Category: Reflections

I personally don’t believe that Gatsby was a villain in the Great Gatsby. In Fact, I don’t believe any character was the true villain in this story. I think that all the characters are morally gray. They all have their own motives and flaws that don’t partially make them a ‘villain’. Here’s a couple of ‘evil’ characters people think of in the book:

Gatsby: 

Gatsby, arguably the protagonist of the book, has the greatest ‘rags to riches’ story there is in the book. Gatsby started out poor, but through bootlegging became rich and (kind of) famous. Gatsby did all of this in pursuit of his one and true love Daisy. Gatsby’s bootlegging took advantage of a lot of people. He profited off others in worse situations to make his own situation better. However, does that make him a bad person? Is he in the wrong for chasing his dreams? Was it wrong for him to commit illegal acts if it was to escape poverty? I personally don’t think so. Gatsby was just following the American Dream. He did what every businessman in the history of capitalism has done. He was doing the best thing he could do to get to his goals. 

Daisy:

I don’t think there is much to be said here. Most things Daisy does in the book are motivated by either love, helplessness, or jealousy. She cheats on Tom with Gatsby when she already knows Tom has been cheating on her. She decided to run over Myrtle out of jealousy and possibly grief of what used to be. I don’t think she did it out of revenge, but she was angry at Tom and his affairs and that took control of her.

Tom:

This one is controversial, but I can explain. People’s actions and decision making is based on their own life experience and things they have learned. This book takes place in a time that the things that Tom did were widely accepted for rich people to do. Tom has been rich his whole life. He assumedly has grown up around people doing these exact things. It’s easy for us with our modern view of things to easily see it’s wrong, but back in this time, where Tom lived and before this modern perspective, he most likely did not see anything wrong. Tom at some point learned in his life that domestic abuse and cheating is a perfectly fine thing to do. Tom was not trying to be a villain because he didn’t think these acts were bad. I think he was just a product of his time. 

In the Great Gatsby, Myrtle really shows a lot of the issues in the society of the time. Despite ending up as roadkill, her legacy lives on to sympathize with many women living in similar situations. However, some people still see Myrtle as a bad person. Personally I don’t think so. I think she was just trying her best to get to a better place in life.

I think that a lot of people reading the book don’t really like Myrtle. She cheats on her husband to have an affair with Tom, and experiences the consequences of her actions, right? Well, I don’t think that Myrtle deserved her fate. I think that Myrtle was actually just a victim of her circumstances. All she wanted was to live a lavish lifestyle, and she was blindsided by Tom’s riches. He gave her what she dreamed of in exchange for destroying her marriage and the life she had built within the Valley of Ashes. She thought that dating him might make life better for her. I believe that the affair was her version of the American Dream. She thought she could truly get somewhere better in life. Instead, she died at the hands of her affair partner’s wife. 

So why do we still consider Myrtle the villain? I personally think it’s because of some of the reader’s own implicit biases. Even if she didn’t do anything wrong, Myrtle is easy to blame. She had no position of power, she had no riches, and had no major relevance in the story aside from the affair she took part in. She’s the ‘low class moral-less’ woman that people automatically assume the worst of. I think that she gets a bad reputation. I think that Myrtle herself, like many of the other characters, is just morally gray with the conditions that she had been put in.