Myrtle In The Great Gatsby

The roaring twenties was a time of incredible wealth and elegance along with extreme poverty, especially in New York. Here there are West and East Egg, both very different yet overall well-off, and the Valley of Ashes, a dark, depressing industrial area. The novel The Great Gatsby, written by Fitzgerald, takes place across the entirety of this contrasting society. The reader sees the events happening in the book mostly from the view of Nick Carraway, a man who is “inclined to reserve all judgements” (Fitzgerald 1). This character Nick observes both the plot and the intricate relationships between characters, while changing himself in the end. In this novel, Fitzgerald stresses these relationships because each one has its own primary function.
Myrtle is the wife of George Wilson, the poor owner of a garage. She is a thick woman in her middle thirties, who “carried her flesh sensuously, as some women can” (Fitzgerald 18). Myrtle, however, doesn’t care about her husband at all. She is in love with Tom Buchanan, a strong football player who can simply be described as “a hulking specimen” (Fitzgerald 10). This relationship not only majorly impacts the plot, it also reveals a truth about both Myrtle and some people as a whole. Tom is married to Daisy, but is in a not-so-secret relationship with Myrtle. Right before the climax of the book, Tom, Nick, and Jordan arrive at George’s garage in Gatsby’s car. Myrtle, who is locked upstairs, looks down and sees Tom with Jordan and assumes that she is Daisy. This feeling of jealousy overcomes Myrtle and causes her to try and run to what she thinks is Tom’s car when they are coming back from New York City, but she gets hit and instantly killed, causing George to go on a search and end up killing Gatsby along with himself. Before this momentous event, however, a simple truth is revealed about Myrtle. Although she is in love with Tom, he is an abusive man, both to Daisy and to Myrtle. Near the beginning of the book, Daisy brings up that Tom hurt her knuckle, which is now swollen, as a result of being the hulking specimen that he is. Later, he breaks Myrtle’s nose just for repeating Daisy’s name, intensifying this characteristic. This is ironic due to the reason Myrtle says she is with Tom in the first place. When Catherine ask Myrtle why she married George, Myrtle replies “I thought he was a gentleman… but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe” (Fitzgerald 23). She continues to say how she wasn’t any more in love with George than Nick, another figure who isn’t portrayed as flourishing financially. Here the reader starts to see a pattern. Despite Tom’s abusive and brutish personality, Myrtle is in