The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Summary

Read the entire book in brief

The book The Great Gatsby is published in 10^th April 1925. The story revolves around two places namely West Egg and East Egg in New York.

Character Analysis

The narrator of the story is Nick Carraway who is brought up in Yale. He moves to New York for his career purpose. Nick has the work on bond business.

Nick rents a house and starts staying there. He visits his sister named Daisy. She stays with his husband Tom. Her husband is a former football player.

There Nick meets with a beautiful lady named Jordan Baker. The lady is a bit introvert but in the after time, Nick builds an affair with the lady Jordan.

The Affair

Jordan informs Nick about the relationship Tom holds with another woman named Myrtle Wilson even if he is married with Nick’s sister Daisy. Myrtle is also a married woman. She is married to George Wilson who is unaware of the affair of his wife with another man. Through Jordan, nick discovers the illegitimate relationships of Tom and Myrtle.

Tom comes back to his house which is situated in West Egg which is a town in New York.

Main Character

Then the main character of the story comes to the picture. His name is Jay Gatsby. He too lives in New York and he is a wealthy, rich person. Gatsby was born in North Dakota. He was raised by a person named Dan Cordy. Every weekend, he arranges a party in his Ostentations Gothic Manson in New York and invites every rich personality in the area.

It is suspected that Gatsby has an illegal business of liquors. Nick visits Gatsby in the party he organized one of the weekends and meets him for the first time.

In the same party, Gatsby tells Jordan about the relation of him with the daisy, the intensity of his love for her. Jordan informs the same information to her lover Nick. After few days Gatsby visits Nick’s house and invites him for lunch to his mansion. He accepts the proposal and goes to Gatsby’s place for lunch.

Gatsby and Daisy

During the lunch time, Gatsby introduces Nick to Mayor Wolfshein who is a business associate and is wealthy enough to be friends with Gatsby. Nick can be profited from Mayor as he might help in his business. But Mayor is a criminal. Gatsby asks Nick to fix a meeting with Daisy. He agrees with him and one fine day they meet.

They build a relationship while the meet and starts the bonding once again. Another fine day Daisy invites Gatsby and Nick to her house. Daisy now knows the affair of his husband and another woman Myrtle. He invites Gatsby to make Tom feel jealous of Gatsby being close to Daisy. Tom guesses the fact of the affair between his wife and Gatsby.

Hurt Gatsby

From here Tom takes everyone to a city and they together visit a plaza. In it, an argument comes up between Tom and Gatsby regarding Daisy. Tom tells Gatsby that Daisy does not love Gatsby rather she loves him. To this Gatsby reacts and they ask Daisy whether she loves Tom or Gatsby. Daisy without any hesitance replies that she loves Tom. Gatsby is flabbergasted to the response of Daisy and is heartbroken. Then he takes an oath to never visit Daisy or ask her to love him. He takes his steps back.

Tragedy

Tom being a villain asks daisy to go home in Gatsby’s car. Gatsby sees in daisy’s eyes that she is quite disturbed and hesitant still goes with him. So he asks her to drive the car (yellow-coloured). While driving Daisy kills Myrtle. She knocked her by the car.

Everyone thought that Gatsby killed Myrtle because he drove the car when they left the Plaza. Nick advises Gatsby to drive back to his own city. Now the husband of Myrtle has lost his mind after the death of his wife.

Tom puts allegation in the name of Gatsby that he killed George’s wife. George gets agitated after listening to this and without a second thought leaves his home to kill Gatsby. He shots Gatsby and put him into death bed. After he realizes he murdered a person, he commits suicide.

Daisy and Tom elopes away from the town. Nick gets to know from Tom that he informed George about Jay being guilty of the car murder which was a lie. It is saddening that very few people came to the funeral of Gatsby.

Finally Nick thought about the greatness of the Gatsby. His greatness is the truth.

Life Lesson from the Great Gatsby

You can’t let the events of your past negatively affect your future.

Jay is a guy who is rich and has a big house. What is the grief in his life? He had everything but he became a little lonely. In the past years he was happy with daisy. When they were together, life was good until Gatsby had to go for the struggle and meanwhile Daisy decided to marry Tom.

After he got the news of her marriage he decided to take her from him anyway. This decision affected his life and his life got ruined anyway. Tom was a jerk to daisy and he also cheated on her still Daisy chose to live with Tom, with her husband.

There was no way; Gatsby could take a wife away from her husband. He should not have interfered. He kept in his mind that daisy and him once were a thing and they were supposed to be together for the lifetime which was a wrong thought of him.

Therefore, you can’t let the events of your past negatively affect your future. This is one of the life lessons one learn from the story.