The Great Gatsby was a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The book is told in the form of a narration and follows the life of the newly rich and the old rich in the 1920s. the main character of the book is a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby. Jay Gatsby is an interesting character that seems to have a lot of hidden secrets; Jay Gatsby always seems to keep the readers of the novel guessing. Though we are not introduced to the great character that the book was named after at the beginning of the book when we do eventually meet Jay Gatsby, he was well worth the wait. The book is called The Great Gatsby but what exactly does make Jay Gatsby as great as he is rumored to be. Jay Gatsby is a man of mystery and no one truly knows much about his life until he shares his version of his story with the narrator. We learn that Jay Gatsby and our narrator Nick Caraway were in the same army group, but Gatsby tells us that he won several …show more content…
Gatsby made most of his fortune from illegal activities.
“I found out what your ‘drug-stores’ were.” He turned to us and spoke rapidly. “He [Gatsby] and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That’s one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn’t far wrong.”
Gatsby, like most of the people that were newly rich, seems to have been involved in the illegal activity of selling alcohol all over the place. With his newly found money, Gatsby kept jumping at the chance to gain more money. In the end of the book, we learn that Gatsby is into more illegal activities than just transporting alcohol. After Gatsby’s death, Nick gets a phone call for Gatsby with a man on the other end that thinks he is talking to Gatsby.
“Hell of a note, isn’t it? Get my wires?” [man on other line named Slagle]
“There hasn’t been any wires.”