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Familiar with the characters of The Great Gatsby , but need to analyze one or more of them for an essay or class assignment? This article has got your back! In it, we'll discuss what the point of analyzing a book character is. We'll also talk about the dos and donts of writing a character analysis, essay, explaining how to go from an argument to finding evidence. Finally, we'll give you an example of how to develop an essay of this type by constructing one around the old money characters (Tom, Daisy, and Jordan). 

You'll also find links to our in-depth articles on each of The Great Gatsby 's main characters, explaining their role and significance in the novel, key quotes for each, and some ideas for essay topics, really helping you pull together your thoughts about these characters!

Why Write a The Great Gatsby Character Analysis Essay?

By assigning a character analysis, your teacher is giving you the chance to practice many different writing and analysis skills, including:

• close reading
• incorporating evidence from the novel into an essay
• building a larger argument
• tying small details you notice while reading into one of the book’s larger themes

The Great Gatsby  is the perfect book for character analysis since it features seven major characters that interact in interesting ways across gender and class lines.  Since this novel has so many beautiful and fascinating bits of character description, it will also get you to practice using evidence from the text in an argument.

So make sure that any character analysis you write builds on the skills you are learning in class! We will go over some do’s and don’t of character analysis below.

Character Analysis Do's

Here are some tips for constructing an excellent The Great Gatsby  character analysis essay.

Create an Argument, Not Just a Topic 

There is a big difference between an essay topic and an essay argument.

Most of the time, your teacher will give you an essay topic - in other words, what your essay should be about generally . Normally a topic will involve connecting the character to one of the novel’s larger themes, especially money and materialism , the American Dream , love and desire , or the relationship between upper and lower classes in society. If you design your own topic, you could explain how your chosen character illuminates one of the novel's symbols motifs.

For our example, let's take the common prompt, “Write an essay about how either Tom, Daisy, or Jordan represents old money.” This essay assignment has the topic built in: it wants you to take one of those characters and explain how their individual qualities tie them to the bigger abstract idea of the old money class.

But you still have to come up with the argument yourself. An argument is exactly what it sounds like - it's a point that you're trying to make by using reasons and evidence. There's an easy test for figuring out whether you're working with an argument. Could someone argue the opposite of what you're saying? Then yes, that's an argument. Otherwise, it's just a statement of fact. Plus, an essay anchored by a surprising assertion will immediately seem more interesting - how on earth are you going to prove this, your reader will be wondering.

In our example essay, let's say that we've decided to analyze Tom. It's tempting to use something like this as the "argument":

Tom's wealth and privilege show that he is part of the old money class.

But could anyone argue the opposite? Not at all - because this is a factual description, not a contentious statement.

Instead, an argument should make some kind of provocative, challengeable point:

Tom Buchanan is an example of Nick’s scathing depiction of the old money class as fearful and insecure despite enormous privilege.

Now, that someone could argue with! After all, Tom doesn't at first glance seem like someone who is fearful or insecure.  

Outline How You Will Prove Your Argument

Make sure each paragraph is anchored by a thesis statement - a one-sentence summary of what part of your argument this particular paragraph is going to prove. Also, loosely plan out what evidence you will use to back up each paragraph's thesis statement.

It can be helpful to create a simple outline before hand to guide how you’ll go about your essay. This will keep your essay clearly organized, and make writing easier.

In our example essay, an outline could look like:

Argument:   Tom Buchanan is an example of Nick’s scathing depiction of the old money class as fearful and insecure despite enormous privilege.

Paragraph 1: The trappings of Tom’s life show his privilege and his insecurity. Evidence:

• fancy house
• polo horses
• enormous wealth
• year in France

Paragraph 2: Tom actions constantly hint at his insecurity about his status. Evidence:

• depressed that his football glory days are behind him
• racist tirade shows he thinks the elite is about to be swept off the map
• has affairs only with lower-class women he can dominate

Paragraph 3: Tom's constant policing of other people's behavior shows how much he wants to reinforce class divisions in the face of them eroding. Evidence:

• throwing money at Myrtle to buy ten dogs
• grousing about Gatsby misinterpreting the invitation from the Sloanes and mocking the pink suit
• investigating Gatsby's criminal dealings even when already pretty sure Gatsby is a bootlegger

Paragraph 4: Tom decisions around Myrtle's murder show that he is more cowardly than his intimidating physical presence leads us to believe. Evidence:

• manipulating George to kill Gatsby rather because he was scared of George's gun
• running away with Daisy rather than sticking around to face consequences

Conclusion: Tom's privilege only heightens his sense of himself as a victim whose status is in danger of being usurped. Tom is a scathing portrait of old money royalty.

