Gatsby

 Fitzgerald originally intended the book to be called Trimalcho, after a freed slave in ancient Rome, who makes money.  It ended up as a modern morality tale about a poor boy who walks out on his impoverished family and re invents himself as a gentleman by becoming an officer in the Army and serving in the War.  He goes to Oxford for a short time and on his return to America, he makes a fortune.  However its clear that he has made his money by very dubious means, working with gangsters and the men who fixed the World Series in baseball, a shocking scandal at the time in America.  

He lives an extravagant life with vulgar loud parties and conspicuous consumption and hopes by befriending Nick Carraway that he can meet with and renew his affair with Daisy.  He does so, because Daisy is unhappy with Tom, who is unfaithful to her, and has never entirely forgotten Gatsby.. though her husband makes it clear that he thinks that Gatsby is vulgar and dubious...She is drawn back to Gatsby, and her attraction towards him is mingled with her materialistic desires.. He is now rich and glamourous as well as the man who has loved her.  

Nick is embarrassed to be embroiled in the affair but has grown fond of Gatsby, and wants him to be happy.  He is also drawn into a romantic flirtation with Jordan Baker even though he knows she is casually dishonest. 

Tom pursues his affair with Myrtle Wilson who lives with her husband, in a working class district near to the Gatsby house.  Myrtle is in love with him and desperate to get away from her dull husband but to Tom she is just an amusement.  Wilson becomes suspicious of his wife's behavior and to get away from him she rushes into the road.  She is knocked down by a car which doesn't stop.  Wilson is distraught at her death, he is a lonely man with no friends or family.. and loved his wife in his way.  Nick realises that the car that killed Myrtle was Gatsby's car and he finds out that Daisy was driving....

However Tom who is by now aware of his wife's relationship with Gatsby tells Wilson who owned the car.. He doesn't realize that Daisy was actually driving.  Wilson in a rage shoots Gatsby, and it is only then after his death that Nick finds out the details of Gatsby's past life, of how he came from a poor family, and got into crime and dubious behaviour to escape poverty.   Gatsby's elderly father turns up to see his dead son, but noone comes to the funeral although in the days of parties, there were hundreds of guests at the house.  Daisy seems to shrug off her affair with her lover and returns to her marriage to Tom.. 

Nick is shocked by  Tom and Daisy's indifference and carelessness, an illustration of Fitzgerald's maxim that the "very rich are different to you and me" because they can shelter from the consequences of their bad behaviour by using their money to protect them... and that as a result, they develop a callousness and lack of conscience.  He organises Gatsby's funeral, and is pained at the way that nobody turned up apart from old Mr Gatz, Gatsby's father...He feels that in spite of Gatsby's involvement in crime, he was at least capable of love for Daisy and was more generous than most of the people who hung off him.  He remembers Jordan's dishonesty and he decides to leave the East and go back West...where the old American values are still honoured.   

M/F