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Characters

Major characters

• Nick Carraway (Narrator)—a 29-year-old (thirty by the end of the book) bond salesman from Minnesota, a Yale graduate, a World War I veteran, and a resident of Long Island. Neighbor of Gatsby and Daisy's cousin. The story is narrated by him.
• Jay Gatsby (originally James "Jimmy" Gatz)—a young, mysterious millionaire later revealed to be a bootlegger, originally from North Dakota, with shady business connections and an obsessive love for Daisy Fay Buchanan, whom he had met when he was a young officer in World War I.
• Daisy Buchanan née Fay—an attractive, effervescent young woman; Nick's second cousin, once removed; and the wife of Tom Buchanan. Daisy is believed to have been inspired by Fitzgerald's own youthful romance with Chicago heiress Ginevra King. Gatsby had courted but lost Daisy five years earlier due to their different social standing, the main reason Fitzgerald believed he had lost Ginevra.^[10]
• Tom Buchanan—an arrogant "old money" millionaire who lives on East Egg, and the husband of Daisy. Buchanan had parallels to William Mitchell, the Chicagoan who married Ginevra King. Buchanan and Mitchell were both Chicagoans with an interest in polo. Like Ginevra's father, whom Fitzgerald resented, Buchanan attended Yale.^[10]
• Jordan Baker—She is Daisy Buchanan's long-time friend, a professional golf player with a slightly shady reputation. Fitzgerald told Maxwell Perkins that her character was based on the golfer Edith Cummings, a friend of Ginevra King.^[10]
• George B. Wilson—a mechanic and owner of a garage located at the edge of the valley of ashes, the cuckolded husband of Myrtle and the one who determined Gatsby's fate.
• Myrtle Wilson—George Wilson's wife and Tom Buchanan's mistress.

Minor characters

• Meyer Wolfsheim—a Jewish man Gatsby describes as a gambler who had "fixed the World Series". Wolfsheim is a clear allusion to Arnold Rothstein, a New York crime kingpin who was notoriously blamed for the Black Sox Scandal which tainted the 1919 World Series.^[11]
• Catherine—Myrtle Wilson's sister
• Chester and Lucille McKee—Myrtle's New York friends
• "Owl-eyes"—a drunken party-goer whom Nick meets in Gatsby's library and is one of the very few people to attend Gatsby's funeral.
• Ewing Klipspringer—a sponger who virtually lives at Gatsby's mansion
• Pammy Buchanan—the Buchanans' three-year-old daughter
• Henry C. Gatz—Gatsby's somewhat estranged father in North Dakota. He is one of the three people to show up at Gatsby's funeral.
• Michaelis—George Wilson's neighbor
• Dan Cody—an adventurer who was Gatsby's mentor as a youth.