Myrtle Wilson is dismissed as a secondary character in The Great Gatsby, but she plays a critical role in revealing the novel’s critique of social mobility, gender, and materialism. Myrtle lives in the gray industrial wasteland of the Valley of Ashes and longs to be something more to be something other than a garage owner’s wife. Her affair with Tom Buchanan offers her a way out, if only temporarily. He sets her up in an apartment, buys her a dog, and gives her the semblance of a more adventurous life. It is all predicated upon deception and exploitation, however. Myrtle is never a member of Tom’s world. She is a diversion, not a partner, for him. He uses her, abuses her, and eventually dismisses her. Fitzgerald portrays Myrtle as aspirational but stuck. She adheres to the flawed assumption of the American Dream that passion and diligence can alter one’s position. Yet in a society where class and gender are rigidly controlled, her hopes are doomed. Her pursuit of wealth is fleshly and impulsive, the opposite of Gatsby’s idealized dream. Her death, struck by a car that she believes Tom is driving is accidental and symbolic. It’s the physical collision of class, power, and illusion. Myrtle dies chasing a life she was never really invited to be a part of. In Myrtle, Fitzgerald exposes the merciless cost of ambition in a world which accommodates the already favored. She is not just a mistress or a victim she is a symbol of all those crushed under the heels of the aspirations they were never meant to have.