The Great Gatsby Summary – Chapter-by-Chapter

This article will provide a chapter-by-chapter summary of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. If you’ve read my other articles on Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, you’ll know that its themes and concerns are as relevant now as they were when it was published in 1925. Greed, love, and violence converge to make the “American Dream” seem like a sham. Let’s jump into our Great Gatsby summary with Chapter 1. 

All the quotes are from Project Gutenberg’s searchable Gatsby.

The Great Gatsby Chapter 1 Summary

Chapter one begins with the narrator, Nick Carraway, addressing the reader directly. He begins by sharing with us the advice his father gave him – “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone…just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” This advice has made Nick “privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men.” 

After his wartime experience in Europe, Nick returns and finds that the “Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe.” He decides to go east and learn the bond business. Upon his arrival in New York, he rents a tiny house in the fictional town of West Egg, Long Island. While Nick’s house is small, it happens to be next to the grand estate of the mysterious “Gatsby.”

The Great Gatsby Summary – Chapter 1 (Continued)

Nick’s cousin Daisy and her husband, Tom Buchanan, invite Nick to dinner. He goes to their palatial estate in East Egg, where he meets Jordan Baker, a famous golfer. During their dinner, Tom’s racist banter is interrupted by a telephone call. When he leaves the table, Jordan whispers to Nick that Tom has a mistress in New York. After an awkward evening, Jordan and Tom go to the library while Nick walks around the grounds with Daisy. She tells Nick how unhappy she is. Nick tries to calm her by asking about her daughter, but Daisy declares bitterly, “Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!”

When this disaster of a dinner party ends, Nick drives back to his house. When he arrives, he sees Gatsby and decides to call on him. He stops when he sees Gatsby reach out toward the bay, toward “a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock.” (If you’re interested, here’s an article all about the green light in Gatsby.)

The Great Gatsby Chapter 2 Summary

In chapter two, we encounter the “valley of ashes,” that lies between West Egg and New York. From a billboard, the two huge eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg gaze out over the landscape. One afternoon, as Nick and Tom are taking the train back to New York, Tom insists that Nick meet his mistress, Myrtle. Myrtle lives in the valley of ashes with her mechanic husband, George B. Wilson. Tom and Nick go to Wilson’s garage where Tom surreptitiously tells Myrtle to come to New York. 

The Great Gatsby Summary – Chapter 2 (Continued)

Tom, Nick, and Myrtle go to the apartment that Tom keeps in the city. Various guests show up and everyone starts to drink. The party stretches into the night and the level of drunkenness increases. Tom and Myrtle start to argue about whether Myrtle has any right to mention Daisy’s name. When Myrtle shouts, “Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!” Tom breaks her nose. Taking this as his cue, Nick leaves the apartment with Mr. McKee and ends up in the latter’s bedroom, drunkenly looking at art photographs. 

The Great Gatsby Chapter 3 Summary

In chapter three, Nick attends his first party at Gatsby’s house. Having come alone to the party, he sees Jordan Baker and joins her group. Nick watches as the rich and famous get increasingly inebriated. Hours later, Nick is sitting at a table with Jordan and is introduced to a man at his table, who turns out to be Gatsby. They discover that both of them were stationed in France during the war. A bit later, Gatsby’s butler tells Jordan that Gatsby would like to speak to her alone. Jordan is with Gatsby for an hour – when she returns to the party, she tells Nick that Gatsby has just told her the most amazing thing. Before leaving, Jordan asks Nick to come see her. 

In the brief second section of chapter three, Nick tells of his growing affection for Jordan. He spends a great deal of time with her that summer and suspects he may be in love with her. (He also recalls that Jordan had been accused of cheating during a golf tournament.) 

