Character analysis
Tom Buchanan
in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Tom Buchanan is the main antagonist of the novel and a former Yale football star, whose imposing physique and old-money arrogance are evident from his first appearance in East Egg. F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays him as a man with a "cruel body" and "supercilious manner," indicating that his power is both physical and social. Tom embodies the reckless entitlement of the established aristocracy: he openly cheats on Daisy with Myrtle Wilson, flaunting the affair shamelessly, yet feels morally outraged when he suspects Daisy might love Gatsby.
His journey is marked by aggressive self-preservation rather than personal growth. When he perceives Gatsby as a threat to his marriage, he orchestrates a calculated attack at the Plaza Hotel, revealing Gatsby's bootlegging connections to undermine him in Daisy’s eyes. This confrontation unveils Tom's cunning intelligence beneath his brutish exterior—he manipulates class anxieties and criminality to regain Daisy’s affection. After Myrtle is killed by Gatsby's car (which Daisy was driving), Tom coldly redirects George Wilson's grief toward Gatsby, effectively orchestrating Gatsby's murder while evading any repercussions.
Tom's key traits include racism (his enthusiasm for "The Rise of the Colored Empires" highlights his ideological decay), hypocrisy (he scrutinizes Daisy's loyalty while maintaining a mistress), and a propensity for violence that keeps those around him on edge. At the end of the novel, he and Daisy retreat into their wealth, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake—Fitzgerald's sharpest critique of the careless rich.
Who they are
Tom Buchanan is introduced in Chapter 1 with deliberate physicality: Nick observes his "cruel body" and "two shining, arrogant eyes," and the language of force surrounds him from the moment he grips Nick's hand in a way designed to hurt. He is a former Yale football star and a man of old money, resident of the fashionable East Egg, and everything about his presentation signals dominance—over space, over conversation, over people. Fitzgerald frames Tom's brutality as entitlement dressed as power, not allowing the reader to mistake it for strength. His casual racism, evident when he thrusts a copy of The Rise of the Colored Empires at Nick and insists "it's up to us" to preserve civilisation, reveals that his worldview is not merely selfish but ideologically rotting from within. He embodies what Nick eventually calls "careless people"—those who smash things up and retreat into their money.
Arc & motivation
Tom does not arc so much as consolidate. He begins the novel in total command of his world and ends it the same way, underscoring Fitzgerald's point. His motivating force is self-preservation dressed as propriety. He tolerates—indeed, flaunts—his affair with Myrtle Wilson, yet becomes genuinely agitated when he suspects Daisy's emotional allegiance is shifting toward Gatsby. This is not love but ownership: Daisy is a possession whose defection would constitute a social humiliation he cannot absorb. The Plaza Hotel confrontation in Chapter 7 clearly expresses his intelligence working in service of ego. He researches Gatsby's bootlegging connections, uses them with surgical timing, and reclaims Daisy not through feeling but through the rhetoric of class and criminality. His "journey" moves only toward greater insulation from consequence.
Key moments
The dinner party in Chapter 1 establishes his dominance immediately—he physically steers Nick around, interrupts conversations, and disappears to take a phone call from Myrtle while Daisy sits in barely disguised distress. His apartment in New York (Chapter 2), where he hosts Myrtle and their acquaintances in a grotesque parody of domesticity, reveals the double standard that governs his life: the affair is shamelessly public, yet when Myrtle taunts him by repeating Daisy's name, he breaks her nose without hesitation, demonstrating that even his mistress is ultimately a subordinate. The Plaza confrontation in Chapter 7 reveals the clearest dynamics of power: he dismantles Gatsby's romantic credibility by exposing the bootlegging operation, watching Daisy's resolve crumble under the weight of social anxiety he has deliberately amplified. Finally, his quiet manipulation of George Wilson after Myrtle's death—steering a grieving, unhinged man toward Gatsby—may be Tom's single most consequential act, performed entirely offstage, never dirtying his hands.
Relationships in depth
With Daisy, Tom maintains a relationship structured on possession rather than partnership. He neglects her chronically but fights fiercely to retain her when she is threatened, revealing that her value to him is primarily social and symbolic. Their reunion after the Plaza confrontation, Daisy choosing the car with Tom rather than leaving with Gatsby, suggests that she ultimately accepts the security of his world even knowing its cruelty.
His rivalry with Gatsby is class warfare as much as romantic competition. Tom's dismissal—"Mr. Nobody from Nowhere"—encodes everything: Gatsby represents new money, criminally sourced, and therefore illegitimate. Tom's investigation of Gatsby's background is not jealously but strategic intelligence-gathering, weaponizing it effectively.
Myrtle Wilson functions for Tom as proof of his appetites and authority. He keeps her, controls her, injures her, and forgets her. Her death occasions no grief—only recognition of its tactical usefulness. He exploits her widower George Wilson with equal coldness, stringing him along economically with promises about a car and then, after Myrtle's death, directing his anguish at Gatsby like a loaded weapon.
Nick begins as an unwilling admirer of Tom's social magnetism and ultimately refuses to shake his hand—a small but telling gesture highlighting the entire novel's moral reckoning.
Connected characters
- Daisy Buchanan
Tom's wife, whom he dominates and periodically neglects through his affair with Myrtle. He takes Daisy for granted until Gatsby threatens to take her away; at the Plaza he fights to reassert ownership over her, and she ultimately chooses the security he represents. Together they embody the 'careless people' Fitzgerald condemns.
- Jay Gatsby
Tom's chief rival and the object of his contempt. He dismisses Gatsby as 'Mr. Nobody from Nowhere,' investigates his bootlegging background, and uses that information to destroy Gatsby's credibility with Daisy at the Plaza. He then manipulates George Wilson into killing Gatsby, ensuring his own survival.
- Myrtle Wilson
Tom's working-class mistress, whom he keeps in an apartment in the city. He treats her as a possession—breaking her nose when she taunts him with Daisy's name—and shows no grief after her death, quickly pivoting to use her murder as a weapon against Gatsby.
- George Wilson
Myrtle's cuckolded husband, whom Tom exploits economically (stringing him along over a car deal) and then manipulates emotionally after Myrtle's death by pointing him toward Gatsby as her killer, making George the instrument of Tom's revenge.
- Nick Carraway
Nick is Tom's distant cousin-in-law and an uneasy social acquaintance. Tom initially pulls Nick into his world with casual authority, but Nick grows increasingly disgusted by Tom's hypocrisy and cruelty, ultimately refusing to shake Tom's hand at their final encounter.
- Jordan Baker
A guest in Tom's social circle at East Egg. Jordan witnesses Tom's affair and the tensions of his marriage, serving as a secondary observer to his behavior, though they share no direct consequential scenes.
Use this in your essay
Tom as the novel's true villain
Argue that Tom, not Gatsby's romantic delusion, is the primary destructive force in the novel—examining how his calculated manipulation of George Wilson makes him more culpable than any of Gatsby's illusions.
Hypocrisy and the double standard of the leisure class
Analyse how Tom's simultaneous infidelity and moral outrage at Daisy exposes the gendered and classed rules governing old-money society.
Racism as symptom of ideological decay
Use Tom's enthusiasm for eugenicist literature to build a thesis about how Fitzgerald links white aristocratic anxiety to broader American moral decline in the 1920s.
Physical violence as class performance
Examine how Fitzgerald uses Tom's body—its size, grip, and the breaking of Myrtle's nose—to argue that upper-class power ultimately rests on unacknowledged brutality.
Impunity as critique
Consider how Tom's complete escape from consequence at the novel's close functions as Fitzgerald's most damning statement about wealth, justice, and the American Dream's fundamental inequity.