ernly mistress Myrtle is run over in Gatsby's car, driven by Daisy, Tom and Daisy close ranks to avoid scandal, thus allowing suspicion to fall on Gatsby. Myrtle's distracted husband, a garage man, shoots Gatsby, then himself. Only one person attends Gatsby's funeral: Nick, uniquely positioned to tell everyone's story.
To see how Fitzgerald's personal life provided material for The Great Gatsby, it is only necessary to know that Fitzgerald was born into a middle-class family in St. Paul, Minnesota. He attended Princeton, an elite university, though he did not graduate. He was a World War I veteran (or anyway had been in the army; the war ended before he could fight) who kindled the great romance of his own life with an Alabama socialite (Zelda), who lived in the town where he was stationed (Mizener passim).
Fitzgerald disperses his personal details among various characters. To Gatsby, Fitzgerald assigns his own birthplace in the Midwest, though Gatsby's social origins are far more modest than his own had been. Fitzgerald was a descendant of Francis Scott Key, lyricist of the "Star Spangled Banner" (though that did not make him rich); Mr. Gatz, the father who shows up to claim Gatsby's body, is a laboring man. To Nick, Fitzgerald assigns his identity as a Princeton man, though Nick is unlike Fitzgerald in being of a serious turn of mind. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald had social ambitions but not the social skills to move easily among social
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