Myrtle is often remembered as “The one woman who gets hit and dies, right?” but, as I’ve mentioned previously, I think all characters in The Great Gatsby are carefully crafted to be complex characters that tell their own story.
For Myrtle, we follow a women who made the decision to marry for love. Perhaps not willingly, she at least believed her partner came from some money considered he came in a nice suit, later learning it was borrowed. Regardless, she is the representation of a woman who didn’t marry into wealth. She didn’t have a bad life by any means, to our knowledge, her husband was never unfaithful or harmed her physically. Yet she always craved more, she wanted to be arm candy, she wanted to be spoiled and won over with materialistic pleasure. So when Tom gave her an “in” into this lifestyle, she took it.
I describe Myrtle using the devil card because the devil card means an unhealthy obsession with material wealth. Myrtle could have lived a long and happy life if she didn’t seek a relationship with Tom to therefore get a closer connection to material wealth. Her obsession with obtaining a higher status, surrounding herself with material wealth, was what got her involved with Tom and later lead to her death. Her obsession to wealth was, quite literally, the death of her. She believed that the lack of wealth what chained her, prevented her from having a happy life, but in reality her need to strive for more was truly what prevented her from having a happy life. She had it all along, a happy and healthy life was right in front of her, but she threw it all away because she couldn’t release her need for materialistic pleasures.
"Getting the devil card in your reading shows that you have feelings of entrapment, emptiness and lack of fulfillment in your life. It might also mean that you are a slave to materialism and opulence and no matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to shake off the feeling of wanting to indulge in luxurious living. Addiction to substances or material pleasures can also be the reason for your feelings of powerlessness and entrapment. In situations such as these, you may feel as though you are a slave, unable to control your impulses or willpower to direct yourself towards something other than the satisfaction of these desires. "
-lucid lamb