Great Gatsby: Knowledge Organiser

Character Chapter summary

Gatsby An ambiguous figure. At once the embodiment of the American dream, he is also a criminal and regularly Nick Carraway reveals he is narrating a story of the previous summer. This begins with him arriving in New York. Invited to his
presents selective truths about his past. His unique capacity to dream and create are both inspiring and cousin Daisy’s for dinner, he finds out her husband is having an affair and meets Jordan Baker. Ends with Nick witnessing
suspicious. Does Nick simply add further embellishment to an already mythologised narrative or is he an Gatsby alone on his dock.
exceptional individual, one of the Myth and Symbol school’s American Adam. Nick travels, via the Valley of Ashes, to New York with Tom to attend a party hosted my Myrtle, his mistress, at an apartment he
pays for. Tom breaks her nose when she taunts him about Daisy whilst Nick gets very drunk.
Nick The narrator of the book, Nick can either be read as a naive but likeable individual who latches on to individuals As the summer progresses, Nick eventually gets an invite to one of his mysterious neighbour’s parties. Here he meets Gatsby
who do not care about him and provides a moral core to the text or a deluded hypocrite with no self-awareness. and Jordan. Gatsby speaks with Jordan alone and requests more of Nick’s company. The chapter ends with Nick narrating
details of his everyday life.
Daisy The object of Gatsby's affection, Daisy is a cynical individual who seems apathetic and ambivalent about her Gatsby invites Nick to lunch and introduces him to Meyer Wolfsheim. During this time, he learns lots about Gatsby’s past, some
wealth and status. Is she simply vacuous, or the product of patriarchal society that places women on a pedestal? of it true. Afterwards, he bumps into Jordan who tells him about Gatsby and Daisy’s past and asks him to arrange a meeting.
Tom The embodiment of old money, an athletic patrician with a “supercilious” manner, Tom nonetheless worries about Gatsby nervously talks to Nick, offering to pay to sort out the meeting. It rains on the day of the reunion, which is an awkward
his position in the world and dreams of the unreachable romance of the college football field. affair culminating in Gatsby throwing shirts as Daisy cries and them staring at the green light together.
Jordan Whilst she deviates from society's expectations with a fulfilling career, and seemingly embodies the freewheeling Rumours spread about Gatsby, and a reporter turns up at his house. Here, Nick decides to narrate Gatsby’s past in Dakota, and
spirit of the era’s flappers, Jordan is cynical and cheats. What does this say about female independence and male how he gained and lost his fortune through meeting Dan Cody. Having not seen either G or D for weeks, Nick bumps into Tom
attitudes towards it? at Gatsby’s house. Tom is highly critical of Gatsby. Later, at another one of G’s parties Tom reveals to D that G’s wealth is
made through bootlegging.
Myrtle Myrtle’s attempts to transcend her station are ultimately futile. Tom will no more grant her access to the Jazz G fires all his staff now the parties have served their purpose. On the hottest day of the year, they all meet for a drink in New
Age’s glamour than her attempts at mimicking the fashions of the elite will. York. G can hardly believe that D’s daughter is real. Tom’s suspicions of an affair are confirmed and a confrontation ensues. G
and D drive off together, and on the way home, Nick, Tom and Jordan learn that Myrtle has been stuck and killed. Back at the
Buchanan house, Nick sees G in the bushes who tells him D hit Myrtle.
Wilson A hard working embodiment of the middle-class, Wilson’s life is destroyed by forces outside of his control as he is Nick meets G at his house, who tells him of his idolization of D. Later, Nick learns from Michaelis, what happened at the garage
manipulated and exploited by Tom Buchanan. after the death. Wilson finds Tom who hints that it was Gatsby. Wilson kills Gatsby who and himself. Nick rushes back but finds
Gatsby dead and then imagines Gatsby’s final thoughts.
Owl A symbolic figure who is able to pierce the unreality of Gatsby’s mansion, Owl Eyes’ symbolic glasses tie him to Writing two years on, Nick narrates the details of G’s funeral. Few came, although G’s father did, and he tells Nick of G’s
Eyes the idea of perception and question our ability to see what is truly real boyhood. Nick meets Tom in NY who tells him it was him who told Wilson that it was Gatsby. All westerners, Nick muses that
the east might have corrupted him and his friends. Sitting on the beach outside Gatsby’s house, he imagines the East before it
was settled.
Wolfshei A gangster and gambler moulded on Arnold Rothstein, Wolfsheim’s acquaintance with Gatsby calls the hero's Technique/context
m character into question, whilst also acting as a tool to reveal Gatsby’s history and also inadvertently illustrating
Nick’s biased narration.
Symbols and Motifs Fitzgerald uses selective details to describe his characters, typifying them with one feature, such as Daisy’s voice. For Gatsby
in particular, this adds to his elusive mystique and comments upon our inability to truly perceive reality.
