The Great Gatsby Chapter 7: Myrtle's Doomed Life

Earlier in the novel, Nick recognizes Myrtle’s duplicity when he goes to New York with Myrtle and Gatsby. Nick remarks, “…her personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality…was converted into impressive hauteur” (Fitzgerald 30). When he first meets Myrtle in Wilson’s garage, Nick identifies a unique vivaciousness despite the dreary atmosphere of her home. Once they arrive in New York, Nick describes her overpowering vitality to be “converted into impressive hauteur.” Now that she is in a city environment, Myrtle’s behavior becomes haughty and arrogant. Although he initially does not see Myrtle’s duplicity, Fitzgerald discloses that Wilson has now become aware of Myrtle’s dual nature. Nick notes, “He had discovered that Myrtle had some sort of life apart from him in another world…” (Fitzgerald 124). Nick describes New York as “another world” because its urban environment enables citizens to behave as they desire without being confined. In New York, Myrtle is capable of creating a life that is independent from Wilson; furthermore, Wilson ultimately grows sick by recognizing his wife’s desire to have another life. Ironically, when Myrtle gets hit by a car, the police inform Tom that there were two cars on the road, one that was going to New York and one that was coming from the city. The cars represent Myrtle’s life because she possessed two lives at once. Since the car which was coming from New York ultimately kills her, Fitzgerald attempts to represent that her duplicity is deathly. Furthermore, one questions whether Fitzgerald tries to divulge the fatality that cities engender. 

The Great Gatsby Chapter 2: Myrtle's Equivocality

As Carraway is led by Tom to meet Myrtle, Carraway acknowledges how she is influenced by her surroundings. At George Wilson’s “shadow of a garage,” which is both “unprosperous and bare,” Carraway can immediately discern that she possesses a “perceptible vitality” (Fitzgerald 25). Nick identifies George’s garage to be gloomy, deserted, and “unprosperous,” which all illustrate the Wilson’s home and environment to be immovable and dull; however, the atmosphere is not entirely dismal because of Myrtle. She possesses a “perceptible vitality” despite her monotonous and barren environment. Her vivaciousness is amplified when Tom takes her to New York, which Nick describes to be set in “glowing sunshine” (Fitzgerald 27). The city’s vitality is so perceptibly radiant that it takes the place of sunshine and reveals a majestic exuberance in great contrast to George’s garage. When Catherine later exposes that Myrtle is extremely unsatisfied in her marriage, one suspects that George’s mundane lifestyle makes Myrtle feel restrained. Fitzgerald reveals earlier that the ashheap’s dust veils George’s “dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife…” (Fitzgerald 26). This “dust” represents the lifelessness of George and his environment, however Myrtle escapes this uniform dreariness.