[[foldercontrol]]

!Main Characters
[[folder:Nick]]
!!Nick Carraway
[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nick_78.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Tobey Maguire]]
!!!Played by: Neil Hamilton (1926), Creator/MacdonaldCarey (1949), Creator/SamWaterston (1974), Creator/PaulRudd (2000), Creator/TobeyMaguire (2013)

A young man from the Midwest who comes to live in New York to go into bond sales. He moves in next door to Gatsby in West Egg and somehow befriends the man. Easy-going, somewhat deadpan, and optimistic, but not for long.
----

* AmbiguouslyBi: He strikes up a relationship with Jordan, but given his admiration/obsession with Gatsby, lack of a desire to get married, and that scene with Mr. [=McKee=] after the party, it's not too surprising that Nick tends to raise a few eyebrows.
* BetaCouple: With Jordan -- their affair happens with much less pomp and circumstance than Gatsby and Daisy's. They eventually break up.
* CantHoldHisLiquor: He gets very drunk at Myrtle's party. He explains it's because it's only the second time in his life he's been drunk.
%%* DeadpanSnarker: Especially towards Daisy.
* JustFriends: {{Implied|Trope}} he had something like this going on at home, before coming east. He claims it's all just gossip, but he makes a point to clearly break it off before getting with Jordan.
-->''Of course, I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn't even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come East. You can't stop going with an old friend on account of rumors, and on the other hand I had no intentions of being rumored into marriage.''
* MinnesotaNice: Considers himself a nice, traditional Midwesterner.
* MoralMyopia: Despite all his talk, Nick is one of the most judgmental people in the story, painting everyone he meets as good or bad solely based on his first impressions. He also constantly criticizes the dishonesty of the Long Island elite while excusing the fact that Gatsby's entire life is built upon lies and dishonest business. Jordan of all people calls him out on it.
* NaiveNewcomer: He spends his whole tenure at Long Island trying to reconcile the materialism, rigid social hierarchy, and general lack of integrity to his Midwest values. Eventually he gets tired of it all and just leaves, and the experience leaves him more bitter and cynical than ever before.
* OnlyFriend: Claimed to be this to Gatsby since he was the only person who [[spoiler:went to Gatsby's funeral and even arranged it]].
* OnlySaneMan: By the end of the novel, he realizes what terrible people his cousin and her husband truly are.
* OppositesAttract: Him and Jordan. He WillNotTellALie; she's a ConsummateLiar.
* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: After [[spoiler:Gatsby's funeral]], he decided that he finally had enough of the East and decides to return home to the West.
* SupportingProtagonist: We see the events of the story unfold through his point of view, even though this is more Gatsby's story than his. Gatsby is the one driving most of the plot through his passions and desires, while Nick is just along for the ride as an outside observer. However, this allows Nick to have a perspective that Gatsby doesn't.
* TookALevelInJerkass: He becomes more sarcastic toward the end of the novel, since [[spoiler:the girl people tried to hook him up with turned out to be a fraud and his friend Gatsby got killed by his cousin's abusive husband's lover's widower]]. Kind of a lot to swallow.
* UnreliableNarrator: He is obsessed with Gatsby and almost always portrays him in a positive light, never acknowledging the man's faults while also painting himself as a martyr. He says several times that he "thoroughly disapproved" of Gatsby; he does tend to lionize Gatsby in sections of the novel, but he also casts aspersions on him.
* WillNotTellALie:
-->''Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest men I have ever known.''
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Gatsby]]
!!Jay Gatsby
[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/2048x2730_5de87610_29f9_11e6_b460_cd7bff022615_assets_elleuk_com_gallery_12050_1368714874_first_image_jpg.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Creator/LeonardoDiCaprio]]


!!!Played by: Creator/WarnerBaxter (1926), Alan Ladd (1949), Creator/RobertRedford (1974), Creator/TobyStephens (2000), Creator/LeonardoDiCaprio (2013)

->''He smiled understandingly--much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on ''you'' with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. Precisely at that point it vanished -- and I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he introduced himself I'd got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care.''

