In F. Scott Fitzgerald's (158) novel, The Great Gatsby, narrator Nick Carraway calls Tom and Daisy Buchanan "careless people" who "smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made." While Nick's comments regarding his friends are accurate, they can also be applied to Nick himself, who acknowledges that he has been something less than "the honest, straightforward person" that his former girlfriend, Jordan Baker, once believed him to be" (156). Nevertheless, each of these characters, along with the central figure of Jay Gatsby, are in pursuit or possession of elements of the so-called American dream during a period in history when excess was the order of the day.
The reader is immediately made aware that Carraway is a person of some status. As the story begins, Nick announces that his father told him that "whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in the world haven't had the advantages that you've had" (7). Nick's background as a member of a prominent, affluent, Midwestern family is balanced by the fact that Daisy Buchanan (his second cousin once removed) is also from a wealthy family, as is Tom Buchanan, who is "enormously wealthy" and who had married Daisy and "come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away; for instance, he'd brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest" (11).
When Nick moved east to pursue a career in finance, he renews his relationship with the Buchanans, meeting Jordan Baker and Jay Gatsby on Long Island. Baker is a professional golfer and Gatsby is a mystery man who was once involved with Daisy and who is determined to win her away from her husband. These people are all rich, all somewhat frivolous, and all somewhat self-involved. The frenzied nature of the social milieu in which they moved is...