The Great Gatsby Violence Analysis

Violence was a common occurrence, affecting every situation and each person in The Great Gatsby. Deep into the seventh chapter, the most violent action of the story took place. Myrtle Wilson and her husband start arguing, but she runs out into the street. As she did this, a death car sped around the road and hit Myrtle. A second car on the road squealed to a stop and “its driver hurried back to Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick dark blood with the dust” (137). Myrtle instantly died, and the entire situation was based upon a violent act. This form of violence – a vehicular hit and run – had an impact on Mr. Wilson, Tom, and, most obviously, Myrtle. Not only did the death scene affect the Wilsons and Tom, but Gatsby played a huge connection as well. After Nick arrived back in East Egg at the Buchanans’, he encountered Gatsby waiting outside the house. Nick knew it was Gatsby’s yellow car that had hit Myrtle; Gatsby tells his side of the story – and how Daisy was the one behind the wheel before he took over. Gatsby said to

In the party, occurring in the sixth chapter of The Great Gatsby, Daisy and Nick were seated at a table with a lady named Miss Baedeker. This drunken woman was fiercely yelling and mumbling. She reveals to Nick how her friends dunk her into a pool to knock sense into her and how “they almost drowned me once over in New Jersey” (106). Miss Baedeker is a violent drunk, so her friends feel the need to control her. Violent means are used to constrain wild drunkenness. Miss Baedeker’s friends choose to dunk her into water, but they must take it too far if Baedeker feels as if she is being drowned. On a broader standpoint, many people who get drunk become violent and their company may try outrageous methods to