Use and Analyze Evidence to Support Your Argument

Bold arguments depend on a solid use of evidence to back them up. That means you can't just throw a quote into your writing and move on! Instead, use this rule of thumb: for each line of quoted text you insert, make sure you have 2-4 lines of your own explaining and interpreting the meaning of the quote as it relates to your argument .

To back up our example argument, we would now scour the book to find evidence of Tom being insecure or fearful. Once we've got something, though, it can't just be thrown into the essay willy nilly like this:

Nick says that Tom was "one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax" (1.16).

Instead, we have to connect this description to the larger argument, using close reading to really get at the meaning of the words Nick is choosing:

Nick is pointing out that Tom's athletic achievements happened too long ago to keep feeding Tom's ego, Instead, because nothing has ever lived up to his football glory days, Tom is spending his time trying to avoid the depressing feeling of "anti-climax."

Use Evidence to Address Counterarguments

Because you've created an actually disputable argument, you can take the time to swat away the opposite position .

In the example essay we've been constructing, we're arguing that Tom Buchanan represents Fitzgerald’s critique of old money and is essentially an antagonist. We should address the idea that Tom is the novel's sharpest observer of people. (After all, unlike Nick, Tom immediately pegs Gatsby as a bootlegger.) This seemingly positive quality could be spun to be yet another example of Tom's insecurity - he is very quick to leap to judgment rather than giving people the benefit of the doubt.

Character Analysis Don'ts

Now that we've covered what you  should  do in a  Gatsby character analysis essay, let's go over some mistakes you should avoid.

Avoid Stating the Obvious

Don’t just say what the character is like, list descriptions from the book, or summarize what the character did without adding any analysis. For example, don’t just say “Gatsby is flamboyant, throws big parties, and even wears a pink suit sometimes. He does all of this to try and win back Daisy, the love of his life.” All that does is summarize something that is obvious from the book.

Instead, tie those observations to a larger idea. For example, “the extravagance of Jay’s parties and dress marks him as a member of the newly rich, allowing Fitzgerald to satirize the newly rich in America as he also critiques the cruelty of old money” or “Jay’s obsessive pursuit of Daisy reveals an unrealistic obsession with reliving the past.”

Don’t Make All or Nothing Claims About a Character

The beauty of this novel is that the statements “Daisy is a horrible person” or “Daisy is a misunderstood martyr” are both wrong.

Instead, try and find the nuances, the good and the bad points of each character, and make them work for your bigger argument. For example, if you’re writing an essay about how Daisy represents the limited options available to women in the 1920s, you would likely be more sympathetic to some of her behavior, but you still shouldn’t excuse her hit-and-run!

Don’t Focus on Including Every Single Scene or Line That Features Your Character

Even for a short novel, Gatsby is jam-packed with meaningful dialogue, imagery, and plot events, and you couldn’t possibly analyze every single key moment for each character in one essay! (You could – and people have – write whole books on the subject!) Instead, focus on finding a few moments and analyzing them in detail, then tying them to your main point. Remember that the quality of analysis is worth more than the quantity of evidence!

Character Analysis Links

Each of our character pages has a detailed section with analysis of each character.

You can also get some helpful background information, a summary of the character’s actions in the book, and important quotes by and about them:

Nick Carraway

Daisy Buchanan

Tom Buchanan

Jordan Baker

Myrtle Wilson

George Wilson

The Bottom Line on  The Great Gatsby  Character Analysis

• Character analysis is a chance to practice many different writing and analysis skills.
• Create an argument - a debatable, provocative point that you're trying to make by using reasons and evidence. 
• Anchor each paragraph by a thesis statement - a one-sentence summary of what part of your argument this particular paragraph is going to prove.
• Loosely plan out what evidence you will use to back up each paragraph's thesis statement.
• For each line of quoted text, have 2-4 lines of your own explanation relating to your argument.
• Take the time to swat away the counterarguments.
• Avoid stating the obvious. Instead, tie observations to a larger idea.
• Don’t make all or nothing claims about a character. Instead, find the nuances in each character, and make them work for your bigger argument. 
• Don’t feel like you have to include every single scene or line that features your character. 

What’s Next?

Want to get advice about comparing and contrasting characters? Head on over to  our Compare/Contrast post to learn how to best write about common character pairings.  

Need a little more background on novel’s plot? Check out our Great Gatsby  summary , or look at a timeline of all of the events in chronological order .

