Jessica Reed
English
February 19, 2013
Great Gatsby Essay
In “The Great Gatsby Mystery?” Anne Crow explores the mystery of how Jay Gatsby
truly died. Crow explores the possibilities surrounding the death of Gatsby and the possible
naiveté of Nick Carraway that just leads the audience to accept the apparent murder of Gatsby by
George Wilson. By looking at the circumstances surrounding Gatsby, Anne takes a deeper look
into the real possibilities and true murder scenarios that could have happened to Gatsby because
of his criminal past times. It is safe to say after searching for more evidence and looking beyond
just coincidence, that there is no way George Wilson killed Jay Gatsby, because in some way
Meyer Wolfsheim must have been connected and must have had something to do with it.
Crow begins the exploration of Gatsby’s death by explaining how impossible it really is
that Wilson actually killed Gatsby, and this suspicion is completely relevant. When thinking of
George Wilson you don’t think cold blooded killer, but rather a ghost like man. When describing
George Wilson Nick Carraway finds himself describing an empty man, “He was a blond,
spiritless man, anemic, and faintly handsome. When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into
his light blue eyes” (25). The emotionless, empty man did not seem to have the true anger streak
to actually kill a man but somehow he managed to become angry enough to actually walk for
miles just to find the man that supposedly killed his wife. How does someone with no spirit find
a way to kill somebody? Crow also brings up the matter of the gun that Wilson supposedly killed
Gatsby with. Where does this poor man who can’t even afford to have his own car or to buy a
train ticket manage to have a gun? He owns a car shop there is no personal cars to be found in his
shop, “The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car visible was the dust-covered wreck
of a Gord which crouched in a dim corner” (25). The man who does not even own a car
somehow gets his hands upon an expensive gun that somehow kept the mattress afloat in the
water, “the laden mattress moved irregularly down the pool” (162). There just is not any sense in
the matter that George Wilson killed Gatsby, at least with means of his own. The questions keep
on spewing and Crow majestically challenges the possibility of this entire event. The truth of the
matter is that there is really no plausible way that Wilson would be able to afford a gun. Even on
a streak of anger how after miles of walking would his anger sustain enough just for him to find
this man Gatsby. Not to mention the possibility of Tom Buchanan’s intervention in the entire
affair. The possibility that Tom Buchanan supplied the gun is so much more plausible in the
murder scheme, yet this still does not even get through every debate. At one point in the novel
Tom is brought into the equation but later in time after much time has passed. Nick sees him
somewhere and asks him a question about George Wilson. Tom replied, “I told him the truth. He
came to the door while we were getting ready to leave, and when I sent down word that we
weren’t in he tried to force his way upstairs. He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadn’t told him
who owned the car. His hand was on a revolver in his pocket every minute he was in the house”
(178). While Tom’s answer may seem like he did not give Wilson the gun you can never know
because he is a known liar, cheating on his lovely wife numerous times. It also is sketchy that
Wilson knew exactly where to find Tom’s home and that he was still so crazy after such a long
journey. Even if the mystery is solved that George Wilson actually did kill Gatsby, the real
mystery still lies in why investigators did not take a deeper look into this gun or the possibility of
Tom Buchanan as an accomplice to murder. They never looked into the gun itself or how George
Wilson found him and it was written off.
Crow then argues that since it is barely plausible that Wilson killed Gatsby, that there
must be reasoning to wonder who the real killers of Gatsby were. The evidence points to the
people surrounding Gatsby at the time, the servants. It was reported that the servants, at least one
of them did hear the shots, “The chauffer-he was one of Wolfsheim’s protégés- heard the shotsafterward he could only say that he hadn’t thought anything much about them” (161). Why did
the servants think nothing when they heard a shot? Whether or not they are trained to hear a
bullet it makes no sense why they would not draw attention to it while working under a new
master unless they just did not care or they had ulterior movements. West Egg and East Egg are
both places that seem pretty devoid of much woodland that might lead the servants to believe
that someone was merely hunting or it was an accidental shot. This leads to the suspicion that the
servants had something to do with the murder if they were not worried about hearing a shot. Or
you wonder why no one found Gatsby for so long and why the line was busy for so long when
Nick called. Maybe the servants were merely clarifying that Gatsby was dead and that they had
to take care of another man, possibly Wilson. Also note how it is suspicious that how Wilson
died was never discussed. As gruesome as it is, it makes no sense that George Wilson’s death
was never discussed further or investigated more. It was never spoken of whether he shot himself
or not. It was left as simply as, “It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the
gardener saw Wilson’s body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete” (162).
