Jay Gatsby () (originally named James Gatz) is the titular fictional character of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. The character is an enigmatic nouveau riche millionaire who lives in a Long Island mansion where he often hosts extravagant parties and who allegedly gained his fortune by illicit bootlegging during prohibition in the United States. Fitzgerald based many details about the fictional character on Max Gerlach, a mysterious neighbor and World War I veteran whom the author met in New York during the raucous Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Gerlach threw lavish parties, never wore the same shirt twice, used the phrase "old sport", claimed to be educated at Oxford University, and fostered myths about himself, including that he was a relative of Wilhelm II.
The character of Jay Gatsby has been analyzed by scholars for many decades and has given rise to a number of critical interpretations. Scholars posit that Gatsby functions as a cipher because of his obscure origins, his unclear religio-ethnic identity and his indeterminate class status. Accordingly, Gatsby's socio-economic ascent is deemed a threat by other characters in the novel not only due to his status as nouveau riche, but because he is perceived as a societal outsider. The character's biographical details indicate his family are recent immigrants which precludes Gatsby from the status of an Old Stock American. As the embodiment of "latest America", Gatsby's rise triggers status anxieties typical of the 1920s era, involving xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment.
A century after the novel's publication in April 1925, Gatsby has become a touchstone in American culture and is often evoked in popular media in the context of the American dream—the belief that every individual, regardless of their origins, may seek and achieve their desired goals, "be they political, monetary, or social. It is the literary expression of the concept of America: The land of opportunity". Gatsby has been described by scholars as a false prophet of the American dream as pursuing the dream often results in dissatisfaction for those who chase it, owing to its unattainability.
The character has appeared in various media adaptations of the novel, including stage plays, radio shows, video games, and feature films. Canadian-American actor James Rennie originated the role of Gatsby on the stage when he headlined the 1926 Broadway adaptation of Fitzgerald's novel at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City. He repeated the role for 112 performances. That same year, screen actor Warner Baxter played the role in the lost 1926 silent film adaptation. During the subsequent decades, the role has been played by many actors including Alan Ladd, Kirk Douglas, Robert Ryan, Robert Redford, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jeremy Jordan, Ryan McCartan, Jamie Muscato, and others.
Inspiration for the character
After the publication and success of his debut novel This Side of Paradise in 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Sayre relocated to a wealthy enclave on Long Island near New York City. Despite enjoying the exclusive Long Island milieu, Fitzgerald disapproved of the extravagant parties, and the wealthy persons he encountered often disappointed him. While striving to emulate the rich, he found their privileged lifestyle to be morally disquieting, and he felt repulsed by their careless indifference to less wealthy persons.: Although Fitzgerald strove "to become member of the community of the rich, to live from day to day as they did, to share their interests and tastes", he found such a privileged lifestyle to be morally disquieting.: Fitzgerald "admired deeply the rich" and yet his wealthy friends often disappointed or repulsed him. Consequently, he harbored "the smouldering hatred of a peasant" towards the wealthy and their milieu.
Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald admired the rich, but he nonetheless harbored a deep resentment towards them.: According to Fitzgerald himself, he was unable "to forgive the rich for being rich, and it has colored my entire life and works." This recurrent theme is ascribable to Fitzgerald's life experiences in which he was "a poor boy in a rich town; a poor boy in a rich boy's school; a poor boy in a rich man's club at Princeton." He "sensed a corruption in the rich and mistrusted their might." Consequently, he became a vocal critic of America's leisure class and his works satirized their lives.: The Saturday Evening Post and other magazines rejected several of Fitzgerald's stories as they deemed them to be "baffling, blasphemous, or objectionably satiric about wealth".
While living in New York, writer F. Scott Fitzgerald's enigmatic neighbor was Max Gerlach. Gerlach claimed to be born in America to a German immigrant family, and he served as an officer in the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I. He later became a gentleman bootlegger who lived like a millionaire in New York. Flaunting his new wealth, Gerlach threw lavish parties, never wore the same shirt twice, used the phrase "old sport", claimed to be educated at Oxford University, and fostered myths about himself, including that he was a relative of Wilhelm II. These details about Gerlach inspired Fitzgerald in his creation of Jay Gatsby. With the end of prohibition and the onset of the Great Depression, Gerlach lost his immense wealth.; ; Living in reduced circumstances, he attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head in 1939, which blinded him. Gerlach died at October 18, 1958, at Bellevue Hospital, New York City. He was buried in a pine casket at Long Island National Cemetery.
Mirroring Gerlach's background, Fitzgerald's fictional creation of James Gatz has a Germanic surname, and the character's father adheres to Lutheranism. These biographical details indicate Gatsby's family are recent German immigrants. Such origins preclude them from the status of Old Stock Americans.
