There are a lot of rumors speculating around Gatsby’s wealth. Some say that he got his money from Kaiser Wilhelm, while others think it was all simply inherited. All of this was false, but what is true is that he had help from other people, and the person who helped him the most is Dan Cody. Before he was Jay Gatsby as the people know him as now, he was “James Gatz — that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career — when he saw Dan Cody’s yacht drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior.” (Gatsby, 6) Cody taught Gatz what it means to be a gentleman, and James was even employed by him, supposedly making him steward, mate, skipper, secretary, and even jailor. Gatz even changed his name to the person everyone knows as Jay Gatsby. However, Cody died on his ship and Gatsby was left “a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars. He didn’t get it.” (Gatsby, 6) Somewhere along the way, he was drafted into the war and fell in love with a lady named Daisy. Ever since then, he was dedicated to get the money to be with her as she was what he wasn’t: rich. …show more content…
After the war however, he took advantage of the prohibition in New York at the time and got involved in bootlegging to make his money and made connections with gangsters, such as Meyer Wolfsheim, who helped Gatsby in his business by buying drugstores to carry out the job, him the rich gentleman we know a Jay