The Great Gatsby characters

Appears from the start

The narrator, a young man from a comfortable Midwestern family who has come east to New York to learn the bond business. He rents a modest house in the wealthy Long Island community of West Egg, next door to a lavish mansion. Reserved and inclined to withhold judgment, he is the cousin of Daisy Buchanan and is drawn into the circle of the rich people around her, observing their world as both participant and outsider.

Appears from the start

Nick's cousin, a beautiful and charming young woman from a wealthy family, married to Tom Buchanan and living in fashionable East Egg. She has a famously lovely, musical voice and an air of sophistication and gaiety, though beneath it runs a thread of boredom and cynicism about her comfortable life.

Appears from the start

Daisy's husband, an enormously wealthy man from an established family and a powerfully built former college football player. Arrogant, domineering, and casually contemptuous of those he considers beneath him, he is restless and given to grand opinions. Though married, he keeps a mistress in the city, a fact that is an open secret.

Appears from the start

A friend of Daisy's, a cool, self-possessed young woman and a well-known professional golfer. Poised and faintly bored, she carries herself with a detached, worldly air. Nick meets her at the Buchanans' and gradually becomes involved with her.

First appears in chapter 2

The wife of a garage owner in the bleak industrial stretch between Long Island and New York, and the mistress Tom keeps in the city. Vital, sensuous, and full of restless energy, she is desperate to escape her drab surroundings and to share in the glamour and wealth she associates with Tom.

First appears in chapter 2

The worn, colorless owner of a garage and gas station in the ash-strewn valley between the city and the eggs, married to Myrtle. Exhausted and faded, he scrapes a living from car repairs and hopes to buy a car from Tom to resell for a profit. At this point he has no idea of his wife's affair.

First appears in chapter 3

The immensely wealthy and mysterious young man who owns the mansion next to Nick's and throws extravagant parties every weekend that draw hundreds of guests, most of whom he does not know. Rumors swirl about how he made his fortune and who he really is. Courteous, formal, and strangely watchful, he is rarely seen among his own guests, and there is an air of hope and longing about him that sets him apart from the careless crowd he entertains.

First appears in chapter 4

A gambler and business associate of Gatsby's whom Nick meets at lunch in the city. Shrewd and sentimental by turns, he is reputed to be the man who fixed the 1919 World Series. His connection to Gatsby hints at the shadier side of how Gatsby's money may have been made.

First appears in chapter 6

A wealthy, hard-drinking former prospector and yachtsman, now dead, who years earlier took the young Gatsby aboard his yacht and made him his assistant and companion. Cody introduced the ambitious boy to the world of the rich and helped shape his dreams, though Gatsby ultimately received nothing of his fortune.