Nick's neighbor and the titular [[CharacterTitle "Great Gatsby"]]. Gatsby is a young millionaire whose weekly parties are as lavish as he is mysterious. Carries a torch for Daisy, much to his detriment.
----

* AntiHero: He gets his money through bootlegging.
* ByronicHero: [[spoiler:As a poor soldier]], he fell hopelessly in love with beautiful socialite Daisy, who got married to her equal, a JerkJock Tom from OldMoney, but he is determined to win her back. He would do--and does--anything for Daisy, who, sadly, doesn't quite deserve it. Gatsby heavily idealized and romanticized Daisy and everything about her. Gradually, it becomes obvious that Gatsby's opulent wealth comes from smuggling and organized crime, but he's more compassionate than most of the "law-abiding" characters.
* CharacterCatchphrase: He calls everyone "old sport." Lampshaded by Tom:
-->'''Tom:''' That's a great expression of yours, isn't it?\\
'''Gatsby:''' What is?\\
'''Tom:''' All this "old sport" business. Where'd you pick that up?
* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: [[spoiler:Got into UsefulNotes/WorldWarI as an ordinary trooper. It took only about one year to be twice decorated for bravery and promoted to Major.]]
* DaydreamBeliever: Gatsby really believes all the stories in the magazines about millionaires. He believes in them so much that he chooses them as the basis of his MultipleChoicePast as a GentlemanAdventurer, a ClicheStorm pastiche of various dime novels and pulps. Obviously, everyone thinks they are ridiculous… at first. But given Gatsby is TheCharmer, he manages to make others believe, even for a little time, in his stories.
* DidNotGetTheGirl: Twice over...and never quite admitting it either time.
* DoggedNiceGuy: He has been pining after Daisy for years. The fact that she's now married with a child doesn't discourage him and he's determined to win her love.
* FatalFlaw: His inability to let go of the past, and his inability to realize that the woman he loves might not be who he thinks she is.
* FakeBrit: [[invoked]]Within the context of the story, he affects a slight accent and several mannerisms to make himself seem more sophisticated and less NouveauRiche.
* LastNameBasis: Very rarely does anybody refer to him as "Jay."
* LonelyAtTheTop: Out of all the people that attend his parties Nick is the only person that actually seems to care about him.
* LonelyFuneral: [[spoiler:Nobody shows up at his funeral except for Nick, his father, and the owl-eyed man from the library.]]
* LoveMartyr: Everything Gatsby did to raise and spend his ill-gotten money was to capture Daisy's heart. He idealizes her to the extent that he's willing to take a manslaughter rap for her. Tragically enough, Gatsby never would have been happy, for he expected too much from Daisy, wanting (and in the infamous confrontation scene, ''forcing'') her to be the perfect memory he obsessed over.
* LovingAShadow: He was in love with the idea of Daisy and wanted everything to be the way it was when he first met her. Lampshaded by Nick in the narration:
-->''There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.''
* MrViceGuy: Gatsby has issues. Like, a ''lot'' of issues. The fact that he's a criminal only scratches the surface of this man's flaws as a human being. And yet, he's probably the nicest character in the book. [[spoiler:No wonder Nick is so heartbroken by his death.]]
* MultipleChoicePast: He and his party guests have all sorts of explanations of where he's from and how he made his money, some more ridiculous than others. Tom pulling the thread on some of his contradictory stories makes him backpedal a little bit.
