By F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

Setting and Context

The story unfolds during the summer of 1922 in Long Island, New York, at the height of the Jazz Age. The narrator, Nick Carraway, has moved from the Midwest to West Egg, a less fashionable area populated by the nouveau riche, while the old-money elite live across the bay in East Egg.

The Main Characters

Nick Carraway: A Yale graduate and World War I veteran who works in the bond business. He serves as both narrator and moral center of the story, observing the lives of the wealthy with both fascination and disapproval.

Jay Gatsby: Nick’s mysterious neighbor who throws extravagant parties every weekend in his enormous mansion. Despite his wealth and lavish lifestyle, he remains an enigma to his guests.

Daisy Buchanan: Nick’s cousin, a beautiful but shallow woman married to Tom. Her voice is famously described as being full of money.

Tom Buchanan: Daisy’s brutish, wealthy husband from an established family. He is arrogant, racist, and physically imposing—a former Yale football star.

Jordan Baker: A professional golfer and Daisy’s friend, who becomes romantically involved with Nick. She is cynical and dishonest.

Myrtle Wilson: Tom’s mistress, married to George Wilson, a gas station owner in the desolate area between West Egg and New York City known as the valley of ashes.

The Plot

Nick rents a small house next to Gatsby’s mansion and is immediately drawn into the wealthy world of East Egg through his cousin Daisy. At a dinner party at the Buchanans’, Nick learns that Tom is having an affair, which Daisy seems to tolerate unhappily.

Nick is invited to one of Gatsby’s legendary parties, where hundreds of uninvited guests drink and dance without even knowing their host. Eventually, Nick meets Gatsby, who is surprisingly young and charming, with an elaborate way of calling everyone “old sport.” Gatsby takes a particular interest in Nick, and through Jordan Baker, the truth begins to emerge: Gatsby and Daisy had a romance five years earlier before he went to war. Gatsby has spent the intervening years amassing a fortune through questionable business dealings for one purpose—to win Daisy back. He bought his mansion specifically because it is across the bay from Daisy’s home. The parties are merely an elaborate trap, hoping she might attend one.

Gatsby asks Nick to arrange a reunion with Daisy. The meeting is awkward at first, but their romance quickly rekindles. Gatsby shows Daisy his mansion, his possessions, his imported shirts—desperate to prove he is now worthy of her. Daisy is impressed and moved, and they begin an affair.

The Confrontation

Gatsby stops throwing his parties, no longer needing them to attract Daisy. On a sweltering summer day, the group—Tom, Daisy, Gatsby, Nick, and Jordan—go to New York City. Tom has grown suspicious of Gatsby’s relationship with his wife. In a suite at the Plaza Hotel, the tension explodes into confrontation.

Tom exposes Gatsby’s criminal connections and the shady sources of his wealth. He forces Gatsby to admit that Daisy loved him (Tom) and that she cannot simply erase their years of marriage. Daisy, caught between the two men, is unable to tell Tom she never loved him, as Gatsby desperately wants her to do. Tom, confident he has won, condescendingly allows Daisy to drive home with Gatsby.

The Tragedy

On the drive back, Daisy—driving Gatsby’s distinctive yellow car—strikes and kills Myrtle Wilson, who has run into the road. They don’t stop. Gatsby later tells Nick that he will take the blame to protect Daisy.

George Wilson, devastated and unhinged by his wife’s death, seeks revenge. Tom tells him the yellow car belonged to Gatsby. Wilson goes to Gatsby’s mansion and shoots him as he floats in his pool, then kills himself.

The Aftermath

Nick tries to arrange a funeral worthy of Gatsby, but almost no one comes—not the hundreds who attended his parties, not the business associates who made money with him, and certainly not Daisy and Tom, who have left town. Only Gatsby’s father, a few servants, and the mysterious “Owl Eyes” (a man Nick met at one of Gatsby’s parties) attend.

Nick learns the truth about Gatsby’s past: he was born James Gatz, the son of poor farmers, and reinvented himself as Jay Gatsby. His wealth came from bootlegging and other illegal activities, orchestrated with the help of the shady Meyer Wolfsheim.

Themes

The American Dream: Gatsby embodies both the promise and the corruption of the American Dream—the belief that anyone can achieve success through hard work, transformed into the pursuit of wealth by any means necessary.

Class and Society: The novel exposes the emptiness of the wealthy elite and the impossibility of transcending one’s social origins, no matter how much money one acquires.

Illusion vs. Reality: Gatsby’s entire life is built on illusions—his name, his past, and most tragically, his belief that he can recapture the past with Daisy.

Moral Decay: Beneath the glittering surface of 1920s prosperity lies corruption, infidelity, and spiritual emptiness.

The Ending

Disgusted by the carelessness and cruelty of Tom and Daisy—people who “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money”—Nick returns to the Midwest. He reflects on Gatsby’s unwavering hope and romantic readiness, even as he pursued an unworthy dream.

The novel ends with Nick’s meditation on Gatsby’s belief in the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock, representing his hopes and dreams. Despite his tragic end, Gatsby’s capacity for hope and his commitment to his dream—however misguided—give his life a nobility that the morally bankrupt Buchanans will never possess.

This masterpiece captures the allure and ultimate hollowness of the Jazz Age, using Gatsby’s doomed love story to explore the darker side of American ambition and the impossibility of recapturing the past.