His body was left as just a little way off, nothing more detailed that let you knew it was
important at all. It was like that part was completely insignificant, when it should be one of the
most significant because if he did not commit suicide then the whole story is off. And even at the
time it might have been possible to discuss whether the trajectory of a bullet into his body
matched up to suicide. Even more interesting is why George Wilson killed himself so far away
from the body of Gatsby. It seems curious that he would walk away from the body or why he
would kill himself after the success he just had. There seems to be more and more room for
possible problems in this murder case. How did this man really die and why was it so easy to
blame George Wilson? The answer falls back on Meyer Wolfsheim and his trusty servants.
In the end, if George Wilson merely was just a pawn in this scenario then it must be true
that Gatsby’s underworld criminal occupations led him to his death and that George Wilson was
merely a cover up to a larger crime scandal. No one knew how Gatsby made his money so it
made sense for him to just disappear off the map for the exact same reasons, because of his
occupations. The connection to a possible criminal or mob death comes from the connection of
the servants to Meyer Wolfsheim, the criminal mastermind that created Gatsby as a secret
bootlegger. You wonder why these “close friends” and why Meyer Wolfsheim did not attend
Gatsby’s funeral if they are so close. It just doesn’t make sense. Meyer Wolfsheim himself states,
“When a man gets killed I never like to get mixed up in it anyway. I keep out. When I was a
young man it was different—if a friend of mine died, no matter how, I stuck with them to the
end. You may thing that’s sentimental, but I mean it—to the bitter end” (171). Maybe he doesn’t
want to come because he feels guilty about having the servants he loaned to Gatsby kill him. In
this scene he is depicted with teary eyes but that might only be because he is putting on an act.
The possibilities of this criminal mastermind are limitless considering how many connections he
had to Gatsby. Not only is Meyer Wolfsheim acting suspicious but things are heating up in the
criminal world. This is sensed when a connected of Gatsby’s calls from Chicago after his death
and says, “Young Parke’s in trouble. They picked him up when he handed the bonds over the
counter. They got a circular from New York giving ‘em the numbers just five minutes before”
(166). Something was going on in Gatsby’s world, and it seems that it could be something quite
important. If Meyer Wolfsheim found out and disliked it then maybe it was his motive in having
the servants kill Gatsby. The servants are the biggest possibility that Meyer Wolfsheim had
something to do with Gatsby’s death and not George Wilson. It seems possible that George
Wilson was just in the wrong place at the wrong time rather than being part of a murder that does
not even fit his profile.
Crow clearly goes through a possibility of events that rule out the murder that Fitzgerald
so messily lays out at the end of The Great Gatsby. You are presented a number of different
ideas and more concepts that shut out the possibility of Wilson’s actual killing of Gatsby and
shift to a criminal connection that killed Gatsby. The coincidence that saved Daisy from being
recognized for murder and saved the awful marriage of Daisy and Tom is a mystery still waiting
to be solved. The one real possibility lies in the pocket of Meyer Wolfsheim with his connection
to Gatsby, his servants, and his control of the police force. He could have easily murdered Jay
Gatsby, because like Gatsby says, “They can’t get him old sport. He’s a smart man” (73).
Works Cited
Crow, Anne. "The Great Gatsby mystery? Anne Crow explores the mystery of how Jay Gatsby
really died." The English Review Sept. 2009: 8+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17
Feb. 2011.
Fitzgerald, Scott F. The Great Gatsby. New York : Scribner and Sons, 2004. Print.