Gatsby Characters

The Characters: Summaries

Nick Carraway

Nick Carraway, the narrator. A young Midwesterner who was dissatisfied with his life at home, he was attracted to New York and now sells bonds there. He is the most honest character of the novel and because of this trait fails to become deeply fascinated by his rich friends on Long Island. He helps Daisy and Jay Gatsby to renew a love they had known before Daisy’s marriage, and he is probably the only person in the novel to have any genuine affection for Gatsby.

Jay Gatsby

Jay Gatsby, a fabulously rich racketeer whose connections outside of the law are only guessed at. He is the son of poor parents from the Middle West. He has changed his name from James Gatz and becomes obsessed with a need for making more and more money. Much of his time is spent in trying to impress, and become accepted by, other rich people. He gives lavish parties for people he knows nothing about and most of whom he never meets. He is genuinely in love with Daisy Buchanan and becomes a sympathetic character when he assumes the blame for her hit-and-run accident. At his death, he has been deserted by everyone except his father and Nick.

Daisy Buchanan

Daisy Buchanan, Nick’s second cousin. Unhappy in her marriage because of Tom Buchanan’s deliberate unfaithfulness, she has the character of a “poor little rich girl.” She renews an old love for Jay Gatsby and considers leaving her husband, but she is finally reconciled to him. She kills Tom’s mistress in a hit-and-run accident after a quarrel in which she defends both men as Tom accuses Gatsby of trying to steal her from him; but she allows Gatsby to take the blame for the accident and suffers no remorse when he is murdered by the woman’s husband.

Tom Buchanan

Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s husband. The son of rich Midwestern parents, he reached the heights of his career as a college football player. Completely without taste, culture, or sensitivity, he carries on a rather sordid affair with Myrtle Wilson. He pretends to help George Wilson, her husband, but allows him to think that Gatsby was not only her murderer but also her lover.

Myrtle Wilson

Myrtle Wilson, Tom Buchanan’s mistress. She is a fat, unpleasant woman who is so highly appreciative of the fact that her lover is a rich man that she will suffer almost any degradation for him. While she is with Tom, her pretense that she is rich and highly sophisticated becomes ludicrous.

George Wilson

George Wilson, Myrtle’s husband, a rather pathetic figure. He runs an auto repair shop and believes Tom Buchanan is really interested in helping him. Aware that his wife has a lover, he never suspects who he really is. His faith in Tom makes him believe what Buchanan says, which, in turn, causes him to murder Gatsby and then commit suicide.

Jordan Baker

Jordan Baker, a friend of the Buchanans, a golfer. Daisy introduces Jordan to Nick and tries to throw them together, but when Nick realizes that she is a cheat who refuses to assume the elementary responsibility of the individual, he loses all interest in her.

Meyer Wolfshiem

Meyer Wolfshiem, a gambler and underworld associate of Gatsby.

Catherine

Catherine, Myrtle Wilson’s sister, who is obviously proud of Myrtle’s rich connection and unconcerned with the immorality involved.

Mr. and Mrs. McKee

Mr. and Mrs. McKee, a photographer and his wife who try to use Nick and Tom to get a start among the rich people of Long Island.

Mr. Gatz

Mr. Gatz, Jay Gatsby’s father who, being unaware of the facts of Jay’s life, thought his son had been a great man.

Social Agency

Human agency is the capacity for human beings to make choices and to impose those choices on the world.

A social structure can refer to socioeconomic stratification (e.g., the class structure) or the way norms shape the behavior of individuals within society.

Written during the 1920s, The Great Gatsby offers a representation of American society at that time. We can consider the characters in terms of their social agency.

Social agency means how much power or capacity one has within a particular society or social structure. When we talk about agency, we are referring to the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. We can consider how particular factors (such as social class, but also religion, gender, ethnicity, subculture, etc.) seem to limit or influence the opportunities that individuals have.

Group TASK:

In groups (pairs), you will use the following questions to produce one page of notes on a character from The Great Gatsby, focusing in particular on issues of social position and power. Use the questions below to help structure your notes, and ensure you provide relevant examples to support your ideas.

Once complete, copy your analysis onto this shared doc

Group 1: Jay Gatsby

•Position in American society?

