Book Report Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Novel
Characters:
Nick Carraway (narrator): Born in Minnesota, educated at Yale, and a former soldier in WWI, Nick goes to NYC to become a stockbroker. He’s approachable, and therefore often ends up as other characters’ confidant. Nick lives in West Egg (new money section of Long Island) next to the rich and mysterious Jay Gatsby, who has long been in love with Nick’s cousin, Daisy.
Jay Gatsby: His past is a mystery, but his parties are legen-(wait for it)-dary. We eventually learn through Nick (who becomes friends with deeply flawed but inherently likeable Gatsby) that he was born James Gatz, son of simple North Dakota farmers. He worked for a millionaire (Dan Cody), though, and got a taste for the high life. He fell in love with Daisy while he was training to be an officer, but things didn’t work out; he simply wasn’t her type (rich and snobbish and handsome). He dedicated the rest of his life to attaining wealth through bootlegging, but finds that social status is not so easy to acquire/ …show more content…
Daisy Buchanan: Nick’s cousin, Tom’s wife, and Gatsby’s longtime crush.
She was raised in Louisville; Long Island is not her native home. She said she would wait for Gatsby, but instead she married hunky and fabulously wealthy Tom Buchanan. The two now live in East Egg (old money), across the bay from Nick and Gatsby. In my opinion, she’s one of the most annoying, superficial, and stupid characters in the history of
literature.
Tom Buchanan: Daisy’s better half . . . not. He’s handsome and descended from old money; he’s also unfaithful. He has an ongoing affair with Myrtle Baker. He’s not even discreet about it. Then when he thinks Daisy and Gatsby are sneaking around behind his back, he flips.
Jordan Baker: Friend of Daisy and Nick’s sort-of girlfriend. She’s pretty, but not very nice.
George Wilson: Myrtle’s husband. He runs a second-rate auto shop at the edge of the valley of ashes. He idolizes Myrtle and is devastated by her affair and her tragic death.
Myrtle Wilson: Tom’s lover. Things don’t turn out that well for her.
Plot (Courtesy of shmoop.com) Our narrator, Nick Carraway, begins the book by giving us some advice of his father’s about not criticizing others. Through Nick’s eyes, we meet his second cousin, Daisy Buchanan, her large and aggressive husband, Tom Buchanan, and Jordan Baker, who quickly becomes a romantic interest for our narrator (probably because she’s the only girl around who isn’t his cousin). While the Buchanans live on the fashionable East Egg (we’re talking Long Island, NY in the 1920’s, by the way), Nick lives on the less-elite but not-too-shabby West Egg, which sits across the bay from its twin town. We are soon fascinated by a certain Mr. Jay Gatsby, a wealthy and mysterious man who owns a huge mansion next door to Nick and spends a good chunk of his evenings standing on his lawn and looking at an equally mysterious green light across the bay.
Tom takes Nick to the city to show off his mistress, a woman named Myrtle Wilson who is, of course, married. (Fidelity is a rare bird in this novel.) Myrtle’s husband, George, is a passive, working class man who owns an auto garage and is oblivious to his wife’s extramarital activities. Nick is none too impressed by Tom.
Back on West Egg, this Gatsby fellow has been throwing absolutely killer parties, where everyone and his mother can come and get wasted and try to figure out how Gatsby got so rich. Nick meets and warily befriends the mystery man at one of his huge Saturday night affairs. He also begins spending time with Jordan, who turns out to be loveable in all her cynical practicality.
Moving along, Gatsby introduces Nick to his "business partner," Meyer Wolfsheim. Everyone (that is, Nick and readers everywhere) can tell there’s something fishy about Gatsby’s work, his supposed Oxford education, and his questionable place among society’s elite. Next, Gatsby reveals to Nick (via Jordan, in the middle school phone-tag kind of way) that he and Daisy had a love thing before he went away to the war and she married Tom (after a serious episode of cold feet that involved whisky and a bath tub). Gatsby wants Daisy back. The plan is for Nick to invite her over to tea and have her casually bump into Gatsby.
Nick executes the plan; Gatsby and Daisy are reunited and start an affair. Everything continues swimmingly until Tom meets Gatsby, doesn’t like him, and begins investigating into his affairs. Nick, meanwhile, has revealed Gatsby’s true past to us: he grew up in a poor, uneducated family, and would in all likelihood have stayed that way had he not met the wealthy and elderly Dan Cody, who took him in as a companion and taught him what he needed to know. Yet it wasn’t Dan that left Gatsby his oodles of money – that part of his life is still suspicious.
The big scene goes down in the city, when Tom has it out with Gatsby over who gets to be with Daisy; in short, Gatsby is outed for being a bootlegger and Daisy is unable to leave her husband for her lover. As the party drives home to Long Island, Tom’s mistress, Myrtle, is struck and killed by Gatsby’s car (in which Gatsby and Daisy are riding). Gatsby tells Nick that Daisy was driving, but that he’s going to take the blame for it. Tom, meanwhile, feeds Gatsby to the wolves by telling George where to find the man that killed his wife, Myrtle. George Wilson shoots and kills Gatsby before taking his own life.
Daisy and Tom take off, leaving their mess behind. Nick, who by now is fed up with ALL of these people, breaks things off with Jordan in a rather brusque way. He is the only one left to take care of Gatsby’s affairs and arrange for his funeral, which, save one peculiar former guest, none of Gatsby’s party-goers attend. Nick does meet Gatsby’s father, who fills in the picture we have of Gatsby’s youth. Standing on Gatsby’s lawn and looking at the green light (which, not accidentally, turned out to be the light in front of Daisy’s house across the bay), Nick concludes that our nostalgia, our desire to replicate the past, forces us constantly back into it.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Novel
Characters:
Nick Carraway (narrator): Born in Minnesota, educated at Yale, and a former soldier in WWI, Nick goes to NYC to become a stockbroker. He’s approachable, and therefore often ends up as other characters’ confidant. Nick lives in West Egg (new money section of Long Island) next to the rich and mysterious Jay Gatsby, who has long been in love with Nick’s cousin, Daisy.
