The Great Gatsby: Story, Characters, Structure, and Major Themes

Geoffrey Chen

100 Works of World Literature · Article 24

# The Great Gatsby: Story, Characters, Structure, and Major Themes

This factual guide introduces the context, characters, structure, and major themes of The Great Gatsby. It does not replace the novel or make the American Dream its only answer. The one-minute introduction avoids the ending; the complete guide contains affairs, a fatal crash, murder, suicide, and the ending.

One-minute introduction

In summer 1922, Midwesterner Nick Carraway enters the New York bond business and rents a small West Egg house beside the mansion of Jay Gatsby, host of lavish weekly parties. Across the bay in old-money East Egg live Nick's cousin Daisy and her husband Tom Buchanan, whose marriage contains betrayal and violence. Gatsby's wealth and performance all point towards a green light at Daisy's dock: he wants their five-year-old love restored.

Nick enables reunion, then watches the dream meet class, marriage, time, and criminal money. In nine chapters, party rumours, retrospection, mistaken identity, and symbolic geography turn private obsession into a tragedy of self-invention, old and new wealth, desire, racial anxiety, and the American promise of beginning again.

Essential facts

  • Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940).
  • Composition: conceived from 1922; principal manuscript completed on the French Riviera in 1924; galleys heavily revised in Rome in early 1925.
  • Publication: Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 10 April 1925.
  • Form: nine chapters; Nick retrospectively narrates summer and autumn 1922 through experience, report, and later investigation.
  • Place: fictional West Egg and East Egg on Long Island, New York City, and the valley of ashes between.
  • Central figures: Nick, Jay Gatsby, Daisy and Tom Buchanan, Jordan Baker, Myrtle and George Wilson, and Meyer Wolfsheim.
  • Era: post-war Jazz Age and national Prohibition, effective from 1920 and accompanied by a growing illegal liquor trade.

Manuscript, title, and publication

Fitzgerald wanted his third novel more formally exact than earlier work. Begun around Great Neck, Long Island, it became a roughly 250-page pencil manuscript after the family moved to France in 1924. Surviving pages show wholesale changes to plot, character, and sentence. An early form even used third person before Nick became intermediary.

Galleys sent by editor Maxwell Perkins were titled Trimalchio or Trimalchio in West Egg, invoking the ostentatious freedman of Petronius's Satyricon. Alternatives included Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires, Gold-Hatted Gatsby, and Under the Red, White and Blue. Perkins preferred The Great Gatsby; Fitzgerald still doubted it after printing.

Francis Cugat's first-edition jacket combines eyes, lips, and city lights. Purchased before completion, it was reportedly “written into” the book and resonates with Doctor T. J. Eckleburg's billboard without being a simple identical code.

Initial reviews varied and sales disappointed Fitzgerald. Armed Services Editions during the Second World War, teaching, and post-war reprinting enlarged the audience. Canonical status was not fixed in 1925.

Chapters One and Two: Eggs and ashes

Nick comes from a prosperous Midwestern family, attended Yale, and served in the war. His cheap West Egg cottage adjoins Gatsby's European-style palace. West Egg signifies recently made wealth without inherited recognition; East Egg provides Tom and Daisy with old money, networks, and unquestioned belonging.

At dinner, physically imposing Tom promotes a racist book about white supremacy while taking a mistress's call. Daisy uses wit and theatrical lightness to mask distress; wishing her daughter a “beautiful little fool” satirises prescribed female ignorance without removing Daisy's privilege. Golfer Jordan is cool, independent, and rumoured to cheat.

Nick later sees Gatsby reaching across water towards one green light. Desire appears as gesture before its object is explained.

The train to Manhattan crosses the valley of ashes, industrial waste around George Wilson's garage. His wife Myrtle is Tom's mistress. Tom takes Nick and her to a city flat, where illegal alcohol is plentiful. Myrtle changes clothes and imitates social superiority; when she repeatedly says Daisy's name, Tom breaks her nose. The man controlling money and force ends her fantasy of crossing class.

