The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
The Great Gatsby Characters
Nick Carraway
- “Nick is considered quite reliable, basically honest, and ultimately changed by his contact with Gatsby.” -
David O’Rourke
- Chapter 1:
o About his tolerance: “I come to the admission that it has a limit.”
o “My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three
generations.”
o Educated – “I graduated from New Haven.”
o Not interested in gossip – “To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing” but
not to him.
- Chapter 2:
o “I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”
- Chapter 3:
o “I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited.”
o Voyeur – “I liked to […] pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes
I was going to enter into their lives, and no would ever know or disapprove.”
o About Jordan: “I wasn’t even in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.”
o Dates multiple women, including Jordan but has a “tangle back home”
o Describes it as a “vague understanding” but leading other girl on – “writing letters once a week and
signing them: ‘Love, Nick’”.
o Immediately follows this by saying “I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.”
- Chapter 4:
o “Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge” – he thinks after seeing a white chauffer
with black passengers.
o About Mr Wolfshiem: “a small, flat-nosed Jew” / “his tiny eyes” – antisemitic.
- Chapter 6:
o “I had merely grown used to it, grown to accept West Egg as a world complete in itself, with its own
standards” – Nick has changed and dirtied himself by associating himself with Gatsby.
Daisy and Tom are uncomfortable – Nick opened the novel at a similar social standing to them.
o Nick: “You can’t repeat the past.”
- Chapter 7:
o In Chapter 7, Nick goes to help a woman who has dropped her pocket-book and “every one nearby,
including the woman, suspected me” of trying to steal it. (Nick has been in Gatsby’s presence a lot.)
o “I was thirty.” – Fitzgerald was 29 when writing.
o Jordan: “Come in.” / Nick: “No, thanks.” – Rejects invitation – no longer withholding judgement.
o “I’d be damned if I’d go in.”
- Chapter 8:
o Nick: “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”
o “It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end.”
- Chapter 9:
o Nick imagines Gatsby says: “Look here, old sport, you’ve got to get somebody for me. You’ve got to
try hard. I cant go through this alone.”
o “I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all – Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I,
were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly
unadaptable to Eastern life.”
o Jordan: “I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person.”
o Nick: “’I’m thirty,’ I said. ‘I’m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honour.’”
Jay Gatsby
- “I find Gatsby aesthetically overrated, psychologically vacant, and morally complacent” – Kathryn Schulz
, - “Gatsby epitomises the self-made man” – Sarah Churchwell
- “Gatsby is a mythic character” – Marius Bewley
- Chapter 1:
o Nick: “Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.”
o Nick – he had “some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life”
o Nick: “romantic readiness”
o His house implies he wants to mimic aristocratic European style – “a factual imitation on some Hotel
de Ville in Normandy”
o First appears alone as a shadowy “figure” – silhouette implies something missing – hollowness.
o Reaching out for an unattainable dream – “he stretched out his arms towards the dark water”.
- Chapter 2:
o Catherine: “Well, they say he’s a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm’s. That’s where all his money
comes from.”
o Catherine: “I’m scared of him.”
- Chapter 3:
o “his guests”/”his raft”/”his beach”/”his two motor-boats”
o Gave a “Two hundred and sixty-five dollars” dress to a girl who tore her own dress.
o Guest: “He doesn’t want any trouble with anybody.”
o Lucille: “he was a German spy during the war.”
o “the romantic speculation he inspired”
o “This fella’s a regular Belasco.” - Producer famous for the realism of his sets
o The party itself is a kind of elaborate theatrical presentation (fitting for “The Great Gatsby” – like a
stage name/Houdini etc.)
o First words are said “politely”.
o We first meet Gatsby as an unnamed kind soldier before he reveals who he is – throughout the book
we see that Nick was initially correct in his mistake and that there are two identities to Gatsby.
o “one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it”
o Jordan: “He’s just a man named Gatsby.”
o Jordan: “Anyhow, he gives large parties” – all that matters.
o Again, “standing alone” and “not drinking” – out of place at his own party.
o Butler: “Philadelphia wants you on the phone, sir.” – Link to the last interrupting phone call – Myrtle
to Tom – sets Gatsby apart.
- Chapter 4:
o Gatsby showing off his car: “It’s pretty, isn’t it, old sport?”
o “he had become simply the proprietor of an elaborate road house next door.”
o “So he was aware of the bizarre accusations that flavoured conversation in his halls.”
o “I knew why Jordan Baker had believed he was lying.”
o “What part of the Middle West?” I inquired casually. / “San Francisco.” / “I see.”
o “The very phrases were worn so threadbare that they evoked no image except that of a turbaned
‘character’ leaking sawdust at every pore as he pursued a tiger through the Bois de Boulogne.”
o Gatsby: “but I seemed to bear an enchanted life.”
o Dismisses a police officer by – “he waved it before the man’s eyes.”
o Jordan: “Gatsby brought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay.”
o Jordan: “He wants her to see his house” – thinks he can win her over with wealth.
o “he says he’s read a Chicago paper for years just on the chance of catching a glimpse of Daisy’s
name.”
- Chapter 5:
o Tactless: “you don’t make much money, do you?”
o Gatsby offers Nick an opportunity for money in exchange for setting him up with Daisy – suggests
this is a transaction, closer to a pimp and prostitute relationship then a fairy-tale romance.
o “strained counterfeit of perfect ease”
o Terrified to meet Daisy again after all these years.
o “’My house looks well, doesn’t it?’ he demanded.”