Chapter 4 

Nick begins chapter four by listing the names of some of the rich and famous people that came to Gatsby’s house that summer. In the next section, Gatsby comes to Nick’s house and offers to take him to lunch in the city. In the ride in, Gatsby tells Nick a bit about his past – stories that Nick doesn’t believe at all. Gatsby informs Nick that he has a request to make of him – but that Jordan will speak to Nick about it when he has tea with her that afternoon. 

In the puzzling next section, Nick has lunch with Gatsby and Wolfshiem, Gatsby’s disreputable business associate. We find out that Wolfshiem was the gangster who fixed the World Series in 1919. Nick is surprised to see Tom Buchanan walk into the restaurant. When he and Gatsby go to say hello, Gatsby shakes Tom’s hand and then disappears. 

Chapter 4 (Continued)

When Nick goes to tea with Jordan that afternoon, we finally find out a bit of truth about Gatsby. Jordan, who grew up in the same town as Daisy, tells Nick about meeting an officer that Daisy was seeing about five years before the events of the book. Daisy introduced him as Gatsby. Evidently, Daisy was smitten with Gatsby, but her family disapproved of the relationship. Nick finds out that when the young officer went to war, Daisy moved on. A few years later, she married Tom Buchanan in an opulent ceremony in Chicago. (It’s implied she received a letter from Gatsby the day before her wedding, but she goes ahead and marries Tom anyways.) It was only when Jordan mentioned “Gatsby in West Egg” the night she met Nick at Daisy’s house that Daisy realized that he was the same officer she knew in Louisville. 

It turns out that Gatsby bought his palatial estate so that he could be directly across the bay from Daisy’s house. After this background, Jordan arrives at Gatsby’s request of Nick. Because Nick is Daisy’s cousin (and lives next door to him), Gatsby wants Nick to invite Daisy over to his (Nick’s) house. Gatsby’s idea is that he’ll come over once Daisy arrives at Nick’s place. 

The Great Gatsby Chapter 5 Summary

When Nick makes it home that night, Gatsby finds him and awkwardly tries to engage him in small talk. Nick tells him he spoke with Jordan and that he’s happy to invite Daisy over. When Daisy comes over the next day, Gatsby is beside himself with anxiousness. Nick excuses himself so that they can be alone. When he returns an hour or so later, Gatsby and Daisy have reconnected and are more at ease. 

Gatsby takes Daisy and Nick on a tour of his house, where they see firsthand its ostentatiousness. (Gatsby shows off his collection of shirts.) After the tour, Nick sees himself out – Daisy and Gatby barely acknowledge his departure. 

The Great Gatsby Chapter 6 Summary

In the first section of chapter six, we find out Gatsby’s real origins. Born Jay Gazt to poor farmers in North Dakota, he spent years bumming around the Midwest. While employed as a clam-digger on Lake Superior, he met Dan Cody, who took Gatsby under his wing (and onto his yacht). Gatsby sailed around the world with Cody until the latter died, five years later. 

After a few weeks of not seeing Gatsby, Nick finds himself at another one of his parties, this time with Daisy and Tom. Tom is suspicious of Gatsby and vows to find out more about him. When Tom and Daisy leave, Nick stays late and talks with Gatsby. Gatsby is depressed because he doesn’t think Daisy enjoyed the party. He’s convinced that he can “fix everything just the way it was before.” 

Chapter 7 

On the hottest day of the summer, Nick gets invited to Daisy’s house for lunch. Gatsby, Jordan, and Tom are present as well. While they eat, Tom suddenly realizes that Daisy is in love with Gatsby. Angry now, Tom suggests they go to town – he drives Jordan and Nick in Gatsby’s car and Gatsby follows in the coupe with Daisy (this seating order will be significant later). 

Tom stops for gas (remember, in Gatsby’s car) at George Wilson’s garage. George tells Tom they’re going West. All of a sudden, Nick realizes that George suspects that Myrtle is having an affair (though George hasn’t realized that Tom is involved).  From the window above the garage, Myrtle looks down, sees Tom (in Gatsby’s car), and assumes that Jordan is Tom’s wife. 

