Characters

Nick Carraway: The narrator of Fitzgerald’s novel and, in a manner, the stage manager of the musical, he is a Midwesterner who comes East to work in the bond market and who rents a small summer cottage in West Egg adjacent to Gatsby’s sprawling mansion. By an innocuous invitation to one of Gatsby’s weekend parties, he is drawn into a ‘passion play’ involving the five main characters─Gatsby, Tom, Daisy, Wilson and Myrtle─and bears witness to the chivalrous, adulterous, homicidal and suicidal events of that fateful summer. Though he is initially cynical and suspect of Gatsby, by play’s end he emerges as his staunchest champion.

Jay Gatsby: His odd-sounding name almost synonymous with his ethereal existence, his entry into Long Island society is shrouded in mystery. Seemingly possessed of unlimited wealth, yet unable to buy himself into Old Monied East Egg society, his mansion, speedboat, yellow coupe and profligate Saturday night bacchanals trigger scandalous rumors of espionage, homicide and bootlegging while cloaking the real reason for his arrival to West Egg: his desire to regain the debutante he fell for when he was an officer candidate at Camp Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky: Daisy Buchanan. Daisy being his Grail, Gatsby is determined to undo the actions that have occurred when he was fighting in the Great War─most prominently, her marriage to wealthy socialite Tom Buchanan─and resume their relationship as if nothing happened in the period of his absence.

Daisy Buchanan: Like the beautiful but delicate flower after which she is named, she is truly in love with Gatsby but, in his absence, proves herself ever the pragmatist by marrying Tom Buchanan, an Old Money product of Yale who courts her with a $300,000 pearl necklace and the promise of a well-to-do lifestyle. Gatsby’s later observation that “Her voice is full of money” hints at his cognizance of the superficiality of her nature, her tendency to opt for wealth and security over wealth and love, but his undying devotion has put her on a pedestal and shaped her into something she is not. His decision to take the fall for her after she runs down Myrtle Wilson, her husband’s mistress, in Gatsby’s car is ultimately a noble action wasted upon an individual who does not deserve it, who, lacking the strength to leave her husband and the Old Money security he offers for the unflagging devotion of Gatsby, disappears to Europe, not even attending the funeral of the man she truly loved.

Tom Buchanan: A wealthy Midwestern Old Money socialite, he comes East with his wife Daisy and settles into the affluent and exclusive Long Island neighborhood of East Egg. A former football star on an All-American level, he is an imposing physical presence and a notorious philanderer, his cheating with other women commencing as early as his honeymoon and being so addictive that he later misses the birth of his own child. His latest affair is with Myrtle Wilson, the smoldering wife of a nearly destitute garage owner, the proprietor of the station at which Tom regularly stops on his drives into New York City.

George Wilson: Owner of a rundown and unprofitable gas station and repair shop, Wilson personifies the failure of the American Dream. His one pump station overshadowed by new and fancier corporate ventures, he is an anachronism who is gradually being squeezed out of existence. He is also quite naïve, and though he gradually begins to suspect his wife may be fooling around behind his back, he is oblivious to the fact that she is carrying on a clandestine affair with one of his few customers, Tom Buchanan. Hoping to sell his business and move West where he might attain a better life, he is hoping to buy an automobile from Tom on the cheap to fix it up and perhaps turn into a profit. Sadly, both his financial and marital horizons are bleak, and he is essentially the anti-Gatsby, a Sisyphus continuously flattened by the boulder he is pushing.

Myrtle Wilson: Wife to the hapless gas station proprietor George Wilson, she is perpetually dissatisfied with her husband and her lowly lot in life. She is a sexually charged creature who, through her affair with Tom Buchanan, is exposed to a higher standard of living than the one she currently enjoys. Like her hapless husband, she too is delusional, believing that Tom will leave his wife Daisy for her, failing to realize that she is just another one of his sexual conquests and, hence, disposable.

Meyer Wolfsheim: A minor character who is loosely based on real-life mobster Arnold Rothstein whose shadowy past, according to Gatsby, includes fixing the 1919 World Series. Though only featured in one scene, he provides a window into the underground Prohibition-era world of speakeasies, bootlegging, and gambling, providing some back-story into Gatsby’s rags-to-riches ascendance.

Jordan Baker: Professional golfer and Daisy’s confidante and friend, she is an attractive, Artemis-like figure who flirts with the narrator Nick Carraway while keeping him at arm’s length. She has been accused of “changing her lie” in a recent tournament─essentially moving her ball to obtain a more favorable spot─though she denies this. Nevertheless, this accusation calls into question her character, suggesting she will do whatever it takes to win, even cheat. A foil for Daisy, she is another woman trapped in a man’s world as their duet “Mirror, Mirror” clearly reveals.