Book: The Great Gatsby
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Pages: 180
Date: 3/7/25
I wanted to read the Great Gatsby because I knew of it as an American classic. It was written in 1925 and the story takes place on two islands (West Egg & East Egg) off the coast of Long Island, NY over the summer of 1922. The book starts out as Nick Carroway, 29 years old, starts working as a bonds salesman in New York City in late May/early June. He rents a small house nestled between large mansions in West Egg and commutes to NYC by train for work. His second cousin once removed, Daisy, lives in East Egg with her husband Tom Buchanan – a well-built, former Yale football player from an enormously wealthy family. While Nick visits them for the first time, he meets their friend Jordan Baker, a very attractive young lady in her mid 20’s who is a semi-professional golf player. She is well known and sought after as a date by young men in the area, but she tends to spend a fair amount of time with the Buchanan’s and even dates Nick to a certain degree.
I learned the following from this book: Nick lives next door to Jay Gatsby – the Great Gatsby. Jay lives in an enormous mansion that hosts lavish parties catered by servants every weekend. Literally everyone who is anyone from a social point of view comes to the parties – mostly uninvited, but welcome by word of mouth. About halfway through the summer, Jay formally invites Nick to start coming to the parties. During this same time period, it becomes apparent that Tom Buchanan is having an affair with Mrs. Wilson, the wife of George Wilson, an unassuming man who owns the gas station and car repair shop between West Egg & NYC. Tom & Mrs Wilson only meet in NYC, so she has never met Tom’s wife or seen his car (this is important later in the story).
In mid-July, Jay eventually asks Nick to arrange a tea/meeting between him and Daisy without Tom present. We soon learn that Jay knew Daisy from five years previous, before he left for WWI. They dated briefly and he has never forgotten her. Later we learn that they had actually fallen in love, but she married Tom before Jay was able to return from France after the end of the war – partly due to the economic security & social standing that Tom had and Jay did not. Jay specifically rented the mansion to be across the bay from the Buchanans & near her so that he could “accidentally meet.” While he appears to be fantastically rich, we learn by the end of the book that he just recently became somewhat well-to-do as a bootlegging partner selling alcohol through East Coast drug stores. After the tea meeting, Jay and Daisy start spending more time together.
It is interesting to note that the story up to now occurred on pages 1-112. Page 113-162 take place over a 24-hour period that starts a few days after Daisy & Jay start spending time together – sometime in late August. At the beginning of this period, Jay, Nick & Jordan are having lunch at the Buchanans. Tom realizes that something is going on between Jay & Daisy. The women want to go into the city and convince the men to go. Tom takes Jay’s yellow car and the lovely Jordan rides with him while Jay, Daisy & Nick ride in Tom’s blue car. Tom stops at Wilson’s gas station to get gas. During a discussion, George tells Tom (they know each other because George is trying to buy a car from Tom) that he suspects his wife is having an affair & he has locked her in the upstairs bedroom while he determines what to do. His plan is to buy George’s car and move to the West as that is what Myrtle Wilson wants. While there, Myrtle looks out the window and sees Jordan with Tom and mistakenly believes that Jordan is Tom’s wife.
While in NYC, the rent a hotel suite to drink mint juleps and try to find a way to stay cool in the heat. During this time, Jay tells Tom that Daisy does not and has not ever loved Tom and only loves him. Daisy meekly agrees that this is true. Tom then says that he knows that Jay’s projection of wealth is a fraud and knows other secrets about him that show he may not be the man everyone thinks. Everyone is angry and they return to West Egg. This time Jay & Daisy are in his yellow car and Tom, Jordan & Nick are following in Tom’s blue car. When they get to the gas station, Myrtle has escaped the house and run into the road believing that it is Tom in the yellow car & she means to stop him so they can talk. The car hits and kills Mrs. Wilson and they keep on driving. Soon after, Tom in his blue car comes upon the accident and realizes that Myrtle is dead. George Wilson is inconsolable. Nick meets Jay and Jay then tells him that he had let Daisy drive the car back as it helped her to ease her mind. From a police point of view and if the information becomes public, it looks as if Daisy gunned down Mrs. Wilson with a car because she was Tom’s mistress – even though she did not know at the time that Tom was having an affair with her.
Jay is sulking outside the home of the Buchanans, waiting for Daisy to come down. Nick encourages him to return to his home, which he finally does about 4 am. When the Great Gatsby wakes up, he gets an inflatable air mattress to lounge in the pool. Now filled with rage, Mr. Wilson is following the road towards West Egg to track down who owns the yellow automobile. He learns from Tom that it is Jay, so he goes there and shoots Jay with a pistol.
The remaining 10% of the book just reveals more about Jay’s life, how he had become infatuated with Daisy, how he gained his money and how Nick was basically forced to arrange Jay’s funeral. The only friends that Jay had were the people who mooched off him for his parties, his illegal bootlegging contacts, Jay and the Buchanans. The morning after the accident, the Buchanans left the island, so they were gone. None of the former party-goers or illegal partners had any allegiance to Jay, so they did not help or attend at all. Only on the third day did Jay’s dad show up from Minnesota. They laid him to rest in a funeral on West Egg. As Nick leaves the island at the end of the summer, he thinks back about his own life experiences and how the super-rich were often careless people – smashing things and creatures and then retreating back into their money or vast carelessness – to let others clean up the mess they made.
I learned three lessons from this book that will help me with my prospective success after prison:
1) When Nick moved to West Egg, he had no friends. He only knew Daisy who was a distant relative and even they were not particularly close. He dated Jordan, but only a little bit. He was invited to Jay’s party halfway through the summer, but during his whole time on the island, he never became good friends with anyone. Jay may have been his best friend, but even then he did not really know the extent of Jay’s past or his previous relationship with Daisy. Jay’s friends were false friends in that they only tried to know him so they could attend his parties. His business associates were not his friends as they only sought to profit from him. To summarize, there were no real good friendships in this book – only loose or false friends. On a similar note, there is nothing like going to prison to find out who your real friends are as the false friends quickly fall to the wayside.
2) After Jay’s death, his attorney states the following as a way to indicate that he will not be attending Jay’s funeral: “Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead. After that, my own rule is to let everything alone.” I thought this was a very good statement. Several years ago, I stopped attending the funerals of people I know unless they were within my circle of very good friends as I totally agree with the above statement. What I do now, is wait six months after the funeral and visit the immediate family as everyone is now long gone after the funeral is over and it appears as if everyone has forgotton the recently departed. I take this time to tell a story or relate something positive about the person to his family to show how that person impacted me or left their mark and to simultaneously show that the person still exists in my memory and presumably others.
3) Jay was infatuated with the past and wanted to go back to the point where he met Daisy and continue life from there. It doesn’t work that way. I am sure that most inmates would like to go back to the point where they committed the crime, not do it and proceed with life from that point forward. Even I think of that from time to time. The important thing is to give up the past (you cannot change it) and focus your time & energy on the future, what you will do with your life in that future and how you can be an improved person in that future to help yourselves, your real friends and society in general.
This was a great book, an easy read and had a way of reaching the emotions of the reader. I only realized about halfway through it that I had seen the movie a couple of years ago. I had started watching it partway through the movie & did not watch it completely to the end. I never made the connection that it was the Great Gatsby that I was watching.
