She recognizes the yellow car driving by, thinking that Tom is behind the wheel. Tragically, she gets hit and is killed by Daisy Buchanan who is driving the car. In the beginning of the film, Jordan reveals to Nick that Tom has a mistress who lives in the "valley of ashes," an industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City.
Not long after this revelation, Nick travels with Tom to the valley, where they stop by a garage owned by George Wilson and his wife, Myrtle, who is Tom's lover that Jordan mentioned. Nick goes with Tom and Myrtle to an apartment that they keep for their affair, where Myrtle throws a vulgar and bizarre party with her sister Catherine , that ends with Tom breaking Myrtle's nose as she taunts him about Daisy.
Days later, at George and Myrtle's garage, George tells Tom when he stops for gas, he plans to move him and wife out west, much to Tom's concern. Myrtle, abused by her husband, tears up while George points at the sign outside, saying, "You can fool me, but you can't fool the eyes of God. She sees Gatsby's yellow car approaching and runs toward it, believing the driver to be Tom after seeing him in the same car earlier. She is struck and killed.
Afterwards, Tom, Nick, and Jordan stop by the garage when they see a large crowd has gathered. He says her face contains no beauty, but she has "an immediately perceptible vitality" When Tom and Nick meet her later, she has changed clothes, but she is still in a dark dress, brown, and it "stretched tight over her rather wide hips" Gatsby is "a year or two over thirty," and Myrtle is "in the middle thirties.
Daisy does not see her until it is too late, and runs her over. Daisy , panicked, drives away from the scene of the accident. In her home in East Egg, Gatsby assures her that he will take the blame. Tom tells George, Myrtle's husband, that it was Gatsby that killed Myrtle.
Expert Answers info Nevertheless, he believes that he loves Daisy. She is his wife and the mother of his child. Part of Tom's class privilege is his belief in his right to have a mistress. His attitude toward both women is actually similar in that he treats them as possessions.
Tom tells George that it was Gatsby's car that killed Myrtle. George goes to Gatsby's house in West Egg, where he shoots and kills Gatsby before committing suicide. Our citation format in this guide is chapter. We're using this system since there are many editions of Gatsby, so using page numbers would only work for students with our copy of the book.
To find a quotation we cite via chapter and paragraph in your book, you can either eyeball it Paragraph beginning of chapter; middle of chapter; on: end of chapter , or use the search function if you're using an online or eReader version of the text. Then I heard footsteps on the stairs and in a moment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door.
She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can.
Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering.
She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. Unlike Nick's description of Daisy, which focuses on her voice, mannerisms, and charm, and unlike his description of Jordan, which focuses on her posture and athleticism, Nick's description of Myrtle focuses almost entirely on her body itself.
Perhaps this fits with her role as Tom's mistress, but it also indicates Nick sees little in Myrtle in terms of intellect or personality. This description also speaks to the strong physical attraction between Tom and Myrtle that undergirds their affair. This attraction serves as a foil to the more deep-seated emotional attraction between Gatsby and Daisy, the novel's central affair.
We don't know a ton about Myrtle Wilson's background except what we can gather from the passing comments from other characters. For example, we get the sense Myrtle loved her husband when they got married, but has since been disappointed by his lack of cash and social status, and now feels stifled by her twelve-year marriage:. I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there.
She pointed suddenly at me, and every one looked at me accusingly. I tried to show by my expression that I had played no part in her past.
I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed somebody's best suit to get married in and never even told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he was out. She looked around to see who was listening: " 'Oh, is that your suit? And Tom's the first sweetie she ever had. She begins her affair with Tom Buchanan after he sees her on the train and later presses against her in the station:.
I was going up to New York to see my sister and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes and I couldn't keep my eyes off him but every time he looked at me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head. When we came into the station he was next to me and his white shirt-front pressed against my arm--and so I told him I'd have to call a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited that when I got into a taxi with him I didn't hardly know I wasn't getting into a subway train" 2.
Myrtle desperately wants to come off as sophisticated and wealthy despite her humble roots. Nick finds her efforts tacky and vulgar, and he spends a lot of time commenting on her clothes, mannerisms, and conversational style. She is oblivious about upper-class life: she tells her sister at one point Tom doesn't divorce Daisy because Daisy is Catholic.
That Myrtle thinks accepts Tom's lie shows that she is not a well-schooled as she thinks she is about the life and customs of the elite class she wants to be a part of. Still, before the novel begins, Tom has gotten comfortable showing Myrtle around in popular restaurants and doesn't hide the affair. Perhaps this causes Myrtle to misunderstand what she means to Tom: she doesn't seem to realize she's just one in a string of mistresses.
To see Myrtle's life events alongside those of the other characters, check out our timeline of The Great Gatsby. One of the single most important parts of your college application is what classes you choose take in high school in conjunction with how well you do in those classes. Our team of PrepScholar admissions experts have compiled their knowledge into this single guide to planning out your high school course schedule.
The idea of Myrtle Wilson is introduced in Chapter 1 , when she calls the Buchanans' house to speak to Tom. We get our first look at Myrtle in Chapter 2 , when Nick goes with Tom to George Wilson's garage to meet her, and then to Myrtle's apartment in Manhattan for a party.
On that day, she buys a dog, has sex with Tom with Nick in the next room , throws a party, and is fawned on by her friends, and then ends up with a broken nose when Tom punches her after she brings up Daisy. This doesn't prevent her from continuing the affair. Later on, in Chapter 7 , George starts to suspect she's having an affair when he finds her dog's leash in a drawer at the house. He locks her upstairs in their house, determined to move out west once he gets the money from the car sale he's waiting on from Tom.
Myrtle glimpses Tom, along with Nick and Jordan, as they drive up to Manhattan in Gatsby's yellow car. Myrtle and George fight later that evening, and Myrtle manages to run out of the house after yelling at George to beat her and calling him a coward. Just then, she spots the yellow car heading back for Long Island. Thinking it's Tom, she runs toward and then out in front of the car, waving her arms. But Daisy is driving the car, and she decides to run over Myrtle rather than get into a head-on collision with an oncoming car.
She hits Myrtle, who dies instantly. Myrtle's death emotionally and mentally devastates George, which prompts him to murder Gatsby who he mistakes for both his wife's killer and lover , and then kill himself. The death car. Wilson had changed her costume some time before and was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room.
With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change.
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