* MysteriousPast: Hardly anybody knows the first thing about where he came from or how he got rich. It's not until near the end of the story that we get a full picture. [[spoiler:He's a simple farm boy from North Dakota who dreamed of making it rich, served with distinction in WWI, went to Oxford for a few years, and made his millions with a string of shady business deals.]]
* {{Narcissist}}: [[http://fitzgerald.narod.ru/critics-eng/mitchell-narcissist.html An English professor from the University of North Texas]] argues Gatsby may be this, based on his [[DoggedNiceGuy persistence]] in wooing Daisy, glib and charming personality, and [[IRejectYourReality utter unwillingness to admit that he can't repeat the past]].
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Gatsby is heavily based on Ohio bootlegger George Remus.
* NouveauRiche: It's not entirely clear where he got his money from, but it's clear that he wasn't born with it. It's strongly implied that he got it through less than legal means, and he primarily spends it on lavish parties and ConspicuousConsumption to try to impress Daisy. And he affects an accent and mannerisms to make himself seem more cultivated than he is.
* PosthumousCharacter: [[spoiler:Died before Nick narrated the story.]]
* RagsToRiches: [[spoiler:Born poor, he falls in love with a girl above his station and dedicates himself to making money to win her back. He's fantastically wealthy by the time the story starts and is famous for the lavish parties he constantly throws in his opulent mansion. Alas, his love still rejects him.]]
* RealMenWearPink: Gatsby wears a pink suit a couple times in the novel. Dismissed by Tom, of course.
* RiddleForTheAges: What ''was'' that other brand of crime he was mixed up in that Tom's sources didn't want to talk about? Another big sports fix? Contract killing? Nick will never know, and so neither will we.
* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: [[spoiler:At sixteen, he ran away from home to pursue his dream of becoming rich and powerful.]]
* SelfMadeMan: A deconstruction. He gained all his money himself, but as he wasn't born with it the only way he could see himself becoming a millionaire was to be a criminal.
* SensitiveGuyAndManlyMan: Gatsby's a sappy romantic and dreamer, in contrast with aggressive and argumentative Tom.
* SingleTargetSexuality: In his [[MultipleChoicePast real]] backstory, it's mentioned that he quickly grew contemptuous of women precisely because it was easy for him to seduce them. Once he falls for Daisy, he's never tempted by anyone else.
* SocialClimber: [[spoiler:He is the son of dirt-poor farmers from the Midwest who made his fortune by bootlegging.]]
* StalkerWithACrush: He has obsessed over Daisy for six years, to the point that he builds an empire of wealth via shady means to become rich and powerful enough to steal her away from her husband. He, with the help of Nick and Jordan, manipulate Daisy to help Jay win her back.
* TragicHero: He genuinely loved Daisy with all his heart (or thought he did) and became rich to win her back.
* UnbalancedByRivalsKid: Daisy's child serves as a symbol to Gatsby of the reality of her marriage to Tom.
* WhenHeSmiles: Gatsby's smile is described as disarming to a suspicious extent, so transforming that it must be hiding something.
* WrongGenreSavvy: Gatsby thinks he's in a beautiful epic romance with his dream girl and believes she will leave her awful husband and fly away with him. Unfortunately, his dream girl is [[LovingAShadow just that]].

