The Great Gatsby vs Jay Gatsby 

    Normally, the title of a book is meant to make clear or define some part of the book, whether it’d be a character, an object, or a setting. However, in the Great Gatsby, the title much more serves to confuse or elude the reader to the subject of the book, rather than make it clear to them. 

    Despite being titled “The Great Gatsby”, our POV character is not Gatsby himself, but Nick Carraway. Along with that, we don’t even meet Gatsby till the 3rd chapter, meaning that for the first 48 pages of this 180-page novel, or 1/4th of the entire book, we don’t even meet the man on the title. We only hear rumors or see hints of Gatsby for the beginning of the book, and once we meet him, he seems to be nothing like what the title has implied.

    Instead of a great and larger-than-life man, we meet someone who’s lonely, who doesn’t even have people on his shoulder or by his side, a man who’s parties are mostly made up of people who weren’t even invited by Gatsby. A man who many seem to believe killed someone else. In fact, the cover of the book that serves as the reader’s first introduction of Gatsby has a face on it that is not even his, judging by the feminine eyes and lips of the face meaning it’s the face of a woman, rather than a man like Gatsby. How can someone be so ‘great’ and not even be on the cover of a book named after them? Despite what the title, the hints, the words said about him by other characters all seemed to imply, Gatsby is anything but great. 

    Yet, in a very roundabout way, the title is actually accurate. For the man the reader meets in Chapter 3 is not the Great Gatsby, it’s Jay Gatsby. 

    The Great Gatsby is the person everyone believes Jay Gatsby is, a man so mysterious that “It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who had found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.” (Fitzgerald, 44). The Great Gatsby is the man who’s parties are so lavish that you don’t even need an invite to get in. The Great Gatsby is the man who has so many rumors, hints, and grandness associated with him that he becomes almost a figure of legend rather than a real man. 

    The title doesn’t necessarily lie to the audience, it just describes the myth of Gatsby rather than the man himself. Same with all the hints and rumors about Gatsby in the first two chapters, they are not lies about Gatsby, they are just describing the idea of Gatsby everyone seems to believe rather than the real man himself. The Great Gatsby is indeed a great, larger-than-life, grandiose figure. It’s just that Jay Gatsby, the man behind the curtain, is a lonely and out-of-place man who both Nick and the audience meet at the party in Chapter 3. 

    The only mystery left is that when Nick describes Gatsby at the beginning of the book, he describes Gatsby as someone who “temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.” (Fitzgerald, 2) But whether or not Nick is referring to the Great Gatsby or Jay Gatsby as the man he hates is something yet to be revealed.