The era of the 1920's from which The Great Gatsby emerges is a time of partying and debauchery. Immediately, the audience is thrown into this world through the eyes of Nickùthe quite unreliable narrator, as he describes the hero, Jay Gatsby. Nick doesn't like Gatsby very much, for the most part, because he is jealous of Gatsby's wealth, and wary of how he might have acquired it. Thus, the audience certainly can't trust Nick's description of Gatsby, as it is a poisoned well.
Though Nick and Gatsby live in the same wealthy part of Long Island, known as the West Egg, they come from very different backgrounds. Nick is educated at Yale, and has family connections on the more fashionable East Egg of long Islandùthat is, Tom and Daisy Buchanan, his cousins. Gatsby's wealth, on the other hand, is newly-acquired, and Nick is suspicious of howùwith good reason, as it comes from bootlegging alcohol.
Tom and Daisy introduce Nick to a beautiful woman named Jordan, who, after fashioning a sort of relationship with him, tells him Tom is having an affair with a woman from a poorer part of town named Myrtle Wilson. At about the same time, the audience learns that Jay Gatsby and Daisy have a sort of history between them, and roots for Gatsby, the seeming underdog to win out in the end. Gatsby is truly in love with Daisy, while Tom seems to see her as a trophy, and continues his affair with Myrtle.
One night, while driving Gatsby's car, Daisy accidentally hits and kills Myrtle, who runs into the road, thinking that it is Tom driving the car, as she had seen him driving it earlier in the story. Though the accident is Daisy's fault, Gatsby plans on taking the blame because he is so in love with Daisy. Thus Tom tells Myrtle's husband that it is Gatsby who has killed his wife, and in the end, Myrtle's husband kills Gatsby because of this.
The most important aspect of this story seems to be the notion of the separation of clas
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