The Great Gatsby

  • 1851

    Nick Carraway's grandfather's begins to start a hardware business that is owned by the family. ("the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the wholesale hardware business that my rather carries on today")
  • 1892

    Nick Carraway is born in a Midwestern city, and Tom Buchanan is born to a very prominent family in Chicago. ("Now he was a sturdy, straw haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner.")
  • 1910

    Myrtle marries George Wilson. ("I married him because I thought he was a gentleman.")
  • 1911

    Myrtle and George Wilson finally move into the apartment above the garage in the valley of ashes. ("They've been living over that garage for eleven years.")
  • 1914

    World War I begins.
  • 1915

    Nick graduates from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and then eventually goes to fight in WWI.
  • 1921

    The Buchanans move to Chicago, where Nick visits them for two days, then to East Egg on Long Island, New York.
  • 1922

    Tom starts to have an with his wife Myrtle Wilson.
  • 1922

    Tom takes Nick to meet Myrtle. They go to a Manhattan apartment, to the small party that was taking place, which ends with Tom hitting Myrtle in the face for talking about Daisy.
  • 1922

    A reporter comes to Gatsby place to investigate the rumors going around about Gatsby. ("It was a random shot, and yet the reporters's instinct was right. Gatsby's notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his hospitality and so become authorities on his past, had increased all summer until he fell just short of being news.")
  • 1922

    On their way back from the hotel, Daisy, was driving Gatsby's car, runs over and then kills Myrtle Wilson. Tom convinces George that is was actually Gatsby who killed Myrtle. Gatsby decided to take the blame for Myrtle's death. Later that day George shoots and kills Gatsby and then kills himself.
  • 1922

    Tom and Daisy come to Gatsby's next party, which Daisy hates to go to. This is when Gatsby and Daisy begin their affair, and Gatsby fires his staff and stops the parties to change for Daisy, because she doesn't like them.
  • 1924

    Nick writes the story about Gatsby and his experiences of what happened during that summer.