The Mysterious Gatsby

In the novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, we know that Gatsby, the main character, is a mysterious man who doesn’t seem to show much personal growth throughout this book. Although, we do learn a lot about him through what the other characters reveal. We learn many different things about Gatsby through these rumors that it helps give us a better understanding of things.

In the beginning of this novel everyone seems to know, or at least have heard, about Gatsby. He is talked about a lot and it is manly in a good way. Gatsby appears to be a very powerful person who also has a lot of respect from people. He has a very strange and kind of mysterious personality. For example when he has his party’s, usually on ever Saturday night, he seems to isolate himself from everyone else there. He is spotted outside with his hands in the air just starring.

In the next few chapters we know that Gatsby is a very wealthy man, but no one really knows how he has all of that money. We begin to hear rumors from other people. For example we begin to get the impression that Gatsby and Wolfsheim are involved in some type of illegal activity, which is where he may be getting his money. Also Catherine says that she heard that Gatsby had inherited his money from either a nephew or a cousin. Gatsby also does another strange thing, he wants to meet with Jordan Baker at his party. We then find out a few days later that Gatsby, Nick, and Daisy are all having tea at Nick’s house. Nick and Gatsby also are becoming closer friends, maybe it’s because Gatsby just wants something.

In the final few chapters we finally get to see Gatsby’s true colors. We see that Gatsby is expressing love towards Daisy when they all decide to go to New York for the day. Tom becomes suspicious and accuses Gatsby of having an affair with his wife and also being a bootlegger. Gatsby tells Tom that he and Daisy love one another and that they are going to be together like they once were in the past. Gatsby was wrong and Daisy ends up staying with Tom. Myrtle Wilson is then ran over by Daisy but Gatsby says that he will take the blame and ends up getting shot. At the beginning of this novel we thought that Gatsby was a well liked, popular guy, but it turns out that no one shows up to attend his funeral.

Although Gatsby didn’t show much personal growth this story, we were still able to learn a lot about him through the other characters in this novel. This kind of made Gatsby a little less mysterious.

Word Count: 467