•What does Gatsby value?

•What are his aspirations? What drives this character?

•Does Gatsby hold social power? If so, where? Does this vary in some social stratas more than in others? Considering the question above, what is the source of his social agency?

•What is Gatsby’s ultimate fate? How does his narrative thread resolve? What is your group’s response to the way Gatsby’s tale ends?

Group 2: Tom Buchanan

•Position in American society? How does he view his place in society?

•What does Tom value?

•How does Tom treat others. Specifically:

•Daisy

•Gatsby

•Myrtle Wilson

•George Wilson

•What is the source of Tom’s social power? Consider his position in society, his background, his gender, his personal qualities, etc.

•What is Tom’s ultimate fate? How does his narrative thread resolve? What is your group’s response to this?

Group 3: Daisy Buchanan

•Position in American society?

•What does Daisy appear to value?

•How much power does she hold? What is the source of her power? Conversely, what are the factors that constrain her?

•How does Daisy’s narrative thread resolve? What is your group’s response to this?

Group 4: Myrtle Wilson

•What are Myrtle’s aspirations? What does she appear to value?

•Does she have any social power? If so, how? What factors constrain her?

•How does Myrtle’s narrative thread resolve? What is your group’s response to this?

Group 5: George Wilson

•George’s position in American society?

•How much social power does George hold? How are we invited to respond to George?

•How does George’s narrative thread resolve? What is your group’s response to this?

Group 6: Jordan Baker

• Position in American society?

• What group from the historical context does Jordan represent?

• How does Nick feel about her?

• How are we positioned to respond to Jordan at the end?

Group 7: Nick Carraway

• Position in American society?

• What does Nick value?

• What does Nick learn by the resolution of the novel? Do readers learn it with him?

• How are we positioned to respond to Nick? How might reader context affect our actual response?

Characters and Time

Fitzgerald’s characters are not only obsessed with time, they seem to embody it.

Tom Buchanan is obsessed with history, reading books like “The Rise of the Colored Empires” that offer historical explanations for his inability to rise above the life he lives. Tom is Old Money, hopelessly stuck in the past, trying to live up to his ancestors’ wealth by amassing his own. He can never recapture his youth, so he seeks to recreate the excitement of those days by having a mistress on the side.

Daisy, too, is stuck in the past, a pre-feminist remnant of an age in which women were expected to act “a certain way.” She tolerates Tom’s affair, and stands out in stark contrast to Jordan Baker’s contemporary “flapper” persona. Daisy is as confined as Jordan is liberated, and she can’t live a life without a man to run it for her. Her true complication comes when two opposite aspects of her past—Tom and Gatsby—compete for her affection. In each, she sees qualities lacking in the other. For a woman who is defined by men, her own definition of herself comes into question.

Myrtle Wilson seems to have a fairly solid definition of herself, and she and her husband George are fully in the present. Living in the Valley of Ashes, they can’t help but see the world as it is, as it goes by the windows of their garage. Myrtle is usually willing to put up with the complications of seeing a married man in exchange for the material possessions George can’t give her. However, when she complains in her “secret” apartment in the city, the past literally smacks her in the face. Presumably, George would never do that to her, devoted as he is. That devotion, and the reality of his situation, causes George to snap at the end of the novel.

Gatsby, of course, the victim of George’s misplaced rage, represents the future. His past is colourless and best forgotten; James Gatz got to where he is in the beginning of the novel by focusing on the future and building toward it, by any means necessary. He desperately wants to make Daisy part of his future (He is, after all, building it to share with her, which hopelessly entangles his past with his future.), but she can’t commit to his far-reaching vision. Gatsby’s world falls apart when he realises the future he envisions simply can’t happen.

Nick’s progression as a narrator provides a yardstick by which the other characters’ relationships to time can be measured. In the beginning, he is purely a product of his Midwestern past; by the time he acclimates himself to New York and meets Myrtle Wilson, he is very much in the present. At the end of the novel, Nick must reconcile his own future by returning to the site of his naïve past a wiser, more jaded person. Nick, in this sense, shares all the other characters’ perspectives of time, allowing us to watch time unfold.

Individual TASK: How does the construction of one or more characters help represent an idea about time?