Mr. Nick Carraway

Nick provides the voice of the novel, documenting his companions exploits in the summer of 1922. Raised in a wealthy middle-western family, Nick graduates from New Haven, the college he attended with Tom Buchanan. After serving in World War I, Nick, at age 29, moves east to learn about business, and becomes involved with the affairs involving The Great Gatsby. Eventually, Nick acts as a messenger between Gatsby and Daisy, setting up the notorious first reunion at his house. Despite repeatedly insisting that he prides himself on his own honesty, Nick continually aligns himself with next-door-neighbor Gatsby where he remains loyal to Gatsby throughout the second half of the novel.

Miss Daisy

Daisy is Tom's 23-year-old wife, Nick's second cousin once removed, and Gatsby's version of the Holy Grail and The Perfect Women. As Nick characterizes both Buchanans, "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made" it reveals that Daisy wasn't who Gatsby saw her as, although later on, he finally realizes that she is all about the money.

Miss Jordan Baker

Jordan, a 23-year-old women's golf champion, becomes involved with Nick during the summer of 1922. Jordan seems incurably dishonest, a trait enhanced by Nick's remembrance of a rumor that she cheated at her first big golf tournament. Although Nick finds Jordan haughty and careless, he finds himself attracted to her anyway. At the end of the novel, Jordan gets engaged to another man after not seeing Nick for a short time, leaving Nick angry, yet still half in love with her, and tremendously sorry. Jordan's action seems to intentionally echo Daisy's leaving Gatsby to marry Tom five years earlier.

Sir Tom Buchanan

An ex-football star from the same college Nick Carraway attended, Tom is described as "one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterwards savours of anti-climax". Now thirty, Tom has become enormously wealthy, yet remains physically powerful with his cruel body and arrogant eyes. Tom has a string of affairs despite being married to Daisy, and is involved with Myrtle Wilson throughout Nick's summer-long friendship with the Buchanans. An aggressive, short-tempered man, Tom  abuses Daisy, Myrtle, George Wilson, and Gatsby, physically or emotionally.

Mistress Mrytle Wilson

Myrtle is a women in her mid-thirties and she is George Wilson's wife, and Tom Buchanan's secret lover. Myrtle is a little chunky but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Although she apparently detests her husband, her lover, Tom, abuses her, in which he actually breaks her nose during their drunken escapade in New York City. Locked in her room by George after her infidelities are found out, she escapes into the night, only to be run over by Daisy driving Gatsby's yellow car. Her death prompts George Wilson to undertake his bloody outrage.

Poor George Wilson

Wilson owns the car repair garage in the valley of ashes, where he and his wife, Myrtle, live. For most of the novel Wilson is unaware that his wife has been cheating on him with Tom Buchanan. After finding out Myrtle's infidelities, Wilson becomes physically ill and determines to move her out west; his illness turns mental, however, once she gets run over by Gatsby's car and dies. The formerly reserved Wilson seeks crazed vengeance for her death and his own pride, ultimately killing Gatsby and himself.

Mr. Jay Gatsby

The invented identity of James Gatz, born the son of poor middle-western farmers, Gatsby sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. Gatsby's beginnings occurred when the 17-year-old Gatz -- a clam digger and salmon fisher -- sees millionaire Dan Cody's yacht drop anchor on a dangerous stretch of Lake Superior. After rowing out to Cody on a borrowed row-boat and warning him that a coming wind might wreck his yacht, Cody employs Jay Gatsby in a vague personal capacity for several years. Later, Gatsby says he worked in the drugstore and oil businesses, omitting the fact that he was involved in illegal bootlegging. Gatsby keeps his criminal activities mysterious throughout the novel, preferring to play the role of the perpetually gracious host. Gatsby buys his West Egg mansion with the sole intention of being across the bay from Daisy Buchanan's green light at the end of her dock, a fantasy which becomes Gatsby's personal version of the American Dream.