Interested in getting help analyzing important symbols and motifs? Get an introduction to symbols in The Great Gatsby  and an overview of the novel's motifs to get started.

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Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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63 pages • 2 hours read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Prologue-Chapter 11

Part 1, Chapters 12-23

Part 2, Chapters 24-39

Part 2, Chapters 40-57

Part 3, Chapters 58-80

Part 3, Chapter 81-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Summary and Study Guide

Originally published in 2013, Shift is the second book in the Silo series of postapocalyptic science fiction novels by Hugh Howey. Shift enriches the story of Juliette (which began in the first book, WOOL ), by looking back and telling the story of Donald Keene, the architect of the silos—subterranean cities that house the remainder of humanity. In telling Donald’s story, Shift reveals the truth about the men who created World Order Operation Fifty (or WOOL, in which the “L” represents the Roman numeral for 50) in an attempt to save humanity. In addition, Shift gives background detail on Silo 17, the location that Juliette discovers after leaving her own home in Silo 18, and makes several connections that deepen revelations Juliette made at the end of WOOL. Finally, Shift connects Juliette to Donald, setting up the premise for the next novel in the series, Dirt .

The Silo series of novels inspired a television series called Silo that airs on Apple TV. Created by Graham Yost, it stars Rebecca Ferguson and Tim Robbins.

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This guide references the Kindle e-book edition of Shift .

Content Warning: Shift contains violence and mentions of death by suicide and attempted suicide.

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Plot Summary

In the year 2110, Troy wakes to start his first shift in Silo 1.

Sixty-one years earlier, Donald Keene is a new congressperson who meets with Senator Paul Thurman , an old family friend. He asks Donald to finish a bio-architectural design he began in college that he wants to use as an underground bunker for workers of the Containment and Disposal Facility (CAD-FAC), a nuclear waste facility, in the improbable event of an accident. Donald will work on this project with his former girlfriend, Anna Thurman (Paul Thurman’s daughter), and his college friend, Congressperson Mick Webb.

While working on the project, Donald visits Senator Thurman at a hospital where he’s being treated with nanobots. The idea of microscopic robots inside his body frightens Donald despite Thurman’s insistence that they can enter only the bodies of those whose DNA they’re programmed to repair. However, Donald’s fear increases after reading a book Thurman gave him, The Order , which leads him to seek medical care in secret and begin taking psychotherapeutic drugs.

The National Convention of 2052 is held on the newly completed grounds of CAD-FAC. Donald is onsite waiting for his wife, Helen, to arrive. Unfortunately, when she finally arrives, she’s at the tent designated for Tennessee, while Donald is at the one for Georgia. He attempts to go retrieve her, but Anna stops him just seconds before planes begin dropping nuclear weapons on the area. Donald rushes into the underground bunker with Anna, Thurman, and Donald’s sister, Charlotte.

In the year 2110, Troy is struggling through his first shift as Silo 1 leader. Silo 1 is the only silo that doesn’t have a thriving society. Instead, it contains storage rooms filled with cryo-frozen people, and the men are awakened on a recurring cycle to work shifts that last six months at a time. Troy’s role as head of Silo 1 is complicated by his slowly returning memories. As more of his memories return, Troy is deemed emotionally “unstable” and is put into a permanent sleep, not to be awakened again until it’s safe to leave the silos.

In 2212, Troy—who now recalls that he’s Donald Keene—is awakened under orders from Thurman. Silo 18 is falling, and several other silos have gone rogue. Victor, one of the men behind the nuclear strikes, became obsessed with a report Donald wrote on the fall of Silo 12, and Anna—who has also been awakened—believes this is the key to saving Silo 18. Donald works with Anna to figure out the problem while also researching what happened to his wife, Helen. He’s sad to learn that Helen married Mick and had two children. However, Donald manages to figure out that Silo 18 is resisting because someone in the silo remembers a time before life in the silos. He helps identify the person and order her execution. At the same time, Donald pinpoints why some people are resistant to the medication that wipes their memories, blaming it on the psychotherapeutic medication he was taking in secret. When Silo 18 is saved, Anna is put back to sleep, but Donald attempts to die by walking outside to the silo where Helen lived her final days. Thurman finds him and takes him back inside, putting him to sleep again.

