A common similarity between many characters in the novel is hurting and betraying the ones who care for them in order to get what they want. Myrtle Wilson deceives her hard working husband, George, by having an affair with Tom Buchanan, since she is not satisfied with the small amount of money George earns.
George gets no respect from his wife. Near the end of the story, when he finds out about his wife's ongoing infidelity, he gets upset and locks her in their apartment. Myrtle does not care what he thinks, as her response clearly illustrates: 'Beat me! Throw me down and beat me you dirty little coward!'
For Myrtle, the affair (her first) is about escape from her life with George, and a taste of a world—Manhattan, money, nice things—she wouldn't otherwise have access to.
Myrtle confesses in The Great Gatsby that she did not marry George out of love. She married him because she thought he was a gentleman. She thought that he would be able to lift him out of her current life and give her a better future.
Like Tom, George Wilson is violent towards his wife. After he finds out that she has been cheating on him, he locks her in a room and keeps her there against her will. Myrtle says, “Beat me! Throw me down and beat me, you dirty little coward” (Fitzgerald 144)!
George loves and idealizes Myrtle, and is devastated by her affair with Tom. George is consumed with grief when Myrtle is killed. George is comparable to Gatsby in that both are dreamers and both are ruined by their unrequited love for women who love Tom.
Myrtle sees the affair as romantic and a ticket out of her marriage, while Tom sees it as just another affair, and Myrtle as one of a string of mistresses. The pair has undeniable physical chemistry and attraction to each other, perhaps more than any other pairing in the book.
In The Great Gatsby, George Wilson locks Myrtle in the bedroom because he ''had discovered that Myrtle had some sort of life apart from him in another world'' and intends to take her away.
He tells him that before Myrtle died, he confronted her about her lover and told her that she could not hide her sin from the eyes of God. The morning after the accident, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, illuminated by the dawn, overwhelm Wilson.
Their love affair makes Gatsby optimistic that Daisy is his true love, but he really only sees and loves an idealized version of her that he has carried for years. In the end, Daisy chooses to stay with her husband even when knowing he had also had an affair.
Tom confesses that George first came to Tom's house that night. There, Tom told him that the yellow car was Gatsby's and insinuated that Gatsby was the one who killed Myrtle and the one who was sleeping with her (9.143).
The narrative switches back to Nick. Tom realises that it was Gatsby's car that struck and killed Myrtle. Back at Daisy and Tom's home, Gatsby tells Nick that Daisy was driving the car that killed Myrtle but he will take the blame.
After Myrtle is hit and killed, George sinks into a severe depression and grief. He reveals to Michaelis that, before his wife died, he warned her that God was always watching. According to Michaelis, Wilson fixated on the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg for a long time after.
Tom hits Myrtle because she refused to obey him, but also in defense of Daisy; he feels strongly about both women. Tom's outburst therefore shows that he has difficulty handling complex emotions. He responds with violence to maintain control.
Although Daisy may have loved Gatsby once, she does not love him more than the wealth, status, and freedom that she has with Tom.
In this quote, Nick tells us that George Wilson has suspicions that Myrtle is having an affair, but he doesn't know that Myrtle is having the affair with Tom.
Wilson believes that Gatsby killed Myrtle because Tom gave him intentionally misleading information. Earlier in the story, Tom stopped by Wilson's garage while driving Gatsby's yellow car, leading Wilson to believe that the car was Tom's.
How did Myrtle know she made a "mistake" when she married Wilson? Myrtle realized she made a mistake because he borrowed another man's suit to get married in and didn't tell her about it. He wasn't as rich as she thought he was, and she says "he wasn't fit to lick [her] shoe". Explain how Tom and Myrtle met.
As Gatsby's car approaches the garage, Myrtle, who has been arguing with her husband, sees the vehicle and mistakenly believes that Tom Buchanan is driving it. She runs into the road, intending to speak with him but she is hit and killed. The car fails to stop.
Daisy chose to marry Tom over Gatsby because Tom was wealthier and more powerful than Gatsby. Gatsby grew up poor and never had money as Tom did. Daisy promised he would wait for Gatsby while he went to war, but she knew her mother would never let her marry a poor man.
When Myrtle told the Golden Trio about her death, she revealed she had been crying in the bathroom after students picked on her over her glasses. She mentioned this kind of bullying frequently, and her sensitivity to insult in her death reveals just how much she was ridiculed in life.
The other car, the one going toward New York, came to rest a hundred yards beyond, and its driver hurried back to where Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick, dark blood with the dust.
Since the early days of his marriage to Daisy, Tom has had affairs with other women. Throughout the novel he commits adultery with Myrtle Wilson, a working-class woman married to a garage mechanic.
To Gatsby, the innocent and naive Daisy comes to embody the American dream, in other words wealth and social status, a goal he will have reached by winning her hand.
Myrtle (and her husband George) represent the lower classes. They live in the 'valley of ashes', an area literally and symbolically impoverished, a great contrast to the luxury of the mansions of Long Island.