Objects/Places

Yale University: Both Tom Buchanan and Nick Carraway went to school here in the East while Gatsby claims he went to Oxford University in England.

West Egg: This is the west side of Long Island where Nick and Gatsby live. Although a wealthy area, it is the less fashionable section and the homes appear to be newer.

New York City: Nick works here in bonds. Tom took Myrtle to his apartment in New York. It was while driving home from the city that Daisy hit and killed Myrtle Wilson. Whenever they are bored, Daisy suggests that they all go to the city since Long Island has nothing exciting to do.

East Egg: This area is on the opposite end of Long Island across from West Egg. It is more distinguished and has more luxurious homes than West Egg. Daisy and Tom Buchanan live here.

Candles: Daisy hurts her hand before supper while extinguishing four candles burning outside, complaining that they spoiled her enjoyment of the sunset.

Rise of the Colored Empires: Tom constantly quotes information from varied sources, such as this book written by Goddard being about other races taking control of the world

The Saturday Evening Post: Nick frequently refers to the names of newspapers and books. Jordan Baker reads this newspaper aloud to Tom. Also mentioned later are the Town Tattle and the Tribune.

Green light: Gatsby stares out across Long Island Sound towards East Egg at this light burning at the end of Daisy's dock. Nick had watched him stretch his arms out as if to grab it.

Ash heap: Between the country setting of Long Island and the city scene of New York there is this sandy wasteland where there is a train station and only three buildings: a restaurant, George Wilson's gas station, and an empty one waiting to be rented.

Doctor T. J. Eckleberg: This is a billboard advertisement depicting a huge pair of bespectacled eyes staring out across the ash heap. Wilson later points to this saying, 'God sees everything' before going on his murderous rampage.

Gas station: George Wilson runs this business. On the way to New York Tom once came here with Nick to see Myrtle Wilson. Later in the summer they drive by to fill up Gatsby's gas tank on the way to New York. Myrtle's body is laid inside on a workbench after her death.

Puppy: Myrtle begs Tom to buy her a puppy while in New York. Later Wilson learns of her affair after discovering the dog collar Tom had bought for her pet.

Apartment: Located in the 'West hundreds' area of the city, Nick comes here with Tom and Myrtle to get drunk with the McKees. The space inside seems too small to fit the elaborate furniture in the room.

Shaving cream spot: Nick is preoccupied with a spot of shaving cream on McKee's neck. After the man is passed out from the alcohol, Nick wipes it off of the drunken man's neck.

Station wagon: Gatsby's station wagon is cream colored outside and green within, 'terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns' when he drives Nick to meet Wolfsheim in New York. Tom drives this car when Jay and Daisy take his coupe to New York, filling up for gas at Wilson's station. While driving this car back from New York, Daisy kills Myrtle.

'Gonnegtion': Wolfsheim speaks often about a business 'gonnegtion' or 'connection' although Nick declines his offer.

Swimming pool: Gatsby's swimming pool has not been used all summer. As autumn approaches and the leaves begin to fall, he decides to go to swim. Here Wilson shoots him to death while afloat on a raft and here his body is found, still floating in the water among the leaves.

Hopalong Cassidy: Henry Gatz carries this wild western book about cowboys with him that belonged to his son as a child. Inside Gatsby had written a daily schedule and listed plans for self-improvement. The book's pages are tattered and worn.

Minor Characters

Finnish woman: While Gatsby and Tom Buchanan have many servants to care for their homes, Nick has only this woman to cook and clean his ramshackle home on West Egg.

Baby: Called 'Pammy,' she is mentioned only twice although Daisy is her mother. When a nurse brings the child out, Daisy ignores the child's question about the whereabouts of her father, admiring how beautiful the girl is, just like her. She wishes only that her baby be a 'beautiful little fool' since Daisy thinks she has had such a hard life herself.

Catherine: Myrtle's sister, she seems possessive over the furniture in Tom's New York apartment and does not drink. On the night of Myrtle's death she is found to be in a drunken stupor and later denies any claims that her sister had been cheating on George after he shot Gatsby in a jealous rage and then shot himself.

Chester McKee: A photographer who attended Tom's little party in New York, McKee behaves according to some deep artistic insight, examining Myrtle's figure as potential for her to be one of his models. He ignores his wife when she offers advice, and bores Nick after taking him back to his own room to show him picture after picture that he has taken of scenes from New York and Long Island. He said he had been to one of Gatsby's parties.

