Nick:
Nicks character is a significant but weak one, he is the narrator of the book but doesn’t have a commanding presence to make you remember him in the novel, meaning if he were to be a real person he would be one of those nice people you say hi to and forget the next day. He is the typical thirty-year-old man that isn’t married but still has an almost naive view of the world, he sees the evil and recognizes that it isn’t right, but he cannot see beneath to the very last layer, like how he never really understood how Gatsby’s character never deserved the pedestal Nick put him on. Over the course of the book, Nick never changes in any major way like Gatsby. His character only matures over the drama, for example, when Nick first came to West Egg he has high hopes that he will do well here in the bonds company, he meets Tom and Daisy and catches that they’re a bit fake but doesn’t think that much of it. By the end of the book, he has organized a funeral and watched an admired friend obsess over a woman who won’t ever be with him. He grew up in the few months he spent in West Egg.
“… and I could only remember, without resentment, that Daisy hadn’t sent a message or a flower.”
Tom:
He is a hard man to get along with, strong-minded and opinionated, he is of old money and knows how to do business, obviously because he still has money. He is married to Daisy, a very self-concerned woman who Gatsby loves and obsesses over. His character is scorching, angry and hard on the outside but Fitzgerald shows us that he does care, on the inside and only every so often. Tom’s character doesn’t evolve like the rest, it’s more like his true character is revealed and confirmed layer by layer, chapter by chapter. He is self-centered and cruel to the end of the book. Personally, I think he has a certain type of hate for the world you cannot see when you just talk to him, as it took Nick the whole book to figure that out.
“‘Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!’ shouted Mrs. Wilson. ‘I’ll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai – ‘ Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.”
Gatsby:
He is a devious person in general, he never reveals his true self to anyone, the vicious and calculating mind that ticks in the background of every scheme and business contract.
Gatsby’s character is very practiced, in his words and in his actions, you can almost tell that he’s playing dress up with money and power, as he has to be for him to pull off the alias of Jay Gatsby.
“Sometime before he introduced himself I’d gotten a strong impression that he was picking his words with care.”
He obsesses over Daisy, a woman he doesn’t know he can’t have, and hide his identity from everyone, making sure no one knows him enough to make an educated guess about where he came from or how he came into his money. He is someone to admire on the outside, but once you get to know him, like Nick, he gets a little distorted and twisted into the character he really is. At the start of the book, Fitzgerald made him a distant character that wasn’t apart of the narrator’s life but a rumor that was to be spread by the other minor characters. At the end of the book, he was a half-finished puzzle that hid his pieces before he died, he has been forgotten and made no significant impact on the world. This somehow makes his death even sadder because he wanted to sharpen his mind and body and make himself rich in the first place to win Daisy’s love and make an impression on the world.
Daisy:
She is the wife of Tom Buchanon, dark brown hair that seems to be light blonde throughout the book because of her character, she is bubbly and ecstatic to new things. At the start of the book, Daisy’s character was light and bright colors tinged with blue and red, sadness anger at the world, for having given her everything, I think she’s one to like challenges that don’t affect her, as soon as she gets out of control of the situation she bolts and can never be pulled back into it again. Her character progresses through the book as being revealed, like any other character but hers has a sinister likeness to it that cannot be ignored. When she was driving Gatsby’s car, she swerved to hit Myrtle, maybe it was the heat but, she had veered away then went back on track to kill Myrtle, however unintentional it was to kill someone, she still swerved back. She doesn’t think before she does, doesn’t consider the consequences of her actions, almost as if she knows she has the influence to get her out of big trouble. It’s kind of like she thinks her wealth and money can solve everything for her.
“‘Her voice is full of money,’ he said suddenly. That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money – that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it… high in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl…”
Relationships:
The relationship between Gatsby and Daisy, this was, I think ‘doomed from the start’, she’s already married and apart of a society that scorns the new money people and frowns upon the idea of a divorce of two good households. Gatsby isn’t exactly known for himself, his reputation of parties and money precedes him most of the time. Gatsby fell in love with the idea of Daisy being his, I don’t think he really fell in love with her as herself and her personality, but her money, her freshness, and her reputation.
The relationship between Nick and Tom is built on the times they had at New Haven. Nick says that Tom has changed since their New Haven days, meaning he grew up and accepted his fortunate place in the world. All throughout the, whenever Nick is with Tom or Daisy something happens that wasn’t supposed to happen, he tries to leave so he doesn’t have to witness anything more than her already hs, but either of them pull him back into the mess. Tom is a strong character and Nick is a significant but weak character, both personalities don’t mix, so all the formalities and artificial kindness showed are based on the thought of not worsening the situation.
Tom and Gatsby’s relationship isn’t really a relationship as much as it is a mutual understanding tipped towards hatred. Tom hasn’t even met Gatsby and he judges him for what he does and for what his reputation says about him, as he said that he did a sort of background check on Gatsby after him and Daisy went to his party, when Tom finds out that Daisy and Gatsby are together behind his back he’s obviously furious about it, as he should be given his character, but what he fails to realize is that he made the situation worse by making assumptions out of hate and haste. Gatsby doesn’t know Tom either but makes an assumption that he’s a hard man and that he doesn’t like him. Gatsby is from the poor side of perception, he has made all of this money and expects himself to be accepted into the secret society of the wealthy, but that cannot happen and deep down he knows it, I think this is also a reason why he dislikes Tom in general.
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