!!!In adaptations

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Daisy]]
!!Daisy Buchanan née Fay
[[quoteright:320:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/daisy_buchanan_fom_the_great_gatsby.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:320:Carey Mulligan]]
!!!Played by: Lois Wilson (1926), Betty Field (1949), Creator/MiaFarrow (1974), Creator/MiraSorvino (2000), Creator/CareyMulligan (2013)

->''I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered "Listen," a promise that she had done [[HaveAGayOldTime gay]], exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.''

Nick's second cousin once removed and the wife of Tom, with whom she has a daughter. Daisy is beautiful and charming, if somewhat careless and shallow. Gatsby's love for her kicks off the plot of the novel.
----

* ArousedByTheirVoice: Nick says that the most memorable thing about Daisy is her voice.
-->''"Her voice is full of money," [Gatsby] said suddenly.\\
That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money -- that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it… High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl…''
* TheBeard: Nick chooses to publicly kiss Daisy at a party to dispel rumors about his sexuality (considering that he was a still-unmarried man in his late twenties, which back then was very frowned upon).
* BitchInSheepsClothing: At first, Daisy seems to be a pure, innocent angel. Eventually, she reveals herself as a selfish, shallow, and materialistic woman.
* BrainlessBeauty: Although there are hints that [[ObfuscatingStupidity this is at least partly a facade]] and that she does know how horrible her life is, merely choosing to play the part of a bimbo as to avoid further struggle.
* TheCharmer: Daisy is a charming socialite.
* ColorMotif: She is routinely linked with the color white (a white dress, white flowers, white car, and so on).
* DespairEventHorizon: Spends most of the film/book already having crossed it.
* DevotedToYou: Gatsby idolizes Daisy to such an extent that he resorts to embezzlement and less-than-scrupulous methods of becoming rich, all done to win her heart. Sadly, Gatsby is so blindly devoted to his unrealistic ideal of her rather than her as a flawed person that he doesn't realize Daisy can't live up to his unfair idea of her.
* FalseSoulmate: Gatsby pines after Daisy for years and is sure that if he can build a fortune and win her love, they'll live happily ever after. The fact that she's married doesn't dissuade him, and he never notices how shallow, careless and self-involved she is. [[spoiler:Things don't work out in the end.]]
* GirlNextDoorTurnedSuperstar: Gatsby knew Daisy when she was young and climbs his way from RagsToRiches to be with her. It doesn't end well.
* HiddenDepths: She's nowhere near as vapid and ditzy as she lets on, but she finds her life a lot easier when she pretends otherwise. She's also deeply unhappy with her charmed life, but Nick's the only one who recognizes this.
* IdleRich: Deconstructed. The price of her life of luxury is an unhappy and possibly abusive marriage, as well as the constant facade of being a BrainlessBeauty.
* TheIngenue: To Tom's ManChild. While certainly not a virgin, her childlike innocence and disposition is a major character flaw, in that she's unable to take responsibility for herself, either to better her life or change the way her actions hurt others.
* KarmaHoudini: [[ZigZaggingTrope Zig-zagged]]. [[spoiler:Daisy's the one driving the car when it kills Myrtle. Gatsby offers to lie that he was at the wheel instead, which she lets him do, resulting in Gatsby's death.]] Meanwhile, Tom and Daisy drift off to Chicago, leaving the entire unholy mess behind. This is one of the themes of the novel: the rich make a huge mess and leave others to clean it up. However, it is implied that their already rocky relationship has been further ruined by the whole experience.
* LonelyAtTheTop: Despite her immense wealth and active social life, she has very few genuine friends. Her husband is someone she can only barely tolerate, and her cousin Nick's opinion of her worsens over time.
* MeaningfulName:
** ''Daisy'':
*** As per the book's ColorMotif, white symbolizes purity and yellow symbolizes corruption. What flower is white outside but yellow inside?
*** Doubles as BilingualBonus: The French for "daisy" is "marguerite", and Marguerite is the heroine-victim of Gounod's ''Faust''. Looked at in a certain light, "'The Great Gatsby'' is a version of the Faust story...
** Her maiden name, ''Fay'', has rather [[TheFairFolk unfortunate connotations]] as something of beauty you would do well not to associate with.
* ObfuscatingStupidity: In chapter 1, she pulls Nick aside and talks about how everything sucks, and this is the best she can do. ("[T]he best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.")
* TheOneThatGotAway: To Gatsby. The entire plot revolves around his attempts to win Daisy back, so they can continue on with their lives like the five years that separated them never happened.
* ParentalNeglect: She and Tom seem barely aware that they have a daughter.
* ShipperOnDeck: She ships Jordan/Nick, and cheerfully admits to the latter she intends to fix them up.
* StepfordSmiler: Pretends to be happy, but it's clear she feels very unfulfilled in her marriage.
-->'''Daisy:''' It'll show you how I've gotten to feel about--things. Well, [my daugher] was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. "All right," I said, "I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool--that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."\\
You see I think everything's terrible anyhow. Everybody thinks so--the most advanced people. And I ''know''. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything. Sophisticated--God, I'm sophisticated!
* TheTease: She flirts with everyone. With Jordan, it comes off as HomoeroticSubtext, and with Nick, KissingCousins.
-->'''Daisy:''' If you want to kiss me any time during the evening, Nick, just let me know and I'll be glad to arrange it for you.
%%* TookALevelInJerkass
* TragicDream: She really ''did'' love Gatsby but couldn't leave her life behind for various reasons.
* UptownGirl: [[spoiler:Gatsby fell in love with her back when he was a poor soldier. He became rich so he would be more worthy of a girl from OldMoney. Unfortunately, even after he's a wealthy guy he's a ''new money'' wealthy guy so the field still isn't even.]]
* WhiteAngloSaxonProtestant: A requirement for high society in the Roaring Twenties.

