"'Then he killed her,' said Wilson. His mouth dropped open suddenly. 'Who did?' 'I have a way of finding out.'" (pg. 159)
I believe at this point in the book, Wilson associates the murderer and the person having an affair with his wife to be the same person. The reader knows that it is not who Wilson thinks it is. In fact, it is actually Daisy who drove the car and not Gatsby. Wilson never finds out the truth though, and things end up bad for Gatsby. Wilson finds Gatsby and shoots and kills him as soon as he sees him. His whole goal was to get revenge on who he thought killed his wife. Unfortunately, Wilson was not correct in his assumptions, and Gatsby had to pay the price. Although I can somewhat see where Wilson was coming from, I believe that he had the wrong reasons for just going out and killing Gatsby. He should have had some evidence to fully accuse Gatsby of murdering Myrtle before going out and killing him.
Sure, Wilson was a little quick to jump to the conclusion of Gatsby killing his wife, but Gatsby was just as quick to lay down his life for Daisy. When questioned about the accident there was a quote that went something along the lines of "She was driving, but of course I'll take the blame".
ReplyDeleteI thought this act of chivalry made Gatsby more of a sympathetic character than anything else. At least he (Gatsby) was ready to take the punches that came with hitting Myrtle with the car.