The Great Gatsby (2013)

and the Woman Nobody Asked

The great American love story, read for the women in it: Daisy, wanted by two men and asked by neither, and Myrtle, whom no one protected. What it shows about a grand gesture that's never about you, being someone's green light, choosing what's safe, and a man who points others at his problem and leaves town.

The Great Gatsby (2013). Directed by Baz Luhrmann, written by Luhrmann and Craig Pearce from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel. Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby, Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan, Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway, Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan, Elizabeth Debicki as Jordan Baker, Isla Fisher as Myrtle Wilson, and Jason Clarke as George Wilson.

Every party was for her. Nobody asked her what she wanted.

A note before you read. This page discusses a film in which a woman is killed by a car, a man is shot, and another man dies by suicide. It also involves drinking and infidelity. Nothing is described in detail. If you are thinking about suicide, you can call or text 988, any time, in the US. Every other number is on the Resources page.

This page belongs to On Screen. It’s the second DiCaprio film in the series, after Titanic, and it turns that story around. In Titanic, a rich man’s fiancée escapes. Here, a poor man becomes rich to win back a woman, and she stays with the rich man after all.

Like every entry on the On Screen page, it reads a story for the pattern it teaches, and makes no claim about anyone’s diagnosis. It’s also a film about one man’s longing, told by another man, and the women in it are seen almost entirely through their eyes. This page tries to look at them directly: Daisy, whom everyone wants, and Myrtle, whom no one protects.

There is no quote page for this film, so this page quotes no dialogue.

The Story

In 1929, Nick Carraway, a veteran, is in treatment at a psychiatric hospital for his drinking. His doctor suggests he write, and Nick begins to tell the story of Jay Gatsby, the most hopeful man he ever met.

Seven years earlier, in the summer of 1922, Nick moves to Long Island and rents a cottage next to Gatsby’s mansion, where enormous parties are held every weekend. Across the bay live Nick’s cousin Daisy and her domineering husband, Tom. One night Nick sees Gatsby on his lawn, reaching toward a green light at the end of the Buchanans’ dock.

Tom takes Nick to meet his mistress, Myrtle Wilson, whose husband, George, owns a garage in an industrial wasteland on the way to the city. Nick meets Gatsby, who tells him he’s an Oxford man and a war hero from a wealthy family.

The truth comes out in pieces. Gatsby fell in love with Daisy in 1917, before the war, and has never stopped loving her. He throws his parties hoping she might come. He asks Nick to invite her to tea, and the two begin an affair. When Daisy wants to run away with him, Gatsby wants a proper divorce instead.

At a hotel in the city, Tom accuses Gatsby of lying about Oxford and making his money bootlegging with gangsters. Gatsby nearly hits him. On the drive home, Gatsby’s car, with Daisy driving, strikes and kills Myrtle, who has run into the road after a fight with George. Tom tells George that the car was Gatsby’s, and that Gatsby was probably Myrtle’s lover.

Daisy decides to stay with Tom. Gatsby tells Nick the truth: he was born poor, his name was James Gatz, and he had asked Daisy to wait for him after the war. She married Tom instead. The next day, George shoots Gatsby, then dies by suicide. Daisy and Tom leave New York. Nick is nearly the only one at Gatsby’s funeral. The papers falsely call Gatsby Myrtle’s lover and her killer.

What It Gets Right

It shows how wealth protects some people and destroys others. It shows a man so devoted to an idea of a woman that he never quite sees the woman herself. And it shows, without softening it, who pays: not the people who caused the harm, but the ones with the least.

What It Teaches

1. The parties

Gatsby throws the biggest parties on Long Island, every weekend, for years, in the hope that Daisy might walk through the door one night.

The Decoder’s Card 48, The Grand Gesture, is “Big displays that substitute for real change.” Gatsby’s gesture is real devotion, and it’s still a display. He never once asks Daisy what she wants. He builds an entire life as a message to her, and then expects her to read it the way he wrote it.

If someone’s love for you has ever been very large and very loud, and somehow never about you, you’ll recognize the parties.

2. The green light

Every night, Gatsby reaches toward the light at the end of Daisy’s dock. It’s one of the most famous images in American fiction. It’s also a picture of how he sees her: not as a person across the water, but as a light. A prize.

The Decoder’s Card 54, Trophy on the Shelf, is “Your image, not you, is the point.” Tom has Daisy as his wife and a mistress besides. Gatsby made himself rich to deserve her. Neither man’s love is quite about Daisy. She is the thing both of them want to have.

3. Daisy’s choice

When Daisy wants to run away with Gatsby, he says no: she should get a proper divorce. When it all goes wrong, she stays with Tom. Readers have blamed her ever since.

It’s worth looking at her more gently. Daisy was a young woman who’d been asked to wait for a man with no money, and married a man with a great deal. Years later she was offered an escape, on someone else’s terms. She chose what was safe. That isn’t admirable. But it isn’t a mystery, either. Many women have stayed for the same reasons.

4. Tom points the gun

After Myrtle is killed, Tom doesn’t go to the police. He goes to George, the grieving husband, and tells him whose car it was, and who Myrtle’s lover probably was. George does the rest.

The Decoder’s Card 47, Flying Monkeys, is “Recruiting others to do their bidding.” Tom never has to touch Gatsby. He just points a broken man in the right direction, and then leaves town.

5. Myrtle

Myrtle is the film’s other woman, in every sense. Tom keeps her, and keeps her in her place. She dies in the road, and the story everyone tells afterward isn’t even true.

She is easy to overlook in a film so in love with its parties. This page doesn’t want to overlook her. The women at the edges of stories like this one, the mistresses, the wives in the wrong neighborhood, are often the ones who pay first.

The Woman as the Prize, Side by Side

	Sabrina (1954)	Titanic (1997)	The Great Gatsby (2013)
Who wanted her	The rich son who’d never noticed her	A rich fiancé, and a poor artist	A rich husband, and a man who got rich for her
Who asked what she wanted	Eventually, the right brother	Jack did	No one
How it ended	She chose for herself	She gave herself a new name	She went back to what was safe

Three films about a woman wanted by men with money. The difference is whether anyone asked her.

If You Grew Up on This

Many readers met this story in high school English, and later in this film. Nothing on this page asks you to stop loving its beauty. The useful thing is to look at it clearly from where you stand now.

Some questions to sit with:

Has someone’s love for you been very large, and somehow never about you?
Have you been someone’s green light: wanted as an idea more than known as a person?
Have you stayed somewhere because it was safe? Can you look at that choice gently?
Has someone pointed other people at a problem, so they never had to act themselves?
Who are the Myrtles in the stories you know, the women nobody protected?

Every party was for Daisy. Nobody asked her what she wanted.

You’re the audience now. You get to be asked.