!!!In adaptions:
* AdaptationDyeJob: Daisy's hair color in the book is somewhat ambiguous: she's described as dark-haired, but her daughter is said to have yellowy hair, and Daisy claims the girl has her hair, not Tom's -- and Tom is blond. Daisy has been depicted as blonde in every film version since the '40s.
* AdaptationalHeroism: Most adaptations portray Daisy more sympathetically, giving her extra scenes or lines to suggest her feelings for Gatsby are genuine.
* BrokenBird: While she's clearly an unhappy StepfordSmiler in the novel, the movie expands on this. She fell in love with Gatsby, [[spoiler:only for him to be sent off to war and resorting to communication via letters. After the war, Gatsby was assumed dead, and she was about to marry Tom like everyone pressured her to when she received a letter from Gatsby]]. She has a HeroicBSOD and tries to break off her engagement, only to be pressured by her family to go through with the marriage. Tom promptly cheats on her, is not even there for the birth of their child, and since then she has been trapped in a loveless marriage.
* DumbBlonde: As a result of AdaptationDyeJob, this winds up subverted or at least played with. Daisy is implied, both in the novel and adaptations, to be at least partly faking her foolish socialite persona.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tom]]
!!Thomas "Tom" Buchanan
[[quoteright:320:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cc0617abb6be5e1be9c2e1dcc57a91c0_joel_edgerton_the_great_gatsby_3.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:320:Joel Edgerton]]
!!!Played by: Hale Hamilton (1926), Creator/BarrySullivan (1949), Creator/BruceDern (1974), Martin Donovan (2000), Creator/JoelEdgerton (2013)

->''Now he was a sturdy, straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body--he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage--a cruel body.''

A school acquaintance of Nick's and husband of Daisy. Tom is a millionaire who lives on the old-money East Egg.
----

* AngryWhiteMan: A proto example, being wealthy, privileged, and given to complaining about the browner races of the world outbreeding his own kind if they aren't kept in their place.
* BerserkButton: Myrtle says "Daisy" multiple times after he asks her to stop, and in response, Tom ''breaks her nose''.
* BigBad: The one that Gatsby fights against for Daisy's affection.
* TheBrute: Daisy gets on to him about his roughness and he doesn't like it when she mentions this.
* CheaterGetsCheatedOn: Tom is a serial adulterer that has an affair with Myrtle, gets cheated on by Daisy, when she rekindles her romance with her past lover Gatsby. [[spoiler:When he learns of the affair in chapter 7, [[{{Hypocrite}} Tom gets upset over Daisy cheating on him and gets into a heated argument with Gatsby over it.]]]]
* DirtyCoward: He has the nerve to be angry about Daisy and her lover having their affair. Yet, he simultaneously hides the fact that he's been cheating on her with Myrtle. [[spoiler:When Myrtle is fatally run over, he lies to her husband George by outing Gatsby as the one who was having the affair with her.]]
* GloryDays:
-->''Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven--a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax. [...] I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.''
* HateSink: Tom has little redeeming qualities, he's a philandering, racist and hypocritical {{Jerkass}} who ruins lives with impunity and cares little about who he hurts in the process.
* {{Hypocrite}}:
** He's been cheating on his wife since their ''honeymoon,'' he doesn't care that Daisy and Gatsby were together before she married him and is shocked by the idea that Daisy would leave him (even if she is cheating) - but once you bring an affair partner over for dinner, you're "sneering at family life and family institutions" and leading to the beginning of the end for civilization.
** He can't even keep his affairs discreetly. He insists that Nick, Daisy's cousin, and good friend, meets his mistress Myrtle (which obviously puts Nick in an uncomfortable situation) but feels that he's not really disloyal because he insists that Myrtle has no right to say Daisy's name, and that really, he still loves Daisy.
* IdleRich: Deconstructed. Without a job, he has plenty of time for RichBoredom. He repeatedly cheats on his wife, and he is clinging to his GloryDays as a football hero because he knows he will never top them.
* InferioritySuperiorityComplex: Even with all his bluster, he's painfully aware that he has nothing to offer Daisy but his money. The only time we see him truly worried about something is when it seems like Daisy is genuinely interested in Gatsby.
%%* ItsAllAboutMe: At the end of the day, this sums up his personality.
* JerkJock: Formerly a football star, now a polo player.
* {{Jerkass}}: A rich bully who cheats on his wife and a white supremacist to boot. Jerkass is putting it mildly.
* JerkassHasAPoint: He may be one of the least sympathetic characters of American literature, but he's quite right to point out that Gatsby's criminal history makes him a bad match for Daisy.
* KarmaHoudini: [[ZigZaggingTrope Zig-zagged]]. [[spoiler:When his mistress is killed, Tom directs her suicidally mournful husband to Gatsby.]] Meanwhile, Tom and Daisy drift off to Chicago, leaving the entire unholy mess behind.
* ManChild: Nick makes this observation late in the book--Tom is unable or unwilling to change, and so self-absorbed he can't see anyone's pain but his own.
* ParentalNeglect: He and Daisy seem barely aware that they have a daughter.
* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: One of the early signs of Tom being a scumbag is his racism. When he finds out about Daisy cheating on him, he finds it as “outrageous” as white people intermarrying with black people.
* RichBastard: He's exactly as immoral as he is wealthy.
* RichInDollarsPoorInSense: Tom is an idiot, no doubt about that. But when you're as rich as he is, intelligence is optional.
* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: By the end of the novel, Tom should be in jail several times over. There's absolutely no chance of that happening.
* SensitiveGuyAndManlyMan: Gatsby's a sappy romantic and dreamer, in contrast with aggressive and argumentative Tom.
* SmugSnake: Despite a strong sense of superiority, the only thing he has going for him is being much bigger and richer than everyone around him. Luckily for him, that's plenty.
* TheSociopath: He seems to have shades of this. For example, he was excited when he saw an accident at George's gas station and was saying that George finally got some publicity.
* VillainousBreakdown: To put it bluntly, he did not take Daisy having an affair with Gatsby well.
* WhiteAngloSaxonProtestant: Naturally, considering he's an American BlueBlood. He also clings to popular racial theories that hold the White Anglo-Saxon to be a superior breed.
* WouldHitAGirl: He slaps Myrtle in the face and breaks her nose.