They make it to the city and go to a hotel room. Tom questions Gatsby about his past and the tension rises. In spite of Daisy’s efforts to calm everyone, Gatsby finally tells Tom that Daisy never loved him. The problem is that this isn’t exactly true. When Gatby turns to Daisy to confirm his declaration, she waffles, saying that she did love Tom once. Gatsby tries to get Daisy back on his side by telling Tom that she’s leaving him. At first, she agrees, but then Tom tells the whole group what he’s found out about Gatsby – that he made his money with bootleggers and gangsters. When Tom suggest that Gatsby is up to something even more sinister, Gatsby begins making excuses to Daisy, unaware that he’s lost her. Tom has won and tells Daisy and Gatsby to go home in Gatsby’s car (this is important). 

Chapter 7 (Continued)

The scene shifts to George Wilson’s garage, where George and Myrtle continue to fight. Myrtle, seeing Gatsby’s car coming down the road, runs out and tries to flag it down (remember, she saw Tom driving it before). She is struck and killed. Tom, a few minutes behind in his coupe, sees the gathered crowd and stops to see what is going on. Nick, Tom, and Jordan enter the garage and see Myrtle’s body wrapped in a sheet on the table. Tom tries to calm George down, and George says he knows that it was a yellow car (Gatsby’s car). Tom stays long enough to establish his innocence and then speeds away. 

Back at the Buchanan’s, Tom goes inside to talk with Daisy while Nick waits for a taxi outside. Suddenly, Gatsby pops out of the bushes. He tells Nick that Daisy was driving when they hit Myrtle. Nick tries to convince Gatsby to go home and get some sleep, but he says he’ll stay and watch the house until Daisy goes to sleep. 

Chapter 8

After the night he’s had, Nick can’t sleep. Early the next morning, he hears a taxi pull into Gatsby’s drive and he goes over to chat. Gatsby tells Nick about Dan Cody, his time with Daisy before the war, and how she chose to marry Tom Buchanan. They have breakfast together and then Nick goes to work. When Jordan calls him at work, Nick realizes he doesn’t want to talk to her ever again. 

The narrator brings the reader back to Wilson’s garage the night of Myrtle’s death. We see a bereft George begin to think that whoever Myrtle was having an affair with must have killed her. The next morning, George goes to find the owner of the yellow car. He eventually finds out it’s Gatsby’s. 

In the next section, we see Gatsby go to his pool. None of the servants notice when George Wilson sneaks up to the pool, shoots Gatsby, and then shoots himself. When Nick arrives, they find Gatsby floating dead in the water. 

The Great Gatsby Chapter 9 Summary 

After Gatsby’s death, Nick tries in vain to find anyone in town who might arrange (or attend) his funeral. Daisy and Tom leave town, Wolfshiem demurs, and none of the hundreds of people that attended Gatsby’s parties seem to care. When Gatsby’s father arrives a few days later, Nick can see how impressed he is with his son’s success. The day of the funeral comes and only three people show up – Nick, Gatsby’s father, and “Owl-eyes,” one of the guests Nick met at the first of Gatsby’s parties.  

Nick decides to go back to the Midwest. Before he goes, he talks to Tom who admits that it was him who told George Wilson that it was Gatsby’s car. As Nick prepares to leave his West Egg house for the last time, he stares over at Gatsby’s mansion and thinks about Gatsby’s relationship to the area’s original Dutch settlers. The book ends with the iconic line: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

The Great Gatsby Chapter 1-9 Summary – Wrapping Up

Jay Gatsby is a man consumed by a dream. He believes, erroneously, that merely having enough money will somehow turn back time to the moment when Daisy first fell in love with him. His failure and eventual death is an object lesson in the intransigence of the American class system. 

If you’ve found this article useful or interesting, I’ve also written on 1984, Beloved, Hamlet, The Crucible and Brave New World.