It was the hottest day of the year. People were keeping to the indoors, trying to cool down with fans and cold baths. Nobody really felt like doing anything that day. It was a very lazy day. Although there was a lot going on in the lives of a few people that day, in the afternoon, a yellow car hit and killed a woman in the roads of the Valley of Ashes. The only spectator to the crime, Michaelis, said that the car didn’t even stop. Michaelis owns a small restaurant next to the garage where Myrtle Wilson, the victim, lived with her husband George Wilson. When Michaelis was interviewed, he said that Myrtle ran out of the garage and into the street. She appeared to be trying to hail down the yellow car. Michaelis said, “The car swerved to the side trying not to hit her, but there was another car going the other way, and the yellow care swerved back to not hit the other car. So it hit Myrtle.” But the car didn’t stop. The yellow car kept on speeding away back to the Eggs. George Wilson was inconsolable after the incident.
Reporters asked around New York and the Eggs and managed to piece together this story. The players in the story are Myrtle Wilson, George Wilson, Nick Caraway, Jay Gatsby, Tom Buchanan, Daisy Buchanan, and Jordan Baker. These people seem unlikely to ever interact with one another. The Wilsons live in the Valley of Ashes, Nick is a middle class man living in a rundown shack in West Egg next to Gatsby who is a high class man of new money. The Buchanans and Jordan Baker live in East Egg and are high class people of old money. How are all of these different people connected and why did their lives all get flipped upside down in the course of a day?
A little background information: Nick Caraway and Daisy Buchanan are cousins. They are both from a family of old money. Daisy stayed old money while Nick moved to New York to sell bonds as a middle class man. Daisy and Jordan were best friends when they were young and have remained friends ever since. When Daisy was young, she lived in Louisville and met many young soldiers. One such soldier she met was named James Gatz. They quickly fell in love. When James had to leave for war, Daisy was prevented from saying bye to him. They kept up through letters, but Daisy was getting anxious not having James around. She started to break off from him and started looking around at other guys. Pretty soon, she met a young man named Tom Buchanan. They fell in love and got married.
James came back from the war with a broken heart and no money. He went to Stanford for a couple months courtesy of the military but couldn’t keep it up. He had many menial jobs for a while until he met a man named Dan Cody. James saved Cody from capsizing in his yacht when there was a storm. Cody liked James and took him in as a personal helper. James had come from a poor farmer family and saw the glamor of the rich life. He decided to get that kind of life. He changed his name to Jay Gatsby and got involved in crime after Cody’s death, thus gaining high monetary status.
After Daisy had married Tom, they moved to New York and lived in East Egg. Gatsby moved to New York and lived across the Sound from the Buchanans in West Egg. Gatsby moved there because he had a goal in mind. Get Daisy back. He was determined to get the love of his life back from Tom Buchanan. He set his eyes on that, and that was the only thing he truly focused on for years. Nick moved into West Egg after two years of Gatsby living in New York, and Gatsby took him on to help him get Daisy. It was also known that Tom had a mistress who turned out to be Myrtle Wilson. Her husband was George Wilson.
Feelings were becoming tense quickly between these people and everything came to a head on the hottest day of the summer. The Buchanans, Gatsby, Nick, and Jordan went to the Plaza Hotel in the middle of a fight. On the way back, everyone was upset. Daisy and Gatsby were in Gatsby’s yellow car, and Tom, Nick, and Jordan were in Tom’s blue coupé. When they were going to the hotel, Tom, Jordan, and Nick had been in the yellow car and had stopped at Wilson’s for gas. Myrtle had seen them and assumed that the yellow car belonged to Tom because Tom said that he was going to sell it to George. When they were coming back, Myrtle ran out into the road in front of the yellow car thinking Tom was in the car. She had wanted to talk to him and get him to take her away from George. Daisy and Gatsby did not recognize Myrtle and did not stop and hit her. Daisy was driving the car.
The next day, George, in his insane grief, vowed revenge on the person driving the car. He thought the car belonged to Tom and went to Tom to kill him. On finding Tom, George was told that the car did not belong to Tom, and that it was Gatsby’s. Even though Daisy was driving, Gatsby took credit for hitting Myrtle. George found Gatsby and shot him and then killed himself. Jordan watched as her friend’s life fell apart and did nothing. After Gatsby died, Tom and Daisy left New York and could not be found for questions. Nick arranged Gatsby’s funeral and then moved back West where he felt he belonged. “The east is not for me,” Nick said. “It both attracts me and repulses me. I’m going back home.” Three people ended up dead, three moved away and one disappeared. Jordan could not be found for questions.
This is a true tragedy. The rifts between the classes are so large, and people go to great extremes to cross the lines to get more. In their quest for happiness, people hurt others, thinking only of themselves and suffering great consequences. The American Dream is famed to be great thing, but in the process of gaining the dream, you have to give everything up.
