PLOT
Nick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn
about the bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but
unfashionable area populated by the new rich, a group who have made their fortunes too recently
to have established social connections and who are prone to garish displays of wealth. Nick’s next-
door neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby, who lives in a gigantic Gothic
mansion and throws extravagant parties every Saturday night.
Nick is unlike the other inhabitants of West Egg—he was educated at Yale and has social
connections in East Egg, a fashionable area of Long Island home to the established upper class.
Nick drives out to East Egg one evening for dinner with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband,
Tom, an erstwhile classmate of Nick’s at Yale. Daisy and Tom introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, a
beautiful, cynical young woman with whom Nick begins a romantic relationship. Nick also learns
a bit about Daisy and Tom’s marriage: Jordan tells him that Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson, who lives
in the valley of ashes, a gray industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City.
Not long after this revelation, Nick travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle. At a vulgar,
gaudy party in the apartment that Tom keeps for the affair, Myrtle begins to taunt Tom about
Daisy, and Tom responds by breaking her nose.
As the summer progresses, Nick eventually garners an invitation to one of Gatsby’s legendary
parties. He encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet Gatsby himself, a surprisingly
young man who affects an English accent, has a remarkable smile, and calls everyone “old sport.”
Gatsby asks to speak to Jordan alone, and, through Jordan, Nick later learns more about his
mysterious neighbor. Gatsby tells Jordan that he knew Daisy in Louisville in 1917 and is deeply in
love with her. He spends many nights staring at the green light at the end of her dock, across the
bay from his mansion. Gatsby’s extravagant lifestyle and wild parties are simply an attempt to
impress Daisy. Gatsby now wants Nick to arrange a reunion between himself and Daisy, but he is
afraid that Daisy will refuse to see him if she knows that he still loves her. Nick invites Daisy to
have tea at his house, without telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially awkward
reunion, Gatsby and Daisy reestablish their connection. Their love rekindled, they begin an affair.
After a short time, Tom grows increasingly suspicious of his wife’s relationship with Gatsby. At a
luncheon at the Buchanans’ house, Gatsby stares at Daisy with such undisguised passion that Tom
realizes Gatsby is in love with her. Though Tom is himself involved in an extramarital affair, he is
deeply outraged by the thought that his wife could be unfaithful to him. He forces the group to
drive into New York City, where he confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Tom asserts
that he and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could never understand, and he announces to his
wife that Gatsby is a criminal—his fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol and other illegal
activities. Daisy realizes that her allegiance is to Tom, and Tom contemptuously sends her back to
East Egg with Gatsby, attempting to prove that Gatsby cannot hurt him.
When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley of ashes, however, they discover that
Gatsby’s car has struck and killed Myrtle, Tom’s lover. They rush back to Long Island, where Nick
learns from Gatsby that Daisy was driving the car when it struck Myrtle, but that Gatsby intends
to take the blame. The next day, Tom tells Myrtle’s husband, George, that Gatsby was the driver of
the car. George, who has leapt to the conclusion that the driver of the car that killed Myrtle must
have been her lover, finds Gatsby in the pool at his mansion and shoots him dead. He then fatally
shoots himself.
Nick stages a small funeral for Gatsby, ends his relationship with Jordan, and moves back to the
Midwest to escape the disgust he feels for the people surrounding Gatsby’s life and for the
emptiness and moral decay of life among the wealthy on the East Coast. Nick reflects that just as
Gatsby’s dream of Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonesty, the American dream of
happiness and individualism has disintegrated into the mere pursuit of wealth. Though Gatsby’s
power to transform his dreams into reality is what makes him “great,” Nick reflects that the era of
dreaming—both Gatsby’s dream and the American dream—is over.