I’ve read this book many times and I’ve always liked to imagine how Nick, Tom, Daisy, Jordan, and others lived out their lives following Gatsby’s death. This is one of those “what if” exercises, so there are no right or wrong answers. But these are some of my main wonderings…
Did Daisy ever leave Tom?
How did Daisy react to news of Gatsby’s death?
Did Tom or Daisy ever suffer consequences for their carelessness?
Jordan and Nick ended their relationship on a sad note. Did they ever interact again?
We know that the Great Depression would occur in the 1930s. How did this impact the characters?
What would Nick end up doing with his life?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
by Haunted_Willow
1 Comment
Here are some of my thoughts if anyone’s interested!
I think something in Daisy went numb after she heard about Gatsby’s death. She went through the motions with Tom and Jordan, but eventually lost touch with Jordan in the years following the novel. She never spoke to Nick again.
Tom ends up losing most of his money during the depression because he invested too much of his fortune in the wrong places. He and Daisy still lived well, but he was a perpetual “has-been” who peaked in college. He became involved in the American Nazi circles before the second war and lost his social standing as a result after Pearl Harbor. Daisy left him, more because others thought she should than anything else. She took her daughter with her and lived a much simpler life, working in factories during the war and helping her daughter pay for education (her daughter wasn’t a fool, for better or for worse!)
Nick’s harder for me to pin down… I think he was bisexual (it seems like he had a one night stand with the photographer in the book) and he may have ended up in more artistic circles, perhaps as an editor for underground literature or something.
Jordan eventually got caught cheating, and there was a scandal. She could no longer play golf professionally, but people around her were fascinated enough by her that the scandal was “fashionable” and she never lost too much as a result.
I think maybe Jordan and Nick do meet sometime either right during or right after the war and get some closure, but they’re never romantic again.