The Great Gatsby recap

Nick Carraway moves to Long Island and befriends his fabulously rich, mysterious neighbor Jay Gatsby, who hosts dazzling parties. Nick learns that Gatsby built his entire fortune and his mansion to win back Nick's cousin Daisy, whom he loved before the war and who married the wealthy, arrogant Tom Buchanan while Gatsby was poor and overseas. Nick arranges their reunion, and Gatsby and Daisy begin an affair. At a tense confrontation in a city hotel, Tom exposes Gatsby's shady wealth and forces Daisy to admit she still loves Tom too. Driving home in Gatsby's car, Daisy accidentally strikes and kills Tom's mistress, Myrtle Wilson, and Gatsby chooses to shield Daisy by taking the blame. Myrtle's husband George, believing the driver was her secret lover, murders Gatsby in his pool and then kills himself. Almost no one attends Gatsby's funeral. Tom and Daisy withdraw into their wealth, and a disillusioned Nick, sickened by the carelessness of the rich, leaves the East to return home.

Nick Carraway, a young Midwesterner, moves east to learn the bond business and rents a small house in West Egg on Long Island, next to the enormous mansion of a man named Gatsby, who throws spectacular parties. Nick visits his cousin Daisy and her rich, arrogant husband Tom Buchanan across the bay in East Egg, where he meets the golfer Jordan Baker and learns that Tom keeps a mistress in the city. Tom later takes Nick to meet her: Myrtle Wilson, the restless wife of a rundown garage owner in the grim valley of ashes between the city and the coast. At a drunken party in a New York apartment, Tom strikes Myrtle and breaks her nose when she taunts him about Daisy. Nick finally attends one of Gatsby's lavish parties, where wild rumors circulate about the host, and there he meets Gatsby himself, a courteous, oddly formal young man surrounded by luxury he seems curiously detached from.

Gatsby cultivates Nick's friendship, driving him into the city, telling him an extravagant and dubious account of his past, and introducing him to the gambler Meyer Wolfsheim. Through Jordan, Nick learns the truth behind Gatsby's grand life: years earlier, before the war, Gatsby and Daisy had been in love, but he was poor and went overseas, and she married the wealthy Tom instead. Everything Gatsby has built, including the mansion directly across the water from Daisy's home, has been aimed at winning her back. He asks Nick to arrange a meeting. Nick invites Daisy to tea, and Gatsby, nervous almost to the point of collapse, is reunited with her. The awkwardness soon melts into joy, and Gatsby proudly shows the two of them through his mansion, overwhelmed to have Daisy there at last.

Nick learns Gatsby's real origins: he was born James Gatz to poor farmers and reinvented himself after a wealthy yachtsman, Dan Cody, took him in and showed him the world of the rich. Gatsby and Daisy carry on their affair, and Gatsby presses her to declare that she never loved Tom. On a sweltering day the group drives into the city, and in a hotel suite the tension breaks open: Tom, who has grown suspicious, confronts Gatsby, exposes the questionable sources of his wealth, and forces Daisy to admit she once loved him too. Shaken, Daisy drives back toward Long Island in Gatsby's car with Gatsby beside her, and on the way the car strikes and kills Myrtle Wilson, who has run out into the road. They do not stop. Gatsby resolves to take the blame himself to protect Daisy.

George Wilson, wild with grief over Myrtle's death and wrongly convinced that her killer was also her secret lover, sets out to find the driver of the car. He traces it to Gatsby, shoots him dead in his swimming pool, and then kills himself. Gatsby's death exposes how hollow his glittering world was: of the crowds who enjoyed his parties, almost no one comes to his funeral, and even his business associates keep away. Only Nick, Gatsby's elderly father, and a few others attend. Sickened by the carelessness of the wealthy, Nick breaks off his relationship with Jordan, coldly parts from Tom, and comes to understand that Tom and Daisy simply retreat into their money and leave others to clean up the wreckage. Disillusioned with the East, Nick decides to return to the Midwest, reflecting on Gatsby's doomed hope and the impossible dream he chased.

Gatsby's dream of reclaiming Daisy destroys him. After Daisy, driving his car, kills Myrtle Wilson and lets Gatsby shoulder the blame, she retreats back to Tom, and the two of them quietly reconcile and leave. Myrtle's husband George, told by Tom whose car struck her and believing the driver was also Myrtle's lover, shoots Gatsby to death in his swimming pool and then takes his own life. The lavish life Gatsby built proves empty at the last: the hundreds who flocked to his parties vanish, and only Nick, Gatsby's father Henry Gatz, and a handful of others attend the funeral. Nick, repelled by the heedlessness of Tom and Daisy, who smash up lives and hide behind their money, ends his romance with Jordan Baker and severs ties with Tom. He concludes that the wealthy leave others to bear the consequences of their carelessness. Choosing to abandon the corrupt glamour of the East, Nick returns to the Midwest, and closes by reflecting on Gatsby's tragic faith in a green light and a future forever out of reach.