Gatsby returned home and settled in New York City
which was being transformed by the Jazz Age. It is speculated, but never confirmed, that Gatsby took advantage of American Prohibition to make a fortune in bootlegging and made connections with various gangsters such as Meyer Wolfsheim (who Gatsby claims is “the man who fixed the World Series in 1919 “).
With his vast income, Gatsby bought a mansion in the fictional West Egg (a reference to the Great Neck or Kings Point neighborhoods) from Long Island. West Egg is located on the opposite side of Manhasset Bay from the old East Egg (a reference to Sands Point), where Daisy, Tom, and their three-year-old daughter Pammy lives. At his West Egg mansion, Gatsby throws elaborate parties every weekend, open to all comers, in an attempt to entice Daisy as a party guest. Through Daisy’s cousin, Nick Carraway, Gatsby finally gets a chance to reunite with her. Gatsby does not reveal to Daisy or Nick the truth about how he came to acquire her wealth. During several meetings, Gatsby attempts to revive his and Daisy’s relationship to what it had been five years ago. He seeks to woo her with her wealth and asks her to leave her rude and unfaithful husband.
At the Buchanans’ house, Jordan Baker, Nick, Jay, and the Buchanans decide to visit New York City. Tom borrows Gatsby’s yellow Rolls-Royce to drive into town. On his way to New York City, Tom makes a detour at a gas station in “the Valley of Ashes,” a run-down part of Long Island. The owner, George Wilson, shares his concern that his wife, Myrtle, might be having an affair. This unnerves Tom, who has been having an affair with Myrtle, and he hurriedly leaves.
During the party in an expensive hotel suite, the casual conversation turns into a showdown between Daisy, Gatsby, and Tom. In a fit of rage, Gatsby insists that Daisy always loved him, not Tom and that she only married Tom for his money. Daisy admits that she loved both Tom and Gatsby. The party then ends, with Daisy taking Gatsby out of New York City in the yellow Rolls-Royce and Tom leaving with Daisy’s friend Jordan Baker and Nick in Tom’s car.
From her room upstairs at the gas station, Myrtle sees a car approaching. Mistakenly believing that Tom has come back for her, she runs to the car, but is instantly struck and killed. In a panic, Daisy walks away from the scene of the event (which is never revealed to be an accident or intentional). At Daisy’s house in East Egg, Gatsby promises Daisy that he will take the blame for her if they ever get caught.
Tom tells George that it was Gatsby’s car that killed Myrtle. George goes to Gatsby’s house in West Egg, where he shoots and kills Gatsby before committing suicide. Later, Gatsby is found dead, floating in his pool.
Despite the many guests who attended Gatsby’s parties, only one (an individual known as “Owl Eyes”) attends his funeral. Also at the funeral are Nick Carraway and Gatsby’s father, Henry C. Gatz, who claims to be proud of his son’s achievement as a self-made millionaire. [8]
Gatsby is a landmark
The figure of Jay Gatsby became a cultural touchstone in the United States in the twentieth century. When poor native son Gatsby tells Nick Carraway, his only true friend and relative to Daisy, he was raised rich and attended Oxford because “all my ancestors were educated there”, MSNBC political commentator Chris Matthews sees it. as the eternal American fighter: “Gatsby needed more than money: he needed to be someone who had always had it… [T]his blind faith that he can tailor his own existence to Daisy’s specifications is the heart and soul of The Great Gatsby. It’s the classic story of the fresh start, the second chance.” [9]
“Jay Gatsby … appears to be the quintessential American male hero. He is a powerful businessman with shady connections, drives a glamorous car … and pursues the beautiful and privileged Daisy,” write Michael Kimmel and Amy Aronson. [10] In the Handbook of American Folklore, Richard Dorson sees Gatsby as a new American archetype who made the decision to transform after his first chance meeting with his mentor Dan Cody, who opens the door to the wealth of the smuggling. “The ragged young man who some months later (after Gatsby leaves St. Olaf) introduces himself to a degenerate boater as Jay Gatsby has explicitly rejected the Protestant ethic … in favor of a far more extravagant form of ambition.” [eleven]
In the United States, it has been common to refer to real-life figures as Gatsby, usually in reference to wealthy men whose rise to prominence involved an element of deception. In a story by R. Foster Winans, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal’s “Heard on the Street” column who was fired after it was discovered that he was given prior knowledge of the column’s contents to Peter Brant, the post of Seattle described Brant as “the Gatsby of Winan”. The article noted that Brant had changed his name from Bornstein and said that he was “a man who turned his back on his heritage and his family because he felt that being recognized as Jewish would be a career detriment.”. [12]
The character is often used as a symbol of great wealth. Reporting in 2009 on the collapse in home prices and tourist spending in the exclusive Hamptons on Long Island, not far from the fictional setting of Gatsby’s house, the Wall Street Journal quoted a struggling hotelier as saying “Jay Gatsby is dead”. [13]
Gatsby has recently been read as a personification and representation of human-caused climate change, as “Gatsby’s life depends on many selfish human-centered endeavors” that are “partly responsible for Earth’s current ecological crisis.” “. [14] news website
