The Great Gatsby Characters: Complete Analysis

Jay Gatsby was born James Gatz to unsuccessful farm people in North Dakota. At seventeen, he met Dan Cody, a wealthy copper mogul, and transformed himself from a penniless drifter into Jay Gatsby—a persona he created with 'a Platonic conception of himself.' He spent five years on Cody's yacht learning the manners and tastes of the wealthy, though he inherited nothing when Cody died.

Everything about Gatsby is performance. His Oxford education was five months in an army program. His wealth comes from bootlegging and association with Meyer Wolfsheim. His library contains real books with uncut pages—the appearance of culture without the substance. Even his speech is affected, calling everyone 'old sport' in an accent that seems to waver. He is the American Dream personified: the self-made man who made himself into something that isn't real.

Yet Fitzgerald makes Gatsby sympathetic despite his fraud. His dedication is genuine even if his methods aren't. He bought his mansion to be across the bay from Daisy. He throws parties every Saturday hoping she'll attend. When she finally does arrive, he's so nervous he nearly knocks over a clock—the man who controls everything can't control his emotions around the one person who matters.

Gatsby's love for Daisy is the engine that drives every action in the novel, but Fitzgerald carefully shows that Gatsby doesn't love the real Daisy—he loves the idea of her from 1917. When he met her in Louisville, she represented everything he wanted: wealth, beauty, social acceptance. He 'took her under false pretenses,' letting her believe he came from her social class. Their romance was real, but it was built on a lie.

Five years later, Gatsby has accumulated enough wealth to feel worthy of her. But Daisy has changed. She married Tom, had a daughter, became a different person. Gatsby doesn't want this Daisy—he wants the 1917 version. When Nick tells him 'you can't repeat the past,' Gatsby responds with genuine bewilderment: 'Can't repeat the past? Why of course you can!' This isn't romantic determination. It's a fundamental break from reality.

His dream of Daisy represents his larger dream of transcending his origins. If Daisy chooses him, it proves that a poor boy from North Dakota can become worthy of old money's highest prize. If she doesn't, everything he's built means nothing. That's why he can't accept her admission that she loved Tom too—it destroys the narrative that justifies his entire existence.

Gatsby dies as he lived—waiting for Daisy. After the car accident, he stands outside her house all night, 'watching over nothing.' Daisy is inside with Tom, probably not thinking about him. The next day, he waits by his pool—a pool he never used all summer—for her call. She doesn't call. Wilson arrives and shoots him.

The funeral crystallizes everything Fitzgerald has been saying about wealth and connection. Hundreds attended Gatsby's parties, but three people come to his funeral. Daisy doesn't send flowers. Klipspringer, who lived in Gatsby's house for months, calls only to ask about tennis shoes he left behind. Gatsby's father arrives from Minnesota, proud of his son's success, unaware it was built on crime and delusion. In death, Gatsby is exactly what he was before he invented Jay Gatsby: alone and invisible.

Daisy Buchanan occupies a complex position in The Great Gatsby. She is simultaneously a victim of her era's gender expectations and a participant in the careless destruction that defines the novel's wealthy class. Her famous voice is 'full of money'—not just pleasant but promising, hinting at old wealth, security, and belonging. When Gatsby hears it, he hears everything he wants. When Tom hears it, he hears what he owns.

Daisy married Tom Buchanan for security after Gatsby left for war. She waited for him initially—Jordan describes her clutching a letter from Gatsby on the eve of her wedding—but ultimately chose the certainty of Tom's wealth over the uncertainty of Gatsby's promises. By the time the novel opens, she knows Tom is unfaithful ('The best thing a girl can be in this world is a beautiful little fool'), but she tolerates it because divorce would cost her social standing. She's trapped, but it's a gilded cage she partly chose.

When Gatsby reenters her life offering passion and devotion, Daisy is genuinely moved. She cries over his shirts, overwhelmed by the life she could have had. But when forced to choose at the Plaza Hotel, she can't fully commit. She loved Tom once, and she can't deny it. Her inability to lie for Gatsby isn't weakness exactly—it's honesty at the worst possible moment. She won't rewrite history even though Gatsby needs her to.

Daisy's true character reveals itself after the accident. She kills Myrtle Wilson while driving Gatsby's car but doesn't stop. She lets Gatsby take the blame. She retreats into Tom's protective wealth and leaves town without attending Gatsby's funeral or even calling. Nick's devastating judgment—'They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money'—captures Daisy perfectly.

But Fitzgerald complicates easy condemnation. In 1922, a woman like Daisy had few real options. Divorce meant social ruin. Tom controls the money, the house, their daughter's future. Daisy's 'carelessness' might be survival instinct as much as moral failure. She can't afford to take Gatsby's side because Gatsby can't actually protect her—Tom can, and does. Fitzgerald shows her as both villain and victim, which is far more honest than making her purely one or the other.

Nick Carraway is The Great Gatsby's narrator, and Fitzgerald uses his perspective to create layers of meaning that extend far beyond the surface story. Nick claims his father taught him to withhold judgment, and he positions himself as a passive observer recording events. But this self-description is immediately contradicted by his narration—he judges Tom as brutish, Jordan as dishonest, Myrtle as vulgar, and the party guests as empty. He is one of the most judgmental characters in American literature while insisting he's not.

More significantly, Nick is not merely an observer. He actively facilitates the plot's central action: he arranges the reunion between Gatsby and Daisy, knowing Daisy is married and that Gatsby's intentions are to steal her from Tom. He then participates in covering up the affair, accompanies the group to the fateful Plaza Hotel confrontation, and after Myrtle's death, helps Gatsby maintain his vigil outside Daisy's house. Nick is complicit in everything while maintaining a posture of moral superiority.

This contradiction is Fitzgerald's commentary on a particular type of person: one who observes injustice, participates in enabling it, and then congratulates himself for having felt bad about it. Nick's 'honesty' is selective. He tells the reader what he wants us to know, in the order he wants us to know it, colored by his own biases and emotional investments.

Nick's admiration for Gatsby is the novel's most interesting bias. He tells us Gatsby 'represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn,' yet devotes the entire narrative to elevating Gatsby above everyone else. He calls Gatsby 'worth the whole damn bunch put together' despite knowing Gatsby is a criminal, a liar, and a man whose entire existence is built on delusion.

Why does Nick romanticize Gatsby? Perhaps because Gatsby's capacity for belief—however misguided—is the only genuine emotion Nick encounters in the East. Tom is cruel, Daisy is careless, Jordan is dishonest, the party guests are parasitic. Gatsby at least believes in something, even if that something is impossible. Nick, who came East hoping to find purpose and meaning, attaches himself to the one person who seems to have both, even though Gatsby's purpose is delusional and his meaning is self-created.

By the novel's end, Nick has become the keeper of Gatsby's story, the one person who saw both the dream and the reality and chose to remember the dream. His return to the Midwest represents a rejection of Eastern moral emptiness, but also an acknowledgment that he was never strong enough to change it—only to observe it and leave.