Chapters Three and Four: party, rumours, and history

Uninvited crowds drink, dance, crash cars, and speculate that Gatsby killed someone, spied, or descends from royalty. Formally invited, Nick takes time to recognise his host. Gatsby drinks little and uses rehearsed language and a smile that makes each person feel understood; the party's centre remains isolated.

“Owl Eyes” is astonished that library books are real, though pages are uncut. Gatsby's performance is not pure counterfeit, but its props are unused. Sincere ideal and designed surface coexist.

Driving into town, Gatsby shows a medal and Oxford photograph while telling a partly true story about inheritance, travel, and war. He introduces Meyer Wolfsheim, said to have fixed baseball's 1919 World Series. Gatsby's wealth is connected to bootlegging and criminal networks.

Jordan supplies the central past. In Louisville in 1917, wealthy Daisy loved young officer Gatsby, who lacked the class fortune his uniform implied. After he left, she eventually married enormously rich Tom. A Gatsby letter nearly stopped the wedding, but it proceeded. Gatsby bought opposite her dock and held parties hoping she might arrive. He asks Nick to arrange tea.

Chapters Five and Six: reunion and repeating time

Rain falls on tea day. Gatsby nearly flees and knocks a mantel clock while greeting Daisy, a time symbol and an awkward accident. As embarrassment dissolves, the weather clears. At his mansion he throws English shirts before Daisy, who cries. Beauty, wealth, lost years, and ideal pressure mingle; “she only loves money” is too narrow.

With Daisy present, the green light loses mystery. Gatsby reaches the object but asks a real woman to bear five years of imagination.

Chapter Six reveals James Gatz, born to poor North Dakota farmers. At seventeen he invented Jay Gatsby and spent five years with yacht owner Dan Cody learning wealthy display. Cody intended an inheritance, but Ella Kaye prevented it. Gatsby served with distinction and briefly attended Oxford after war; he is neither inherited elite nor someone who never went there.

Tom investigates the nouveau riche. Daisy dislikes West Egg's party. Gatsby wants her to tell Tom she never loved him, cancelling marriage and elapsed time. He seeks not merely Daisy but proof that self-creation succeeded and history can be reset.

Chapter Seven: Plaza and crash

Gatsby ends parties and changes servants. On the hottest day, Daisy displays affection before Tom. Cars are exchanged going to Manhattan: Tom drives Gatsby's yellow car and Gatsby drives Tom's, enabling later misidentification.

At the Plaza Hotel, Gatsby demands that Daisy deny ever loving Tom. She initially complies, then admits loving both. Tom exposes Gatsby and Wolfsheim's illegal pharmacy liquor trade. Daisy retreats towards her husband's class and legal shelter; Gatsby's perfect history collapses.

Returning, Daisy drives the yellow car. Myrtle, perhaps believing its earlier driver Tom has returned, runs towards it. Daisy strikes and kills her without stopping. Gatsby will claim he drove and waits outside the Buchanan house, fearing Tom may hurt her. Nick sees the couple quietly sharing food. Not happy, they have reformed a unit protected by marriage, money, and shared danger.

Chapters Eight and Nine: death and aftermath

Gatsby tells Nick the full Daisy history and awaits a call. Before work, Nick praises him above the surrounding people, despite claiming to reserve judgement. Gatsby uses the pool as autumn approaches. George decides the yellow car's owner was driver and lover; Tom later admits identifying Gatsby as owner. George shoots Gatsby and then himself.

Nick seeks mourners. The Buchanans leave no address, Wolfsheim refuses involvement, and resident guest Klipspringer asks about shoes. Gatsby's father Henry arrives with his son's boyhood self-improvement schedule. Almost nobody attends the rainy funeral; Owl Eyes is a rare guest. Party abundance and funeral absence make a social verdict.

