He claims, for instance, to be the son of wealthy, deceased parents from the Midwest. As they drive to the city, Gatsby tells Nick about his past, but his story seems highly improbable. He then describes a trip that he took to New York with Gatsby to eat lunch. Nick lists all of the people who attended Gatsby’s parties that summer, a roll call of the nation’s most wealthy and powerful people. From there he began his journey of wealth and luxury and it was all part of his American dream to break the boundaries of reality. He borrowed a rowboat and went out to warn the owner of the yacht that “a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour.” The owner was Dan Cody, a millionaire who took Gatz’s warning for granted by making him his “steward, mate, skipper, secretary, and even jailor”. On this day, he was at the beach and came to see a yacht named “TUOLOMEE” drop anchor on Lake Superior. James Gatz changed his name to Jay Gatsby when he was about 17 years old introducing this young lad into a bright, glorious career. This foreshadows Nick discovering the truth about Gatsby’s past before he became the infamous Mr.Gatsby.įinally, Gatsby shows his true metal and reveals the truth about his background after he gains Nick’s trust. While speaking of his made-up past, Nick begins to find flaws in his story which begin to raise his suspicions about Gatsby. And with this doubt, his whole statement fell to pieces, and I wondered if there wasn’t something a little sinister about him, after all”.

This can be seen when Nick says “He hurried the phrase “educated at Oxford,” or swallowed it, or choked on it, as though it had bothered him before. While conversing with Nick and Wolfsheim, Gatsby begins to become hesitant during his recollection of the past.

Wolfshiem, which rises suspensions about his fortune and his shady business dealings handled under tables. He questions Gatsby’s credibility seeing that he wasn’t comfortable talking about his past and seemed to hide an important aspect of it. Gatsby’s speech about himself arose doubt and curiosity in Nick as his story was quite far-fetched. He adds that he attended Oxford University as a family tradition and with his fortune, he traveled throughout “capitals of Europe - Paris, Venice, Rome - collecting jewels, chiefly rubies, hunting big game, painting a little, things for myself only,” trying to escape a sad, sad memory. While on the road to New York, Gatsby tells Nick about his past he comes from a Midwestern wealthy family from San Francisco in which he inherited ‘a good deal of money’ after his family died.

Gatsby shady business page