Brief Summary of The Great GatsbyAlthough The Great Gatsby is a highly specific portrait of American society during the Roaring Twenties, its story is also one that has been told hundreds of times and is perhaps as old as America itself: a man works his way from rags to riches, only to discover that his wealth cannot afford him the privileges enjoyed by those born into the upper class. The central character is Jay Gatsby, a wealthy New Yorker of indeterminate occupation. Gatsby is best known for the lavish parties he throws every weekend at his pompous Gothic mansion in West Egg. He is suspected of being involved in illegal smuggling and other underworld activities. The narrator, Nick Carraway, is Gatsby's neighbor in West Egg. Nick is a young man from a prominent Midwestern family. Educated at Yale, he came to New York to enter the bond business. In a sense, the novel is Nick's memoir, his unique take on the events of the summer of 1922; as such, his impressions and observations necessarily color the narrative as a whole. For the most part he plays only a peripheral role in the events of the novel; he prefers to remain a passive observer. After arriving in New York, Nick visits his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom. The Buchanans live in the upscale East Egg neighborhood on Long Island; Nick, like Gatsby, resides in nearby West Egg, a less fashionable area despised by those who live in East Egg. West Egg is home to the nouveau riche who have no established social ties and tend to vulgarly flaunt their wealth. Like Nick, Tom Buchanan graduated from Yale and comes from a privileged Midwestern family. Tom is a former football player, a brutal bully obsessed with maintaining class boundaries. Daisy, by contrast, is an almost ghostly young woman who affects an air of sophisticated boredom. At the Buchanans, Nick meets Jordan Baker, a beautiful, if girlish, young woman with a cold and cynical manner. The two will later become romantically involved. Jordan tells Nick that Tom has been having an affair with Myrtle Wilson, a woman who lives in the Valley of Ashes, an industrial wasteland outside New York City. After visiting Tom and Daisy, Nick returns home to West Egg; there, he sees Gatsby staring at a mysterious green light across the bay.