The Great Gatsby - Plot

Plot

The time is the summer of 1922 and the narrator is Nick Carraway, a Yale graduate and World War I veteran who takes a job in New York. He rents a small house on Long Island, next door to the mansion of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious millionaire who holds extravagant parties.

Across the bay lives his attractive second cousin Daisy with her rich husband Tom Buchanan, who was at Yale with Nick. They ask him to lunch, where he meets a girl called Jordan Baker, but the atmosphere is spoiled when Tom answers a telephone call from his mistress Myrtle.

She is the unhappy wife of George Wilson, who owns an unsuccessful garage in the Valley of Ashes on the outskirts of the city. Tom takes Nick to the flat in New York where he meets Myrtle and holds parties, but the atmosphere is spoiled when Tom hits her, breaking her nose.

Nick gets an invitation to one of Gatsby’s huge parties, which he attends with Jordan. Most guests seem to be uninvited and not to know their host, who keeps aloof. However he befriends Nick, taking him to lunch in New York with a business associate, a notorious gangster called Meyer Wolfshiem. There he reveals to Nick that he wants a meeting with Daisy. In 1917, though from a modest family and penniless, he had hoped to marry her but was sent to Europe to fight. Now he is rich, has bought a house near her and throws enormous parties in the hope she will attend.

Nick asks them both to tea, after which Gatsby shows them round his opulent mansion. Daisy, unhappy with the unpleasant Tom, is ready to revive her relationship with Gatsby. Daisy asks Gatsby to lunch at her house, together with Nick and Jordan. She then suggests that they all go into New York. Tom, Jordan and Nick get into Gatsby's car while Daisy and Gatsby follow in Tom's car. At Wilson’s garage, Tom stops to fill up and is told by an unhappy Wilson that he knows Myrtle has a lover.

The group goes to the Plaza Hotel, where Tom angrily confronts Gatsby over his relationship with Daisy and his criminal activities. Gatsby challenges Daisy to choose him, her first love, and to deny she ever loved Tom. She avoids both and, overwrought, begs to go home. Daisy sets off with Gatsby in his car, followed by the rest in Tom's car.

As Daisy passes Wilson’s garage, Myrtle runs into the road and, hit by the car, is killed. Daisy in panic drives on but Tom stops and finds the corpse. Back home, Tom and Daisy achieve a reconciliation, pack up and hastily leave. Having been told by Tom that Gatsby was to blame, Wilson finds Gatsby in his swimming pool, shoots him dead and then kills himself.

Nick is the only one left. He arranges Gatsby’s funeral, avoided by all his former friends, and attended only by his father. The old man tells Nick that his dead friend was a poor boy from North Dakota called James Gatz. Disgusted by the whole set-up and no longer interested in the unreliable Jordan, Nick gives up both his job and his house to return to his native Midwest.