Fitzgerald based many aspects of the lower-middle-class character on himself. "The whole idea of Gatsby", he later explained, "is the unfairness of a poor young man not being able to marry a girl with money. This theme comes up again and again because I lived it." In particular, Gatsby's obsession with Daisy Buchanan was based on Fitzgerald's romantic obsession with Chicago heiress Ginevra King.
After The Great Gatsbys publication in April 1925, Fitzgerald was dismayed that many literary critics misunderstood the novel, and he resented the fact that they failed to perceive the many parallels between his own life and his fictional character of Jay Gatsby; in particular, that both created a mythical version of themselves and attempted to live up to this legend.
In June 2025, Clare Hopkins, archivist at Trinity College, and Roger Michel, a fellow of the College, announced after searching historical records that the model for young Gatsby was “almost certainly” Robert P. T. Coffin, a poet.
Fictional biography
Born circa 1890 to impoverished Lutheran farmers in rural North Dakota,: "Just why these inventions were a source of satisfaction to James Gatz of North Dakota, isn't easy to say.... His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people".: "A little before three the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing, and I began to look involuntarily out the windows for other cars. So did Gatsby's father". James Gatz was a poor Midwesterner who briefly attended St. Olaf College, a small Lutheran institution in southern Minnesota.: "An instinct toward his future glory had led him, some months before, to the small Lutheran College of St. Olaf's". He dropped out after two weeks as he disliked working as a lowly janitor.: "He stayed there two weeks, dismayed at its ferocious indifference to the drums of his destiny, to destiny itself, and despising the janitor's work with which he was to pay his way through".
In 1907, a 17-year-old Gatz traveled to Lake Superior, where he met copper tycoon Dan Cody whose yacht Tuolomee was anchored in Little Girl Bay.: "The none too savory ramifications by which Ella Kaye, the newspaper woman, played Madame de Maintenon to his weakness and sent him to sea in a yacht, were common property of the turgid journalism of 1902. He had been coasting along all too hospital shores for five years when he turned up as James Gatz's destiny in Little Girl Bay". Introducing himself as Jay Gatsby,: "I suppose he'd had the name ready for a long time, even then.... He invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end". the ragged young man saved Cody's yacht from destruction by warning him of weather hazards. In gratitude, Cody invited him to join his yachting trip. Now known as Gatsby, he served as Cody's protégé over the next five years and voyaged around the world. When Cody died in 1912, he left Gatsby $25,000 in his will (), but Cody's mistress Ella Kaye cheated Gatsby out of the inheritance.: "And it was from Cody that he inherited money—a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars. He didn't get it. He never understood the legal device that was used against him, but what remained of the millions went intact to Ella Kaye".
In 1917, after the United States' entrance into World War I, Gatsby joined the United States Army. During infantry training at Camp Taylor near Louisville, Kentucky, 27-year-old Gatsby met and fell deeply in love with 18-year-old debutante Daisy Fay.: "He found her excitingly desirable. He went to her house, at first with other officers from Camp Taylor, then alone.... I can't describe to you how surprised I was to find out I loved her, old sport". Deployed to Europe with the American Expeditionary Forces, Gatsby attained the rank of Major in the U.S. 7th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Division and garnered decorations for extraordinary valor during the Meuse–Argonne offensive in 1918 from every Allied government, including the one of Montenegro, which King Nicholas I gave him the Order of Danilo, to "Major Jay Gatsby For Valour Extraordinary".: "Your face is familiar," he said, politely. "Weren't you in the First Division during the war?" "Why, yes. I was in the Twenty-eighth Infantry." "I was in the Sixteenth Infantry until June nineteen-eighteen. I knew I'd seen you somewhere before.": "Your face is familiar," he said politely. "Weren't you in the Third Division during the war?" "Why, yes. I was in the Ninth Machine-Gun Battalion." "I was in the Seventh Infantry until June nineteen-eighteen. I knew I'd seen you somewhere before."
After the Allied Powers signed an armistice with Imperial Germany, Gatsby resided in the United Kingdom in 1919 where he briefly attended Trinity College, Oxford, for five months.: "It was in nineteen-nineteen, I only stayed five months. That's why I can't really call myself an Oxford man.... It was an opportunity they gave to some of the officers after the armistice".: "After the armistice he tried frantically to get home, but some complication or misunderstanding sent him to Oxford instead". While there, he received a letter from Daisy,: "The letter reached Gatsby while he was still at Oxford". informing him that she had married Thomas "Tom" Buchanan, a wealthy Chicago businessman. Gatsby departed the United Kingdom and traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to Louisville, but Daisy had already departed the city on her honeymoon. Undaunted by Daisy's marriage to Tom, Gatsby decided to become a man of wealth and influence in order to win Daisy's affection.: "However glorious might be his future as Jay Gatsby, he was at present a penniless young man without a past, and at any moment the invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders. So he made the most of his time".