Fifth Avenue

Fifth Avenue runs through the heart of New York City as a stage for the novel's most charged social performances and confrontations. It is the address of the apartment Tom Buchanan keeps for his mistress, Myrtle Wilson, in the West Hundreds near 158th Street, a slice in a "long white cake of apartment-houses" where the affair's secret life is conducted. It is also the route of the tense drive to the Plaza Hotel, where Gatsby's dream of reclaiming Daisy finally shatters. And it is the street where Nick Carraway, months after Gatsby's death, meets Tom Buchanan for the last time and learns the truth about how George Wilson was directed to Gatsby's house.

The Apartment on the West Hundreds

On a sweltering Sunday afternoon, Tom Buchanan brings Nick Carraway and Myrtle Wilson to a small apartment on the top floor of a building on Fifth Avenue near 158th Street. The living-room is crowded with tapestried furniture too large for it, and the only picture is an over-enlarged photograph of Myrtle's mother. Here, Myrtle changes into an elaborate cream-colored chiffon dress and her personality transforms from the vital woman of the garage into an affected, haughty figure. The apartment becomes the setting for a drunken party where Tom breaks Myrtle's nose with his open hand for shouting Daisy's name, and where Nick later finds himself standing beside Chester McKee's bed, looking at a portfolio of photographs titled "Beauty and the Beast . . . Loneliness . . . Old Grocery Horse . . . Brook'n Bridge." The apartment represents the illicit, performative space where class pretensions and violent impulses collide.

The Plaza Hotel Confrontation

On the hottest day of the summer, the novel's central confrontation takes place in a suite at the Plaza Hotel, which stands at the southern end of Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park. The party—Tom and Daisy Buchanan, Gatsby, Nick, and Jordan Baker—engages the parlor of a suite, a large, stifling room where opening the windows admits only a gust of hot shrubbery from the Park. Here, Tom exposes Gatsby's criminal background as a bootlegger and associate of Meyer Wolfsheim, and Daisy, confronted with the choice between Gatsby and Tom, admits she loved them both, effectively destroying Gatsby's dream. The room is filled with the muffled chords of Mendelssohn's Wedding March drifting up from the ballroom below, a bitter counterpoint to the unraveling romance. After the confrontation, Tom sends Daisy home with Gatsby in his yellow car, a decision that leads directly to Myrtle Wilson's death.

Nick's Final Encounter with Tom

One afternoon late in October, Nick Carraway, walking along Fifth Avenue, sees Tom Buchanan ahead of him in his alert, aggressive way, his hands held out from his body as if to fight off interference. Nick slows to avoid overtaking him, but Tom stops to frown into a jewelry store window, then turns back and holds out his hand. In this encounter, Nick confronts Tom about what he told George Wilson on the day of Gatsby's death. Tom admits he told Wilson that Gatsby owned the yellow car, knowing Wilson had a revolver in his pocket. "That fellow had it coming to him," Tom says. "He ran over Myrtle like you'd run over a dog and never even stopped his car." Nick cannot bring himself to reveal the truth—that Daisy was driving—and walks away, recognizing Tom and Daisy as "careless people" who smash things up and retreat into their money. Tom then goes into the jewelry store to buy a pearl necklace or perhaps only a pair of cuff buttons, a mundane errand that underscores his complete lack of moral reckoning.

The Avenue as Social Stage

Fifth Avenue appears earlier in the novel as a setting for Nick's solitary walks, where he picks out romantic women from the crowd and imagines entering their lives. It is also the route of the drive from the Queensboro Bridge into the city, where Nick reflects that "anything can happen now that we've slid over this bridge." The avenue, with its glittering storefronts and fashionable crowds, represents the promise and the moral emptiness of the Eastern world that Gatsby tried to conquer and that ultimately destroyed him.