The Great Gatsby Chapter 4 Summary

Chapter 4: chapter recap, key events, character developments, and running summary.

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

8 chapters

Chapter 4

Chapter 45,544 wordsCompleted

On a July morning Gatsby arrives at Nick’s house in his ornate cream‑colored automobile and invites Nick to ride with him to the city for lunch. During the drive Gatsby launches into a self‑portrait, claiming he was born in the Middle West, educated at Oxford, served as a major in World War I, earned a Montenegrin “Order of Danilo” medal, and spent post‑war years traveling Europe, hunting, and collecting jewels. He shows Nick the medal and a photograph from his supposed Oxford days, then hints that a “sad thing” from his past will be explained later. Gatsby asks Nick to help him with a “big request” involving Miss Jordan Baker, but is vague about the details.

Later, at a Fourth Avenue restaurant, Nick is introduced to Gatsby’s longtime associate Meyer Wolfsheim, a short, flat‑nosed man who speaks in a nasal tone. Wolfsheim reminisces about the 1919 World Series fixing, describing how he paid “Katspaugh” to silence a witness. He also mentions his own criminal connections and the “old Metropole” where a murder of a man named Rosy Rosenthal took place. Gatsby and Wolfsheim discuss business, and Gatsby assures Nick that Wolfsheim is “just a friend.” Tom Buchanan enters the dining room, greets Gatsby with an uneasy handshake, and the conversation turns cold; Gatsby slips away, leaving Nick uneasy.

After lunch, Jordan Baker recounts to Nick a detailed history of Daisy Fay’s youth in Louisville, her social prominence, a wartime romance with a lieutenant (who Nick later identifies as Gatsby), her marriage to Tom Buchanan in Chicago, and the tumultuous events surrounding her wedding night, the pearl incident, and later life in New York. Jordan explains that Daisy once heard Gatsby’s name again and recognized him as the officer she had known years earlier. She reveals that Gatsby’s entire strategy has been to buy a mansion opposite Daisy’s house so that he could invite her for tea through Nick, hoping she would visit his home. The chapter ends with Jordan describing Gatsby’s long‑standing, patient longing for Daisy and his reliance on Nick to arrange the first meeting.

What happened until now

Summary of the chapters Chapter 1 to Chapter 4.

Nick Carraway relocates to West Egg, befriends neighbor Jay Gatsby, attends a dinner at Tom and Daisy Buchanan’s in East Egg, meets the Buchanans’ social circle (including the mysterious Miss Baker), observes Tom’s racist rhetoric and Daisy’s melancholy about her daughter, and later glimpses Gatsby on his lawn beside a distant green light. Nick is taken by Tom to the valley of ashes where he meets Tom’s mistress, Myrtle Wilson, and the garage owner George Wilson. Tom then brings Nick to New York, where they stay in a shabby apartment with Myrtle, her sister Catherine, the McKees, and other guests; the group drinks, argues, and Tom ultimately assaults Myrtle, breaking her nose. Nick attends Gatsby’s first lavish party, meets Jordan Baker and a circle of other guests, hears rumors about Gatsby, encounters the drunken “Owl Eyes” in the library, finally meets Gatsby himself who gives Nick a brief, enigmatic conversation and an invitation to a morning hydro‑plane ride; later a guest’s car loses a wheel in the driveway prompting Owl Eyes’s baffled explanation; the night ends with Gatsby alone on the porch. Nick then reflects on his routine work life in New York, his occasional affairs, and his uneasy observations of Jordan’s dishonesty. Gatsby gives Nick a lengthy, partly false, personal history—including Midwestern roots, an Oxford education, wartime heroics, and a Montenegrin medal—and reveals his hidden agenda to use Nick to arrange a meeting with Daisy. Nick meets Gatsby’s associate Meyer Wolfsheim, who boasts of fixing the 1919 World Series. Jordan Baker later recounts Daisy’s early life, her marriage to Tom Buchanan, and the circumstances that led to her current estrangement, setting the stage for Gatsby’s plan to have Nick invite Daisy to tea.

Chapter Intelligence

Characters and settings known up to the selected chapter.

Present in chapter

Jay Gatsby