In 2312, Silo 17 falls when someone opens the airlocks. Panic ensues. The IT shadow—second in command—locks his 16-year-old son, Jimmy, in a hidden bunker beneath the server room to keep him safe. For several years, Jimmy hides in the server room’s bunker while listening to the fighting that continues outside. Over time, however, he needs more supplies and begins sneaking out to explore the silo. As time passes, Jimmy sees fewer and fewer signs of other survivors. In the silo’s lowest level, he finds a cat in the flooding mechanical rooms. Jimmy and the cat, which he calls Shadow, survive on food growing in the farms and on canned goods. At the 34-year mark, Jimmy is shocked when a woman from the outside—later revealed as Juliette Nichols—invades his silo.

Donald is awakened again in 2345, but this time, the workers believe he’s Thurman for reasons unknown to Donald (but later implied to be a scheme by Anna to save the people in Silo 1). Donald learns that a cleaner wandered away from Silo 18. He instructs no one to interfere with the cleaner, Juliette Nichols, assuming that she’s walking toward an empty silo. At the same time, Donald uses his position as “Thurman” to gain access to information he shouldn’t have. Over time, Donald begins to put things together: He realizes that Anna and Mick worked together to put Donald in Silo 1 with Anna, thus allowing Mick to be with Helen in Silo 2. Donald awakens Anna, forces her to confess, and then kills her via an overdose of sleeping pills. In the aftermath of Anna’s death, Donald finds evidence that Thurman, Erskine, and Victor never intended to awaken the people in Silo 1 as they were told. Instead, their plan was to allow only one silo to survive once the world became inhabitable. Donald decides to prevent this. He wakes Thurman, confirms his own theories, and then shoots Thurman before putting him back in his cryopod. Donald speaks to Juliette over the radio, warning her that the truth can be dangerous.

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How Working the Swing Shift Saved My Writing

Anna maxymiw on the perks of an unusual schedule.

In 2013, I got my first job in the news industry working for a national paper. There were so many things that were unfamiliar to me: the breath-stealing pressure of a daily deadline, the stress of having everyone on the desk looking over your shoulder as you wrote a headline with only a few minutes until the page had to be sent to transmission, new language like “flare,” like “lede,” like “treats,” like “jewel” and “zipper” and “deck.” But the newest thing, the oddest shift, was moving my life from the light to the dark.

Those of us in the news industry often work what’s called the second shift: it’s not the typical 9 to 5, and it’s not an overnight or a graveyard. Instead, it’s a slice of work that fills the gap between the two, 1 to 9, or 2 to 10, or 5 to 1. It’s also called the middle shift or the swing shift, mainly because it’s a time that swings, in motion and pendulous and defying precise definition, between the two more recognized workdays. 

Working this shift changes your life by shifting you forward, at first in a way that feels like a lurch and then in a way that feels like a big loping step. Daylight saving time never makes you distressed because, no matter what, it’s always dark when you leave work and always light when you wake up midmorning the next day. You end up learning the contours of your neighborhood without the help of sun; instead, you see each of your neighbors’ lives lit up at night in their apartment windows like stars in the sky. On the nighttime walk home, you swathe yourself in the dark like a security blanket, and you learn to be less scared of it. You don’t commute during rush hour; instead, it’s hush hour, the subway rocking like a lullaby punctuated by the occasional burble of a drunken reveler or a sleepy child.

Working nights also changes your life by limiting you. I find dating hard to schedule; people rarely want to meet at 11 pm on a weeknight, and lunch dates seem to be unanimously deemed uncool. My social life is locked in sometimes months in advance; because I only get two evenings off each week, they book up quickly, and there’s little wiggle room. I’ve lost friendships; I’ve stayed single for years. My sleep has never been quite as good as it was when I was working a 9 to 5, because it’s difficult to get the brain to quickly calm down, to climb into bed and try to wake up at a reasonable time. And it can be really hard when you get home from work and it’s quiet and lonely and you feel like you’re the only person awake in the thick, velvet night.

The allure of swing shift isn’t solely about having uninterrupted time. It’s also about using darkness as a shield, using unconventionality as a bolster.

But there’s at least one thing I think the swing shift is really, really good for, and that’s writing.

I didn’t actually write my entire book while working nights. Some of it was started earlier, patched together throughout the final year of my writing degree, and then in between jobs as a bartender at a theatre, a volunteer at a literary magazine, and a barista for an office-building coffee counter. But it was once I settled into my job as a newspaper paginator and editor that I felt a shift. Something in me was cracked open, threatening to spill out onto whatever page was closest: my Notes app, an empty page in Google Drive, the notebook I was using for training at work. Suddenly, I had mornings spread out in front of me, open and free and strange. Suddenly, I had time during which other people weren’t around, during which things weren’t expected of me. If people didn’t want to meet for a date at noon, I could spend the whole morning researching. Since most of my friends worked a day shift, I didn’t have to uphold plans I had made, didn’t have anyone to distract me.