Nick ends his relationship with Jordan. Meeting Tom later, he learns Tom directed George towards Gatsby while believing Gatsby both driver and lover; he does not know Daisy drove. Nick finally judges Tom and Daisy as destroyers who retreat into money.

On his final night, Nick imagines European sailors seeing the green American coast. Gatsby's personal light becomes America's recurrent future and new beginning. Boats move forward against a current of past. Effort is not meaningless, but no dream begins outside history, class, and memory.

Nick as witness and participant

Nick relays paternal advice to withhold judgement and calls honesty his virtue, yet judges everyone. He enables an affair, continues after apartment violence, and enjoys access to wealth. He is not simply lying but selects, delays, and beautifies material.

Before Gatsby appears, Nick announces special tolerance for him. Narration is memorial, not neutral suspense. Nick rejects criminal business and possessive fantasy while valuing Gatsby's capacity for hope. “Great” is sincere admiration, showman's billing, and tragic irony.

Information order moves from rumour to host to James Gatz. Gatsby authors himself, while Nick authors “Gatsby” for readers.

Wealth, class, and racialised boundaries

Gatsby buys mansion, car, and shirts but not East Egg security. Tom exposes crime to protect wife and class, not the rule of law; his own affairs and violence carry fewer consequences. Daisy is constrained by patriarchal marriage and also uses privilege to leave damage.

Tom's fear of white displacement belongs to Jazz Age mobility, immigration, and female freedom. Pseudoscience defends hierarchy. The novel exposes his brutality but repeats period antisemitic stereotypes in Wolfsheim's appearance and speech. Critique and textual limitation coexist.

The Wilsons absorb deaths caused by rich people's vehicles and desires. Class decides who leaves the scene, who is offered to vengeance, and whose life receives elegy.

Images and structure

Green light. A real dock light becomes Daisy's distance, futurity, and an American beginning. Once Daisy stands nearby it becomes ordinary, showing desire creates symbol.

Ashes and Eckleburg's eyes. Waste lies between mansion and city. A dead optician's advertisement becomes divine witness for desperate George: people seek moral meaning in an empty commercial image.

Cars. Speed and modern freedom repeatedly become collision, mistaken identity, and transferred responsibility. The actual driver disappears behind colour and ownership.

The reunion centres Chapter Five, confrontation and crash reverse it in Seven, and Eight–Nine render death and judgement. Repeated imagery and delayed information give density to brevity.

Major themes

American Dream and self-invention. James Gatz renames and improves himself, enacting mobility. Energy is real, but success becomes possession of a woman formed by old wealth.

Past and repetition. Gatsby wants not a new relation but proof that war, marriage, and childbirth changed nothing. Clock, season, and retrospective narrative resist him.

Class and carelessness. Old money need not explain origins and passes damage downwards. New wealth is mocked; workers absorb both costs.

Love, projection, and possession. Gatsby loves Daisy and what her voice, house, and acceptance complete in himself. Demanding denial of Tom erases her contradictory experience.

Rumour and identity. Guests invent Gatsby, Gatsby stages himself, and Nick creates a remembered literary figure. Authority over the “real” man remains unstable.

Common oversimplifications and reading suggestions

Daisy drives the car that kills Myrtle; Gatsby prepares to take blame. George shoots Gatsby, while Tom identifies the owner and misdirects revenge. Gatsby did attend Oxford briefly. The green light begins as an actual location, not one fixed “money” code. Nick selects and participates rather than recording objectively. Finally, the novel attacks class and white anxiety while using antisemitic form around Wolfsheim.

Map West Egg, East Egg, the valley, and Manhattan, noting who moves and who is trapped. Label every biographical claim by source: rumour, Gatsby, Jordan, or Nick's investigation. Track light, colour, weather, and cars at each plot turn. Compare opening reserve with final judgement: is Nick defending Gatsby, mourning him, or testing his dream as an American myth?

Sources

Series directory

Explore the complete series

Discover more from Geoffrey Chen

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.