The Great Gatsby Summary & ending explained

I came East in the spring of 1922 to sell bonds, like half the young men of the Middle West that year. The house I rented in West Egg was a cardboard box wedged between two mansions. The one beside me belonged to a man named Gatsby. I knew nothing about him except that his lawn went on forever.

Across the bay, in the older, quieter money of East Egg, lived my cousin Daisy and her husband, Tom Buchanan. I'd known Tom at Yale: a big, restless body made for knocking other bodies over. Their house was all wind and white curtains. On the sofa beside Daisy lay a cool, bored young woman named Jordan Baker, a golfer.

"West Egg?" Jordan said. "Then you'll have met Gatsby."

Daisy's head came up. "What do you mean, Gatsby?"

Before I could answer, dinner was called. Halfway through it the telephone rang. Tom went inside, and then Daisy went after him.

Jordan leaned toward me. "Tom's seeing a woman in New York," she murmured. "And now she calls him at dinner. Some people have no shame."

Later, alone with me on the porch, Daisy told me about the day her daughter was born. Tom had been who knows where. She had cried, she said, and then hoped the baby would grow up pretty and empty-headed, since that was the only safe thing for a girl to be. She laughed as she said it. I didn't trust the laugh.

I drove home uneasy. On the lawn next door, in the moonlight, a man stood alone with his hands in his pockets. Something told me not to call out. He stretched his arms toward the black water, and even from where I stood he seemed to shake.

I followed his gaze. Out there was nothing but one small green light, far away, at the end of a dock.

When I turned back, he had vanished.