!!!In adaptations:
* AdaptationDyeJob: Described as "straw-haired" in the book. Movie adaptations tend to change it, as they do with the other characters.
* AdaptationalVillainy: Especially in the 2013 film, where he's much more uninhibited and is explicitly abusive towards Myrtle.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Jordan]]
!!Jordan Baker
[[quoteright:320:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/13f7ac42696a77636968e2050f25ad5b.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:320:Elizabeth Debicki]]
!!!Played by: Carmelita Geraghty (1926), Ruth Hussey (1949), Creator/LoisChiles (1974), Creator/FrancieSwift (2000), Creator/ElizabethDebicki (2013)
!!!Dubbed by: Creator/MaryanaSpivak (Russian, 2013)

->''Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible. She was incurably dishonest. She wasn't able to endure being at a disadvantage, and given this unwillingness, I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard, jaunty body.''

An attractive, jaunty, somewhat aloof golfer who is good friends with Daisy. She and Nick strike up a romance over the course of the novel.
----

* BetaCouple: With Nick.
* ConsummateLiar: "Incurably dishonest."
* DeadpanSnarker: Always has a sly quip ready to share with Nick for the various things they witness.
* DramaQueen: Invoked. Jordan loves to see drama, arguments, and issues coming to the forefront, even doing what she can to drive it along. This puts her at odds with the honest-to-a-fault Nick, who eventually leaves Jordan over this flaw.
* TheFlapper: Jordan's the modern woman of the 1920s by working (she is a pro-golf player). Her name is taken from brands of cars, and she fits the ideal appearance of a flapper by being small-chested and slim.
-->''She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet.''
* {{Jerkass}}: A thoroughly enjoyable one, but a jerkass nonetheless. Nick realizes this and dumps her for it.
* MeaningfulName: Lost to time now, but "Jordan" and "Baker" are both the names of car companies, alluding to [[ComingOfAgeStory freedom]] and [[AutoErotica liberation]].
* OppositesAttract: Her and Nick. He WillNotTellALie; she's a ConsummateLiar. She explicitly says that this is why she's attracted to him. And indeed, for his part Nick doesn't believe her in the end when she claims she's now engaged to somebody else.
* PassThePopcorn: She loves watching people dealing with their problems. This is why Nick leaves her.
* RedOniBlueOni: The cool-headed blue to Daisy's more emotional red.
* WomenDrivers: By her own admission -- she expects other people to compensate for her own carelessness.
-->'''Nick''': You're a rotten driver. Either you ought to be more careful or you oughtn't to drive at all.\\
'''Jordan''': I am careful.\\
'''Nick''': No, you're not.\\
'''Jordan''': Well, other people are.\\
'''Nick''': What's that got to do with it?\\
'''Jordan''': They'll keep out of my way. It takes two to make an accident.