Colour Green is clearly associated with Gatsby’s dream, but also with the new world, exploration and discovery. White is Fitzgerald uses romantic and modernist language at the same time. Romantic language shows the beauty in nature, and the
most closely associated with Daisy, could this be ironic? Yellow is associated with money and death, like the car, transcendental power of human imagination. The modernist imagery is closely tied with the technological innovation of the
Jordan’s arms, and . Blue is closely associated with Gatsby and his parties, perhaps signifying their illusory Jazz age. Does Fitzgerald debase the romantic ideal via association with the superficiality of the jazz age, or does he show us
nature. Grey is associated with lifelessness and death often in the Valley of Ashes and with Wilson. the beauty in the jazz age itself? In its more modernist moments, the book is a highly experimental text.
Glasses Both T.J Eckleberg and Owl eyes wear glasses. Both seem to have unique powers of perception. Eckleberg Fitzgerald’s structure is a disrupted chronology that has many filters and layers. Firstly, we have the unreliable viewpoint
oversees the Valley of Ashes and inspires Wilson to murder Gatsby, perhaps representing some kind of of its participant narrator who regularly shows both his inadequacy as an impartial observer. Secondly, many of the vignettes
omnipotence?Owl Eyes is able to see through Gatsby’s facade. of Gatsby’s life are repeated to Nick second hand, most tellingly is Jordan revealing Gatsby and Daisy’s past. This shows that
there is no ‘true’ account of the story, and that reality is always mediated.
The The Valley of Ashes represents the impact of capitalist excess. Its denizens are dull and lifeless, almost inhuman, Initial reviewers, especially H.L Mencken were highly critical of the text, seeing it as a reflection of the Jazz Age’s superficiality.
Valley of and as such, it is closely tied to the idea of class. Later, it was seen as a visionary critique of the Age’s superficial, greedy and consumerist ethic, prescient in light of the 1929
Ashes Wall Street Crash.
Gatsby’s Gatsby’s mansion and parties represent the excess and glamour of the Jazz age. Yet they are also clearly Myth and Symbol scholars highlighted three common tropes in early American literature: The machine in the garden, The
mansion superficial and pretentious, representing the binary of glamour and repulsion Fitzgerald felt towards the Jazz Age. American Adam, and the Virgin Land. As a text regularly regarded as one of America’s true literary masterpieces, Gatsby can
been seen to explore and subvert all these tropes.
Geograp East vs West, old money vs new, establishment vs progress. Gatsby is a novel about the American frontier. A period of many contradictions, the 1920s, commonly known as the Jazz Age, were a period of glamour and affluence for
hy some, and prejudice and disenfranchisement for others. Whilst women got the vote, African Americans were still denied it..
The For Gatsby, this is initially a metonymic representation of Daisy. Later, it embodies the paradoxical nature of Whilst the middle-class boomed, industrialisation and urbanisation meant the working class were exploited with poor working
green Gatsby’s desire, and shows how our dreams are always out of reach. conditions. Whilst high cultural forms such as Jazz and modernism proliferated, the era witnessed the first mass-media in the
light form of paperbacks, radio and cinema. Alcohol became illegal, but this simply fuelled mass illegality and made gangsters
billionaires. Cars and money liberated many young people, whilst advertising increasingly homogenised them into consumers.
Themes Gatsby shows how dreams and desire are always paradoxical; we pine for what we cannot have and if we get what we want, we lose desire itself. The American dream is equally debauched in the book; glamour and wealth with excess and
pretense all at the same time
Gatsby explores many of the myths of America. The east draws people away from the western frontier and corrupts them; the American Dream is debauched by excess; America as a place of creation and exploration is shown to be false.

In its exploration of class, Gatsby shows the supercilious and elitist nature of old money America, challenging the county’s meritocratic ideals. The working poor are exploited to the point of ruination, and those who try enter the elite are judged on their
manners and style by a new aristocracy.
Gatsby’s gender roles are rigid. Women are to look pretty, be subservient to men, and to embody masculine desires. Whether Fitzgerald’s characterization of Daisy and Jordan is reflective or critical of its time is open to interpretation. Even the men,
however, are unfulfilled.
With all aspects of the text open to interpretation, all of its characters putting up facades and most of the narrative filtered through many lenses, Gatsby questions our ability to truly perceive, and explores the binary between illusion and reality.

Gatsby’s world is an amoral and secular one. The only hint towards religion is the mock omnipotence of Eckleberg. Does Fitzgerald believe that America has become debased in a more secular age, or does the period simply lack a moral core?