Mrs. McKee: She claims to be quite happily married to her husband when Myrtle laments her own troubles. In admiring Myrtle's dress so much, the woman gives the dress to Mrs. McKee although it had been a gift of Tom. Mrs. McKee's husband, Chester, ignores her when she offers advice.

Owl Eyes: Bearing a pair of spectacles, he is found drunkenly muttering about the books in Gatsby's library. When a car's wheel breaks off after the party, he is the passenger in the car and appears later at the funeral already waiting for Nick's arrival. He expresses disgust that so few had come to bury Gatsby.

Meyer Wolfsheim: An older man about fifty years old, he recalls memories in his past and about business 'gonnegtions.' He involved Gatsby in shady business dealings to build up his wealth and supposedly fixed the World Series in 1919. He declines to attend the funeral since he has learned to show friendship when men are alive and not dead.

Klipspringer: A free boarder at Gatsby's mansion, he seems ungrateful by refusing to play the piano for Jay and Daisy, complaining that he's too tired. He is unable to attend Gatsby's funeral since he has to go to a picnic in Connecticut instead and asks Nick to mail him a pair of shoes he had left at the mansion. Disgusted, Carraway hangs up the phone without a response.

Dan Cody: Serving as a mentor in Jay's youth, Cody was a millionaire yachtsman whose inheritance was invalidated by a woman, Ella Kaye, and Gatsby was left only with the education this man had given him about how to live. A picture of Cody hangs on the wall in his mansion.

Ella Kaye: A love interest of Dan Cody, who invalidated Cody's last will in order to get the $25,000 Dan left as an inheritance to Jay Gatsby. Jay sees Ella as a simple gold digger, who patiently bided her time, but doesn't feel bitter about the money because he feels he gained so much in experience from Dan.

Biloxi: This man had fainted at Daisy's wedding due to the heat. Buchanan calls him a fraud since Biloxi had told Daisy he was president of Tom's class at Yale University. But Tom's class didn't even have a president.

Michaelis: This Greek man ran a restaurant near Wilson's gas station in the ash heap and comforts him after his wife is killed. Worried at hearing his irrational words, Michaelis had stayed with him at the garage until going home for a nap late at night. George then sneaked out across Long Island to find the man who killed his wife.

Henry C. Gatz: The father of Gatsby, Gatz talks about how great his son had been and how much potential he had. Jay had bought Gatz's house for him in Minnesota in spite of telling Nick that all of his family was dead. Although Gatsby seemed to be the least proud of his homely father, in the end it is this man who comes from halfway across the country to bury his son while Daisy, whom Gatsby had loved for five years, fails to appear.

Major Characters

Nick Carraway: A man in his late twenties originally from Midwest, he has moved East to Long Island's West Egg to start a new life working in bonds in nearby New York City. Having attended Yale University with Tom Buchanan before his service in the war, he continues to feel set apart from the luxurious lifestyle of these people in the East and after rejecting this way of life, moves back to the West. He turns thirty on the evening Myrtle Wilson is killed. Nick alone seems to care after his neighbor Gatsby dies and goes about arranging the funeral himself.

Jay Gatsby: Five years before moving to West Egg in pursuit of Daisy whom he has never stopped loving, Gatsby was sent off to Europe for the war, after which he claimed he had gone to Oxford University. Raised by a farm family in the Midwest like Nick, and also in his late twenties, he has earned his wealth from shady business dealings hoping that Daisy will take him back. He throws wild weekend parties throughout the summer for people whom he hardly knows although these end after Daisy expresses her distaste of them. His illusion of being a distinguished gentleman is shattered by a very jealous Tom Buchanan. Daisy is appalled although Gatsby refuses to give up the chase, waiting for her to call him until the very moment he dies.

Daisy Buchanan: A relative of Nick Carraway, this 'golden girl' was also from the West before moving to Long Island's East Egg with her husband Tom. She has always enjoyed luxury and had rejected Gatsby five years earlier due to his lack of wealth and shows a renewed interest only when he shows her the riches that he has come to earn. An unhappy person at heart due to her regrets about being married to Tom, it is she who kills Myrtle while driving Gatsby's station wagon. Afterwards she disappears from Long Island with Buchanan, failing to appear at the funeral. She has a baby daughter, Pammy, although she seems to spend little time with her.

Tom Buchanan: A big football star at Yale University, he had since continued to live off his Chicago-based family's wealth and married Daisy before travelling to France and then returning to the US and settling down in East Egg. He thinks himself to be an intelligent man, constantly babbling random facts he has read or heard, although he has few opinions of his own aside from the possessiveness he feels towards Daisy. At the same time, however, he sees no wrongdoing in having an affair with Myrtle Wilson; it is Tom who tells George Wilson that the car that ran into his wife had belonged to Gatsby, unaware perhaps that his own wife had been the driver.