!!!In adaptions
* AdaptationDyeJob: In the book, Jordan has dark blonde hair -- "the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair" -- with the autumn leave comparison being made twice. In films, she's brunette, to contrast Daisy's adaptation blondness.
* AdaptationalHeroism: Whereas her book counterpart drinks up the drama, her 2024 Broadway musical depiction emphasizes her altruistic motives. She has private conversation with Daisy to encourage her affair with Gatsby because she genuinely believes it will make Daisy happy. She also is the one who suggests to Meyer Wolfsheim to attend Gatsby's funeral.
* StatuesqueStunner: In the 2013 movie, her actress is over six feet tall.
* StepfordSmiler: The 2024 musical depicts a Jordan who is more conscientiously shaken by the events around her. When Nick breaks up with her, she's shattered but forces herself into a carefree air.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Myrtle]]
!!Myrtle Wilson
[[quoteright:320:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/myrtle_wilson.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:320:Isla Fisher]]
!!!Played by: Georgia Hale (1926), Creator/ShelleyWinters (1949), Creator/KarenBlack (1974), Creator/HeatherGoldenhersh (2000), Creator/IslaFisher (2013)

->''She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crêpe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering.''

Wife of George, she and Tom have an affair to escape the unfulfillment both were feeling in their marriages.
----

* BigBeautifulWoman: She's a plus-sized woman who dresses herself nicely and can be alluring.
* BirdsOfAFeather: Catherine tells Nick that neither Tom nor Myrtle can stand the person they're married to -- although Tom is more possessive of Daisy than Myrtle was led to believe.
* GoldDigger: ZigZaggedTrope between this and NotWithThemForTheMoney. She ''didn't'' become Tom's mistress for his money, but at her party, it's clear she enjoys having a rich boyfriend and flaunting that to her friends.
* HardDrinkingPartyGirl: She's wild even for this time.
* IronicName: The flower Myrtle Wilson is named after represents amongst other things, marital fidelity. Myrtle cheats on her husband as she has an affair with Tom Buchanan.
* LookBothWays: [[spoiler:Daisy accidentally kills her by running her over in Gatsby's car, but Gatsby takes the blame.]]
* TheMistress: To Tom. He's a lot more open about it than most examples, mostly because he knows he can be.

!!!In adaptions:
* AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther: Some stage adaptations expand on her marriage to George, giving them some of these moments.
** The off-Broadway immersive staging depicts a bickering relationship with some hints that there was once love in their marriage. Myrtle recognizes that George loves her, but reproaches him for thinking it's even enough to keep their marriage going.
** In the 2024 Broadway musical, Myrtle speaks of being allured by George's endearing qualities, admitting that he did look "cute" at their wedding despite her frustration with him wearing a second-hand suit. Her final number indicates that she can return to a forgiving George [[spoiler: suspecting that he'll forgive her for her affair and that he'll gladly raise Tom's child as his own.]]
* BlatantLies: In the 2024 Broadway musical, she brazenly tries to [[spoiler: spin her affair with a rich man as an attempt to procure money for both her and her husband. He does not buy it.]]
* HystericalWoman: In the 1974 film adaptation. Upon seeing Tom after he breaks off the affair, ''she punches her hand through the window.''
[[/folder]]

