Myrtle Wilson desperately looks for a better life than the one she has. She feeling imprisoned in her marriage to George, a downtrodden and uninspiring male who she mistakenly thought had great “breeding.” Myrtle and also George live together in a ramshackle garage in the squalid “valley the ashes,” a pocket of working-class desperation situated midway between brand-new York and also the suburbs of East and also West Egg. Myrtle attempts come escape her social place by coming to be a mistress come the wealthy Tom Buchanan, that buys her gifts (including a puppy) and also rents she an apartment in Manhattan, where Myrtle play-acts one upper-class lifestyle, dressing up, throwing parties, to express disgust because that servants. Myrtle seems to believe Tom genuinely loves her, and would marry she if only Daisy would divorce him. Nick knows that Tom would never ever marry Myrtle, and also the lopsidedness that the connection makes Myrtle a an ext sympathetic character than she would certainly be otherwise. Come Tom, Myrtle is just one more possession, and also when she tries to assert her very own will, he will to violence to put her in her place. Tom at as soon as ensures and endangers her upwardly mobile desires.

Although The an excellent Gatsby is full of tragic characters who don’t gain what lock want, Myrtle’s fate is amongst the most tragic, together she is a victim that both her husband as well as people she’s never ever met. Myrtle is a continuous prisoner. In the start of the publication she’s stuck in the figurative jail of she social class and her depressing marriage. Midway through, however, this immaterial jail becomes literal when George, suspicious that she’s cheating ~ above him, locks she in their rooms above the garage. This situation only amplifies she desperation come escape, which leads to her death in thing 7. As soon as she escapes and also runs out in front of Gatsby’s car, she walk so since she saw Tom driving it previously in the day; she think he’s behind the wheel. Daisy, that doesn’t know Myrtle, is control the vehicle when that strikes Myrtle down; Daisy doesn’t also stop to view what happened, and escapes there is no consequences. The lower class personalities – Gatsby, Myrtle, and George – room thus essentially sacrificed for the moral failings the the upper class characters of Tom and Daisy.




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