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Mind Map
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Chelsey Swann
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AS - Level English literature (The Great Gatsby) Mind Map on The Great Gatsby - Characters, created by Chelsey Swann on 20/04/2016.
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english literature
the great gatsby
as - level
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Chelsey Swann
over 8 years ago
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5197214
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2016-12-04T00:32:08Z
The Great Gatsby - Characters
Daisy Buchanan
Jay Gaysby
Tom Buchanan
Nick Caraway
Nick calls himself "one of
the few honest people that
I have ever known"
(3.170), but that doesn't
mean he's very nice. Nick
may be polite and easy to
get along with on the
outside, but he's not afraid
to tell it like it is. Nick still
seems to see himself as a
good Midwestern boy with
high standards for everyone
he meets, including himself,
and prides himself on
maintaining his standards,
even in the corrupt,
fast-moving world of East
coast high society.
Nick gradually gets sucked
into the world he's
observing, both through his
friendships with Tom, Daisy,
and Gatsby, and through his
romantic relationship with
Jordan. The deeper he's
drawn into these
relationships, the less honest
he becomes – until at the
end, Jordan rebukes him for
being just as dishonest and
careless as the rest of them
Nick realizes he's being drawn into a
dishonest lifestyle, and that's what makes
him scurry back West. Right after Jordan
calls him a "bad driver," he tells her, "I'm
thirty … I'm five years too old to lie to
myself and call it honor" (9.135). But
what is Nick lying about? That he loves
her? That he belongs in this world? That
Tom and Daisy are living acceptable
lives? It's not entirely clear. What is clear
is that this crazy summer has jolted Nick
back into real life. He's not cut out for a
world of moral ambiguity.
As a rural farm boy growing up in North
Dakota without connections, money, or
education, Jimmy Gatz had a plan: he was
going to escape his circumstances and
make a name for himself. And, luckily, his
dad has saved his plan.
James Gatz believed in the American Dream. He
believed that you really could work your way up
through hard work, resolve, and self-control—just
like another young, impoverished boy who made
schedules: Ben Franklin. Ben Franklin's
autobiography contains a suspiciously similar daily
agenda. And notice that young James—like Mr.
Franklin—was interested in electricity and
inventions? The problem, as Gatsby (no longer
Gatz) learns, is that it doesn't actually work that
way. The American Dream is just that—a dream. All
that hard work and discipline only earned him
ill-gotten gains, and it set him on the path to
untimely death.
Jimmy Gatz died the moment he rowed
up to Dan Cody's boat. A new man was
born – Jay Gatsby. Like Nick, we're
skeptical of him at first. When we meet
him, Jay Gatsby is a man with a lot of
money, a lot of acquaintances, and very
few friends; the rumors that circulate
around him make him out to be some
kind of mysterious superhero or
supervillain.
Daisy's voice makes her sound
untouchable. Nick thinks of it as "full of
money," and that it sounds like it belongs
to someone who lives "high in a white
palace, the king's daughter, the golden girl
[…]" (7.99). You know, the prom queen, the
sorority president, the pageant winner:
exactly the kind of girl that neither Gatsby
nor Nick would ever have a chance with.
But Tom does. And Daisy may marry him
at first because she feels like she has to,
but she does end up falling in love with
him. (Or at least lust.) Jordan clues us in: If
he left the room for a minute she'd look
around uneasily, and say: "Where's Tom
gone?" and wear the most abstracted
expression until she saw him coming in the
door. She used to sit on the sand with his
head in her lap by the hour, rubbing her
fingers over his eyes and looking at him
with unfathomable delight. (4.143)
One of the things Gatsby and Daisy share is
an idealized image of their relationship, a
rose-colored view makes everything in the
present seem dull and flat in comparison.
She longs for the innocent period of her
"white girlhood," before she was
forced/forced herself into her marriage to
Tom.
Daisy may be a married woman with a child, but she doesn't
seem like she's managed to grow up very much. She can't live
with the consequences of her actions, trying to (drunkenly)
change her mind on the night before her wedding (4.120), and
then being unable to make up her mind between Tom and
Gatsby: "I did love him once," she says, "but I loved you too"
(7.266).
He's a: sturdy, straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth
and a supercilious manner. Two shining, arrogant eyes had
established dominance over his face, and gave him the appearance
of always leaning aggressively forward … you could see a great pack
of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It
was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body. (1) But
Nick is also fascinated with Tom. He probably can't help it; like
Daisy, Tom is a fascinating kind of guy. Like Daisy, he's got
something that everyone else wants: he's got power.
Tom's family is rich. Really rich. Not well-to-do like Nick's family, and not nouveau riche like Gatsby,
but staggeringly wealthy, with money going way back. (Or as far back as any money in America
goes, anyway.) And he does extravagant, crazy things with it, like bringing "a string of polo ponies
for Lake Forest" (1).
In his own way, Tom is just as flashy as
Gatsby. But everyone somehow knows that
Gatsby's a newcomer. Tom, on the other
hand, has something you can't buy. You might
call it "breeding," but that sounds weird and a
little racist, or even eugenicist. So, we're going
to call it "arrogance": the absolute conviction
that, thanks to money and family, he was
born to inhabit a certain world; to marry a
certain type of woman; and to receive
homage from, well, pretty much every other
man he encounters.
Jordan Baker
Jordan is a golfer—a professional golfer.
Already, we know she's different from Daisy.
Where Daisy is always fluttering and babbling
and giggling and basically acting like a dumb
girl (her words, not ours), Jordan is hard,
direct, and cynical. And she's bored to tears.
We don't know much about her family, except
that she has "one aunt about a thousand
years old" (1.137), but we know that she and
Daisy spent their "white girlhoods" together
(1.140). Given the looks that Daisy and Tom
give each other, we suspect that she might not
be so "white" (as in, pure) anymore.
George Wilson
Myrtle Wilson
Wilson is hard-working and not cheating
on his spouse. He's in a marriage with a
woman who doesn't love or respect him,
who walks through him as though he's a
ghost; and meanwhile he just does what
she says: "'Oh, sure,' agreed Wilson
hurriedly" (2.15)
Myrtle and Gatsby have one thing in common: they're
both trying to rise above their station. Like Gatsby,
Myrtle isn't happy with the class she was born to. She
insists that she married beneath her, and she tries to
talk about the "lower orders" as though she's not one
of them: "I told that boy about the ice." Myrtle raised
her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the
lower orders. "These people! You have to keep after
them all the time" (2.69). So, what makes Gatsby and
Myrtle different? Gatsby is a tragic hero, while Myrtle,
in Fitzgerald's portrait, is a ridiculous fool. Is it that
Gatsby strives out of love, while Myrtle does it out of
greed? Or is it simply because Gatsby is a man—and
Myrtle had the tragedy of being born a woman
After Myrtle's death, Wilson is in serious emotional
pain. He cries out "Oh, my God" over and over—but
because his wife is dead? Because he just found out
she was having an affair? Or because he feels guilty
for making her run out into the street? The other
thing to note about Wilson is that he's the only
character who talks about God. He tells Myrtle that
she "can't fool God," that "God sees everything"
(8.105).
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