dock—to a lesser-known one.

The title of Manhattan Theatre Club’s latest play, Dan Cody's Yacht , refers to the symbol of wealth within F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel that belongs to copper tycoon Dan Cody and which so captivates a young James Gatz (before he transforms himself into the golden Jay Gatsby). Cody’s yacht becomes the symbol of wealth and luxury that Gatsby aspired to.

Giardina takes that hunk of symbolic clay and warps it when observing the cultural and moral clash of Kevin O’Neill (Rick Holmes) and Cara Russo (Kristen Bush).

The play, directed by the Tony-winning Doug Hughes, spans 2014 to 2016. Kevin is a rich single gay father of a son (Conor, played by John Kroft), while Cara is a single, not that rich, heterosexual mother of a daughter (Angela, played by Casey Whyland).

He lives in the posh Bostonian suburb of Stillwell, and she in the more hardscrabble suburb of Patchett, and they first come into conflict because she, a teacher at the nice school in Stillwell, wants to encourage a merger with Patchett’s school which Angela attends. She sees this as helping poor and able kids, he sees it as being a potential disaster for the posh school.

Holmes is excellent at playing both smooth and slimy; insinuating and charming with a glass of wine and silken compliments, and beneath that hard and aggressive with Connor who’s lazy and not really applying himself at school; just like Gatz/ Gatsby , Kevin has raised himself from a materially tough upbringing to upper middle class comfort. He knows the grime beneath; he never wants to see it again.

Bush is a working class teacher who is nobody’s fool, and Angela is just like her mother.

Instead of Dan Cady’s yacht, Kevin wants his lifestyle to inveigle Cara into not pursuing her campaign, to win her over to his view of making money out of stocks, shares and nefarious financial schemes. Why, he is even has a simply lovely evening of wine regularly with a group of like-mindeds, playing at being suburban masters and mistresses of the universe. Of these, Laura Kai Chen as the serene and also terrifying-without-saying-much Alice Tuan stands out.

Cara begins the play feeling passionately about the merits of hard work and educational fairness for all; Kevin’s peacockish privilege is everything she despises. But slowly, observing what feels like the terminal state of her and Angela’s life together, and the lack of educational opportunities for Angela to progress, she doesn’t exactly relent, but does become more open to Kevin’s schemes. The difference is, she is conflicted; he delights in playing human chess.

Cara does want change. She wants improvement. Her buddy Cathy (Roxanna Hope Radja) suddenly seems to stand for stasis, and being trapped. Maybe Cara can escape Patchett. Maybe she and Angela can live in Stillwell, move, move up.

John Lee Beatty’s revolving and revealing set is simple and a little ingenious, with the characters caught at scene changeover time having little emotional moments in corridors. Giardina cleverly tells a number of different stories and truths. If Kevin is the devil, he is one who seems also to want to do something good; he wants to share the Gatsby dream, ruthlessly.

Whyland is particularly good as a kid, who wants to be left alone to work and do well, but do well honestly and on the terms she is comfortable with (and she is as revolted by Kevin, as much as he claims to admire her). Hope Radja’s circumspect, earthy friend, suspicious of snobs, money, and anything in a posh restaurant—particularly ones serving cocktails with not enough alcohol in them—may remind you, in the best way, of Joan Cusack in Working Girl and Laura San Giacomo in Pretty Woman .

Bush is at her best when she is allowed to let rip. But something rings a little hollow in how these characters end up. If the stakes were as high as the play has led us to believe, a denouement of comparative equanimity feels bogus. And so you think back to the yacht in Gatsby : something very real, also something very real to aspire to, and also an illusion in a young man’s eyes.

Kevin has made Dan Cody’s yacht happen for himself. So many others do not, and yet are tempted by Kevins and other unscrupulous money-promisers that Dan Cody’s yacht can be anybody’s. The iniquities of the public education system remain a damning constant.

Giardina finally seems to be saying: dream, and dream big, especially for your children, but dream real. And if someone today, in the economically fraught 2018, comes promising you Dan Cody’s yacht, sure—go for it. And also, don’t believe it.

Dan Cody's Yacht is at City Center Stage I, 131 West 55th Street, NYC. Book tickets here to July 8 .

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast  here .

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The Great Gatsby Quotes

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Source: The Great Gatsby

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

"James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, his name."

James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career—when he saw Dan Cody's yacht drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior.

By Chapter 4 of The Great Gatsby , we already know that Jay Gatsby is putting on a show. We don't know just how much of one, though, until we find out that he's even changed his name. In order to get ahead, he gave himself a shmancy name and, in the process, changed his entire identity.

Where you've heard it

People change their names all the time now for all sorts of reasons: distancing themselves from a family member, traumatic associations with their name, sharing a name with a serial killer ...

But Gatsby does it for the reason that lots of celebs do it today: to make it sound flashier. Just Google "celebrity name changes"—and enjoy falling down the rabbit hole.

Pretentious Factor

If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back here it is, on a scale of 1-10..

The only reason you'd drop this quote at a dinner party would be to show that you could quote The Great Gatsby .

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