Jordan Baker: A sportswoman, Baker is somewhat of a celebrity. Nick recalls how she had lied about moving a golf ball at a tournament years before but doesn't let this stop his pursuit of her. In the midst of Daisy, Tom, Myrtle, and Gatsby with their twisted love relationships, Jordan seems to be indifferent and set apart as does Nick. She offers comfort to him later although after Myrtle's death he becomes cold to her, completely disgusted with everyone in the East. Baker has been friends with Daisy for many years and remembers Gatsby from when he and Daisy first met.

George Wilson: A 'sick man' as Nick describes him, he operates a ramshackle gas station in the ash heap. Oblivious to his wife's affair until discovering the dog collar Tom had bought for her, he goes mad with rage and locks her inside, declaring that he is going to take her away to the Midwest. After his wife's death he goes crazy and embarks on a shooting rampage, killing Gatsby and then himself.

Myrtle Wilson: Desirous of wealth, she was heartbroken after learning that George had borrowed his wedding suit. Tom Buchanan offers her presents and fancy clothes when the two begin having an affair and she is hopeful that he will leave Daisy to be with her despite his excuses for not doing it already. Running into the street in front of the gas station to escape her maniacal husband, Myrtle is run over and killed by Daisy driving Gatsby's station wagon. Her battered body is laid upon a workbench inside the garage.

Author: Fitzgerald, F. Scott

Born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was raised by his father following the death of his mother; the two lived off her small inheritance. A distant relative of the writer of "The Star Spangled Banner," Fitzgerald's longtime dream to attend private school in the East became a reality in 1911, followed by his enrollment at Princeton University in 1913. Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby also was a man of the Midwest who had come East, as was Jay Gatsby.

Fitzgerald's Princeton years helped considerably in focusing his writing abilities although his academics were poor, and it was here that he began drafting sections of a novel called The Romantic Egoist. Leaving Princeton in 1917 to enlist in the military, without receiving a degree and after being placed on academic probation, he continued to draft his novel during his weekends off from army drill. Never stationed overseas, it was while at a country dance in Montgomery, Alabama that F. Scott Fitzgerald met a wealthy judge's daughter, Zelda Sayre and the two fell in love. However, due to his lack of money they were not allowed to marry until he could prove himself able to support her. After being discharged from the Army he headed north to New York City to start a meager advertising job until Zelda, upset at his failure to save enough money, broke off their engagement. Fitzgerald went into a drunken depression using borrowed money from his former classmates at Princeton and returned home to complete the novel he had been working on for years. It was renamed This Side of Paradise and was a tremendous success. He and Zelda were at last married in New York City in April 1920. Similar to Gatsby's quest for Daisy, Fitzgerald had invested all of his energies into earning enough money to marry a woman he had fallen in love with while in the military.

With all of this sudden wealth and fame, the two danced wildly at parties and immersed themselves in the social scene of the Twenties. A daughter, Francis Scott, called "Scotty," was born a year later and in 1924 the family of three moved to the French Riviera, travelling often to Paris and Rome, just as Daisy and Tom Buchanan had moved to Europe after the birth of their own daughter, Pammy. It was soon after arriving in Europe that The Great Gatsby was completed although its release in 1925 was not as great a success as had been hoped for.

It marked the beginning of a decline in Fitzgerald's career from which he would never quite recover.

In earlier years Zelda had functioned as his advisor and literary editor, yet signs of mental illness began to consume her followed by breakdowns in 1930 and in 1932, finally diagnosed as schizophrenia. Running out of money and Francis lacking a job, the Fitzgeralds moved back totheir estate, "La Paix" located near Baltimore, Maryland in time for the stock market crash in 1929. Zelda's illness became so bad that she required hospitalization for the remainder of her life. Fitzgerald's drinking increased, like that of the characters in his novel, and he eventually suffered a mental breakdown himself from 1935 to 1936, following the unsuccessful release of his third novel, Tender is the Night. Recovering somewhat, he took a scriptwriting job in Hollywood in 1937 where he lived in relative peace with a famous Hollywood gossip columnist, Sheilah Grahm. His fourth novel, The Last Tycoon, was left incomplete after Fitzgerald's untimely death in Hollywood caused by a heart attack on December 21, 1940. He was 44 years old.