Jay Gatsby: His past is a mystery, but his parties are legen-(wait for it)-dary. We eventually learn through Nick (who becomes friends with deeply flawed but inherently likeable Gatsby) that he was born James Gatz, son of simple North Dakota farmers. He worked for a millionaire (Dan Cody), though, and got a taste for the high life. He fell in love with Daisy while he was training to be an officer, but things didn’t work out; he simply wasn’t her type (rich and snobbish and handsome). He dedicated the rest of his life to attaining wealth through bootlegging, but finds that social status is not so easy to acquire/ …show more content…
Daisy Buchanan: Nick’s cousin, Tom’s wife, and Gatsby’s longtime crush.
She was raised in Louisville; Long Island is not her native home. She said she would wait for Gatsby, but instead she married hunky and fabulously wealthy Tom Buchanan. The two now live in East Egg (old money), across the bay from Nick and Gatsby. In my opinion, she’s one of the most annoying, superficial, and stupid characters in the history of
literature.
Tom Buchanan: Daisy’s better half . . . not. He’s handsome and descended from old money; he’s also unfaithful. He has an ongoing affair with Myrtle Baker. He’s not even discreet about it. Then when he thinks Daisy and Gatsby are sneaking around behind his back, he flips.
Jordan Baker: Friend of Daisy and Nick’s sort-of girlfriend. She’s pretty, but not very nice.
George Wilson: Myrtle’s husband. He runs a second-rate auto shop at the edge of the valley of ashes. He idolizes Myrtle and is devastated by her affair and her tragic death.
Myrtle Wilson: Tom’s lover. Things don’t turn out that well for her.
Plot (Courtesy of shmoop.com) Our narrator, Nick Carraway, begins the book by giving us some advice of his father’s about not criticizing others. Through Nick’s eyes, we meet his second cousin, Daisy Buchanan, her large and aggressive husband, Tom Buchanan, and Jordan Baker, who quickly becomes a romantic interest for our narrator (probably because she’s the only girl around who isn’t his cousin). While the Buchanans live on the fashionable East Egg (we’re talking Long Island, NY in the 1920’s, by the way), Nick lives on the less-elite but not-too-shabby West Egg, which sits across the bay from its twin town. We are soon fascinated by a certain Mr. Jay Gatsby, a wealthy and mysterious man who owns a huge mansion next door to Nick and spends a good chunk of his evenings standing on his lawn and looking at an equally mysterious green light across the bay.
Tom takes Nick to the city to show off his mistress, a woman named Myrtle Wilson who is, of course, married. (Fidelity is a rare bird in this novel.) Myrtle’s husband, George, is a passive, working class man who owns an auto garage and is oblivious to his wife’s extramarital activities. Nick is none too impressed by Tom.
Back on West Egg, this Gatsby fellow has been throwing absolutely killer parties, where everyone and his mother can come and get wasted and try to figure out how Gatsby got so rich. Nick meets and warily befriends the mystery man at one of his huge Saturday night affairs. He also begins spending time with Jordan, who turns out to be loveable in all her cynical practicality.
Moving along, Gatsby introduces Nick to his "business partner," Meyer Wolfsheim. Everyone (that is, Nick and readers everywhere) can tell there’s something fishy about Gatsby’s work, his supposed Oxford education, and his questionable place among society’s elite. Next, Gatsby reveals to Nick (via Jordan, in the middle school phone-tag kind of way) that he and Daisy had a love thing before he went away to the war and she married Tom (after a serious episode of cold feet that involved whisky and a bath tub). Gatsby wants Daisy back. The plan is for Nick to invite her over to tea and have her casually bump into Gatsby.
Nick executes the plan; Gatsby and Daisy are reunited and start an affair. Everything continues swimmingly until Tom meets Gatsby, doesn’t like him, and begins investigating into his affairs. Nick, meanwhile, has revealed Gatsby’s true past to us: he grew up in a poor, uneducated family, and would in all likelihood have stayed that way had he not met the wealthy and elderly Dan Cody, who took him in as a companion and taught him what he needed to know. Yet it wasn’t Dan that left Gatsby his oodles of money – that part of his life is still suspicious.
The big scene goes down in the city, when Tom has it out with Gatsby over who gets to be with Daisy; in short, Gatsby is outed for being a bootlegger and Daisy is unable to leave her husband for her lover. As the party drives home to Long Island, Tom’s mistress, Myrtle, is struck and killed by Gatsby’s car (in which Gatsby and Daisy are riding). Gatsby tells Nick that Daisy was driving, but that he’s going to take the blame for it. Tom, meanwhile, feeds Gatsby to the wolves by telling George where to find the man that killed his wife, Myrtle. George Wilson shoots and kills Gatsby before taking his own life.
Daisy and Tom take off, leaving their mess behind. Nick, who by now is fed up with ALL of these people, breaks things off with Jordan in a rather brusque way. He is the only one left to take care of Gatsby’s affairs and arrange for his funeral, which, save one peculiar former guest, none of Gatsby’s party-goers attend. Nick does meet Gatsby’s father, who fills in the picture we have of Gatsby’s youth. Standing on Gatsby’s lawn and looking at the green light (which, not accidentally, turned out to be the light in front of Daisy’s house across the bay), Nick concludes that our nostalgia, our desire to replicate the past, forces us constantly back into it.