• Nick Carraway – Both the narrator and the author of the story
• Mentions Gatsby briefly; states that although Gatsby represents everything he normally scorns, Nick exempts him from his usual judgements
• This is the first time that Nick differentiates
Gatsby from the other characters in the novel/everyone else he knows.

• East Egg v. West Egg / Old Money v.
New Money
• Nick meets Tom and Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker, although he does not realize that she is a famous golfer.
• Learns about Tom’s extramarital affair

• Nick and Tom go to the Valley of Ashes.
• Nick meets Tom’s mistress, Myrtle Wilson, and her husband, George.
• Nick, Myrtle, and Tom go to the apartment shared by Tom and Myrtle. Myrtle’s sister
Catherine and the McKees arrive at the apartment.
• Tom hits Myrtle after she repeats Daisy’s name.

• Nick attends a party at Gatsby’s after being personally invited.
• He sees Jordan Baker and spends his evening with her.
• Nick meets Gatsby for the first time.
• Gatsby sends a butler to ask Jordan to speak with him privately.

• Nick travels to New York with Gatsby.
• Gatsby tells Nick his history, which seems highly improbably.
• Shows Nick a picture of him at Oxford and a war medal
• Nick and Gatsby meet Meyer Wolfsheim, a very successful gambler.
• They see Tom Buchanan. Gatsby seems uncomfortable and disappears before Nick can introduce them to one another.
• Jordan tells Nick about the history between Gatsby and
Daisy and how he asked her to ask Nick to invite Daisy to tea.

• Nick comes home from a date with Jordan and talks to Gatsby, who appears very nervous about his request.
• After Nick agrees, Gatsby offers him an opportunity to make some additional money.
• Nick, Gatsby, and Daisy have tea together, then visit Gatsby’s house.

• Rumors about Gatsby begin to circulate.
• Nick interrupts the story to tell the reader Gatsby’s true personal history.
• Born James Gatz on a North Dakota farm; attended St. Olaf’s in Minnesota but dropped out after only two weeks because he hated the humiliating janitorial work that paid for his tuition; worked on Lake Michigan and met Dan Cody
(introduced himself to Cody as Jay Gatsby); fell in love with wealth and luxury after spending time with Cody and his peers; cheated out of his inheritance by Cody’s mistress; determined to become wealthy and successful

• Tom and Mr. and Mrs. Sloane talk to Gatsby at his house. Gatsby tells Tom that he knows Daisy.
• Gatsby seems nervous and agitated.
• Gatsby accepts the Mrs. Sloane’s insincere invitation to dinner. Tom comments about this to
Nick, expressing distaste for Gatsby’s lack of social graces and criticism of Daisy’s tendency to visit his house alone.
• Tom, Daisy, and Nick go to a party at Gatsby’s.
Tom keeps a careful eye on Daisy and expresses his dislike for Gatsby.

• Tom says that Gatsby’s money comes from bootlegging. Daisy defends him by saying that it comes from owning a chain of drugstores.
• Gatsby talks to Nick after the party and is unhappy because Daisy did not seem to enjoy it.
• Gatsby wants things to be exactly as they were in the past. He wants Daisy to leave Tom and tell him that she never loved him.

• Chapter 1
– “If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away…
No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.”
Nick describes Gatsby for the first time. This is the reader’s introduction to the character. Like a machine that registers earthquakes, Nick says that Gatsby seems to be more aware or receptive to life’s possibilities. He ends the quote by stating that not Gatsby, but the “foul dust…” that ends
Nick’s interest in such things.

– “She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said,
‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’”
Daisy is a product of her environment, which does not value intelligence in women (ex.
Tom’s tendency to be dismissive of her. She is not a fool, but recognizes the fact that there are benefits to not knowing anything (her husband’s infidelity, a boring marriage and life, etc.).

• Chapter 2
– “’Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!” shouted Mrs. Wilson. ‘I’ll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai-’
Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.”
Tom and Myrtle argue about her “right” to mention Daisy’s name. We see the extent of Tom’s brutality here, as well as the fact that despite his infidelity, he still holds Daisy on a higher pedestal than Myrtle.

• Chapter 3
- “He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.”
Nick’s description of Gatsby’s smile tells the reader a lot about Gatsby’s character, especially his charisma and ability to be theatrical. Fitzgerald deconstructs
Gatsby’s formulated persona as the novel progresses.

• Chapter 5
- “Almost five years! There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short his dreams—not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”
Gatsby has created an impossibly perfect image of
Daisy in his head.

• Chapter 6
- “The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long
Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.”
Nick uses a comparison of Gatsby to Jesus to shine light on Gatsby’s creation of his own identity. Gatsby transforms himself into the ideal he has envisioned.

- “’I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ventured. “You can’t repeat the past.”
‘Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!’”
Gatsby is certain that he can recreate his history with Daisy.