After serving in the Third Infantry Division in World War I, Nick Carraway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby (1925), declined to return to his roots in the Midwest and moved instead to West Egg, a wealthy section of Long Island, and settled near his cousin Daisy Buchanan and her affluent husband Tom, a classmate of Nick’s at Yale. Before long he is dating Jordan Baker, a young heiress and golf champion, and attending lavish parties at the estate of neighbor Jay Gatsby. Nick is intrigued by Gatsby’s relationship with the gangster Meyer Wolfsheim and wonders at the origin of the fortune that the self-made Gatsby has somehow amassed. Gatsby takes a liking to Nick and confides that he has been in love with Daisy since before the war and asked for his help in winning her over. He arranges a rendezvous and serves as their confidant as they resume their love affair. Things come to a head one night in an automobile accident following an evening of drunken revelry. Lies, betrayal, revenge, and bloodshed follow and lead to a tragic end. A disillusioned Nick abandons West Egg and returns to the Midwest convinced that the era of high times and big dreams is over. The book received generally favorable reviews but was a commercial failure, which led Fitzgerald to think himself a failure.  After his death, the book was recognized as a masterpiece and became a symbol of its era, a part of popular culture, and, some say, the Great American Novel.

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