Characters

There are several important characters in The Great Gatsby. These include Nick Carraway (the narrator), Jay Gatsby who is the central subject of the novel, as well as Daisy Buchanan and her husband Tom Buchanan.

Jordan Baker, Tom's lover Myrtle Wilson, and her husband George Wilson are secondary characters, though the Wilsons both play important roles during the story’s climax, as Myrtle's death directly leads to George's murder of Gatsby. 

The book also features other named characters, such as Meyer Wolfshiem and Dan Cody, but these mostly exist on the sidelines and do not play very direct roles in the story. 

In what follows, we will give in-depth characterizations of the book’s most important characters, before we briefly look at the secondary characters. At the end of this section, we will also discuss some of the key relationships between the various characters in the novel.