The Great Gatsby: Pages 133-144

The falling action of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby crashes through the pages at this point in the novel. With the drama of the Buchanan’s unfaithfulness still in the air, the action that gets the ball rolling down the hill to the end of the story is the death of Mrs. Myrtle Wilson. As I had predicted earlier, Wilson does have a great effect on the result of the story. Because of her death, scandal now surrounds Gatsby and Daisy, as they were in the car that took her life. Myrtle’s husband, George Wilson, basically falls into a state of madness where all reasonable thought is blocked out by the idea of avenging his wife. Furthermore, the relationship between characters Jordan Baker and Nick Carraway is shot to pieces during these events. The stress of the evening’s events and the horror of the unknown breaks them apart beyond repair, ending any hope of a continued relationship. It is at this point that Carraway also loses faith in Gatsby, even though he was the one person who tried to stay his friend throughout the entire book. Not thinking about the fact that he just killed a woman, Gatsby is only concerned that no one saw that he and Daisy were the passengers of the car that killed Mrs. Wilson. The characters’ lack of concern or responsibility for their own actions drove me crazy during this novel, and Gatsby’s insensitivity towards the death of Wilson sent Carraway over the edge. He claimed, “I disliked him [Gatsby] so much by this time that I didn’t find it necessary to tell him he was wrong,” (Fitzgerald, 143). The fact that Gatsby had upset Nick so much that he refused to tell him a piece of information that could possibly get him in trouble proves that he had crossed a line, even for caring Nick.