But the allure of swing shift isn’t solely about having uninterrupted time. It’s also about using darkness as a shield, using unconventionality as a bolster. When I commute with fewer people, when I walk to my apartment with no one crowding the sidewalk, when I’m able to go straight home after work instead of having to go to a class, a book launch, an acquaintance’s birthday dinner, my brain has the latitude to unfold. Without outward conversation using up my energy, I’m able to keep my inner conversations stoked.

And so I wrote. From 2013 to 2016, I finally, slowly sewed together the disparate essays that I believed could become a book. I thought about my book in the shower, on the subway, during my nighttime walks home. It grew out of the silence of coming home from work and feeling like I was the only person awake in the quiet of the night. I mustered the guts to approach an agent in the summer of 2016, and by February 2017, I was signing a deal with a publisher. Over the next two years, I used those precious unhindered mornings to go through three rounds of substantive edits, a copy edit, a proofread, and a lawyer’s edit, and, in May 2019, I was holding my new book in my hands.

I won’t work the swing shift forever. I’m tired; my brain is ragged from writing all morning and then reading and editing all night. I tell people that my inner thesaurus is broken because, after a long week, I struggle to come up with the right word in conversations: “story” becomes “episode,” “football” becomes “baseball,” my boss becomes “mom.” Sometimes I say words incorrectly, mashing two nouns together to create a hideous new portmanteau. Sometimes I call a coworker the wrong name and don’t notice until someone else laughs. My head is a cage for too many words, too many thoughts about the power and different usages of language. It’s difficult to toggle back and forth between my adjective-rich personal writing and the clipped newsroom-ese of my work. It’s difficult to have an idea for a story and not be able to even make notes for it because newsroom deadlines are always looming and we’re all just trying to write the best headlines we can in the little time we have.

Now that I have a book published, people ask me if I’m going to quit my job in order to write full time. I tell them that there’s no way I could support myself on the proceeds from just one non-fiction book, that I’m not disciplined enough for the freelance hustle. But the truth is, the metronomic night-in and night-out of my work, the solidity of it, the familiar quiet and weight of the night that inexorably blooms into a bright, free morning, the beginning of a new shift with a new deadline and new ideas and new layouts—it’s a buttress for me. It’s a safety net, a necessary thing that pulls me out of my apartment even on the worst writing days, when I’m living heavily in my head, pinned between my characters. It’s the thing that keeps me in motion; I am pendulous, defying precise definition, swinging back and forth between day and night, writing and editing, the different forms of the language that defines my life.

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• Shift Summary

by Hugh Howey

These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own.

Written by Tyler Henson

Shift is the second book in the Silo series written by Hugh Howey . It is a precursor to the previous book, "Wool," and digs into the beginnings of the silo civilization. The story takes place in a gigantic subterranean silo in a post-apocalyptic world where people live and work, unconscious of the damaged world above.

The story is broken into three interrelated narratives in the book. The first storyline concerns Donald Keene , a recently appointed congressman who is sent to serve in Silo 1, the silo system's highest level of control. As Donald undertakes his tasks, he discovers the silo's dark secrets and manipulations. He becomes entangled in a labyrinth of deception and conspiracy, battling to safeguard those he cares about while questioning the silo's genuine purpose.

The second narrative focuses on the creation of the silos and their initial construction. It follows the work of a crew of engineers led by Mission Director Troy who is tasked with developing and engineering the silos to assure humanity's survival. As they build the silos, they meet a variety of hurdles and unanticipated obstacles which ultimately lead to huge sacrifices and difficult decisions.

The third plotline involves Solo, a young woman who lives in Silo 17, one of the freshly constructed silos. Solo is a mechanic who begins to think that the silo is more than what she has been told. Her curiosity motivates her to continue her investigation, placing herself in peril as she finds astounding secrets that threaten to collapse the foundations of the entire silo civilization.

Hugh Howey expertly weaves these stories together, eventually unveiling the many links and insights that link the prequel to the events of "Wool." The novel delves into issues of power, control, and the ramifications of a society constructed on secrets. With its exciting plot, thought-provoking topics, and well-developed characters, "Shift" provides a riveting investigation of the origins and intricacies of the silo civilization, leaving readers anxious to learn more about humanity's fate in this dystopian future.

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Shift Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Shift is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Study Guide for Shift

Shift study guide contains a biography of Hugh Howey, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Shift
• Character List