[[folder:George]]
!!George B. Wilson
[[quoteright:320:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/george_b_wilson.png]]
[[caption-width-right:320:Jason Clarke]]
!!!Played by: William Powell (1926), Howard Da Silva (1949), Creator/ScottWilson (1974), Bill Camp (2000), Creator/JasonClarke (2013)

->''He was a blonde, spiritless man, anaemic, and faintly handsome.''
A grumpy, unlikeable mechanic who works in a garage. He's Myrtle's husband, unfortunately for everyone involved.
----

* CrazyJealousGuy: Locks Myrtle upstairs upon learning she's having an affair.
* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler:After he murders Gatsby, he shoots himself.]]
* MurderSuicide: [[spoiler:George Wilson shoots himself over the death of his wife Myrtle, taking Gatsby with him.]]

!!!In adaptions:
* AdaptationalHeroism: Some stage adaptations tone down his jealous violence.
** In a UK-imported, off-Broadway immersive production, George is depicted more as a plucky dreamer, annoying Myrtle with his naive optimism in his business. Depending on how it's played, he may indicate awareness that Myrtle is having an affair but chooses not to look. Also, he begrudgingly allows Myrtle to walk away from their marriage, something that didn't happen in the novel.
** In the 2024 Broadway musical, he locks Myrtle away [[spoiler: when finding out that she's pregnant with a rich man's child]] but then immediately regrets it and decides to talk it over (by then, she has broken out). This adaptation even indicates [[spoiler: Myrtle knows George would have raised and loved Tom's child as his own.]]
[[/folder]]

!Other Characters
[[folder:Wolfsheim]]
!!Meyer Wolfsheim
[[quoteright:320:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gatsby2_jan5_621x414.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:320:Amitabh Bachchan]]
!!!Played by: Howard Da Silva (1974), Jerry Grayson (2000), Creator/AmitabhBachchan (2013)

A mobster of Jewish descent who is a close business partner of Gatsby's.
----

* AffablyEvil: Meyer Wolfsheim is quite friendly for a gangster who wears human teeth as cufflinks.
* CreepySouvenir: He wears "the finest specimen of human molars" as cufflinks, just to underscore that he's bad news. May or may not be {{Battle Troph|y}}ies, given his line of work.
* GreedyJew: He's a shady Jewish gangster who's said to have fixed the 1919 [[UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueBaseball World Series]]. Although he's apparently based on Jewish gangster Arnold Rothstein, he's considered to be a fairly anti-semitic character.
* KosherNostra: A Jewish gangster based on Arnold Rothstein.
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: A very clear allusion to Arnold Rothstein, Jewish gambler, racketeer, and mastermind behind the infamous [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandal Black Sox Scandal]].
* ObviouslyEvil: His appearance immediately corroborates Nick's suspicions about there being holes in Gatsby's stories sheerly by virtue of how obviously shady he is; he's a GreedyJew with a complimenting appearance, he casually offers Nick a shady business proposition before Gatsby clarifies why Nick is there, and he wears ''human teeth as his cufflinks''. Despite this, [[AffablyEvil he's cordial]] and [[VillainOfAnotherStory never really antagonizes Nick directly]].
* PragmaticVillainy: Despite being a close business partner with Gatsby, [[spoiler:he didn't go to the funeral out of concern that it would attracted unwanted attention to him.]]
-->'''Wolfsheim''': [[spoiler:Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.]]
* ProfessionalGambler: Described as having "fixed the World Series in 1919."
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Dr. T. J. Eckleburg]]
!!Dr. T. J. Eckleburg
[[quoteright:320:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/c11e28c11d492d7afc103b5ae584dee9.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:320:from the 2013 film]]
An optometrist [[TheGhost who never actually appears]], but a billboard advertising his practice, which consists of a giant pair of eyes with glasses, is a recurring symbol throughout the book.
----

* BigBrotherIsWatching: Though only symbolically to represent the characters' guilt.
* {{God}}: It's been interpreted by many people that the billboard represents the Eyes of God seeing everything. George Wilson outright believed that the billboard was God during his mental breakdown and believed that God [[spoiler:wanted him to avenge Myrtle's death.]]
[[/folder]]
----