George Wilson shoots and kills Jay Gatsby

George Wilson, the grief-stricken and deranged husband of Myrtle Wilson, murders Jay Gatsby in the swimming pool of Gatsby's West Egg mansion, an act that serves as the brutal, inevitable conclusion to the novel's intersecting tragedies. The killing is the direct result of a chain of events set in motion by Myrtle's death, which occurred when Daisy Buchanan, driving Gatsby's yellow car, struck and killed her. Wilson, having been told by Tom Buchanan that Gatsby owned the car, becomes convinced that Gatsby was both his wife's lover and her murderer, and he sets out to exact revenge. The murder is not a spontaneous act of passion but the final, desperate move of a man who has been systematically broken by the careless cruelty of the Buchanans' world, and it leaves Gatsby floating dead in his own pool, his dream finally and irrevocably shattered.

Wilson's Descent and Determination

In the aftermath of Myrtle's death, George Wilson is a man consumed by a single, obsessive purpose. The night before the murder, he is found by Michaelis, the young Greek who runs the coffee shop beside the ashheaps, rocking back and forth in his garage office, muttering incoherently. He reveals that he has a way of finding out who owned the yellow car that killed his wife, and he speaks of a dog leash he found, a symbol of Myrtle's secret life. Wilson's mental state deteriorates as he stares out the window at the giant, faded eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg on an advertising billboard, which he interprets as the eyes of God. He tells Michaelis, "God knows what you've been doing, everything you've been doing. You may fool me, but you can't fool God!" This delusion, that a divine witness has seen Myrtle's sin, hardens his resolve. By dawn, he is gone, having set out on foot to find the owner of the yellow car. His movements are traced to Port Roosevelt and Gad's Hill, where he buys a sandwich he doesn't eat, and then he disappears for three hours. By half-past two, he is in West Egg, asking for directions to Gatsby's house, having learned Gatsby's name—likely from Tom Buchanan, who told him the truth about the car's owner to deflect suspicion from himself.

The Murder at the Pool

On the day of his death, Gatsby seems to have abandoned hope. He puts on his bathing suit and instructs the butler that if anyone phones, word is to be brought to him at the pool. He stops at the garage for a pneumatic mattress, which the chauffeur helps him pump up, and then gives strange orders that the open car is not to be taken out under any circumstances, as the front right fender needs repair. Gatsby shoulders the mattress and walks toward the pool, disappearing among the yellowing trees. The chauffeur, one of Meyer Wolfsheim's protégés, hears the shots but thinks nothing of them at the time. When Nick Carraway arrives from the station and rushes anxiously up the front steps, he is the first to raise an alarm. Four of them—the chauffeur, the butler, the gardener, and Nick—hurry down to the pool. There, they find Gatsby's body. The water shows a faint, barely perceptible movement as the fresh flow from one end urges its way toward the drain. The laden mattress moves irregularly down the pool, and a small gust of wind disturbs its accidental course. The touch of a cluster of leaves revolves it slowly, tracing, like the leg of a compass, a thin red circle in the water. As they start to carry Gatsby toward the house, the gardener sees Wilson's body a little way off in the grass. The holocaust is complete: Wilson has shot Gatsby and then turned the gun on himself.

Aftermath and Abandonment

Gatsby's death is met with a profound and chilling indifference from the world that once flocked to his parties. Nick Carraway, feeling a sense of responsibility because no one else is interested, tries to find someone to attend the funeral. He calls Daisy Buchanan, but she and Tom have left early that afternoon, taking baggage with them and leaving no address. He contacts Meyer Wolfsheim, Gatsby's business partner, but Wolfsheim refuses to get involved, writing a letter that says, "I cannot come down now as I am tied up in some very important business and cannot get mixed up in this thing now." The only person who shows up at the funeral, besides Nick and Gatsby's father, Henry C. Gatz, is the man with owl-eyed glasses, whom Nick had met in Gatsby's library. As the rain pours down, the owl-eyed man takes off his glasses and wipes them, then says, "The poor son-of-a-bitch." Gatsby's dream, which he had pursued with such relentless hope, ends not with a triumphant reunion but with a lonely death in a pool, mourned by almost no one, a final testament to the emptiness of the world he tried so desperately to enter.