Meyer Wolfsheim

We don’t know a lot about Meyer Wolfsheim – and we’re not supposed to. Beyond the fact that he’s a business associate and a friend of Gatsby’s, and that he’s interestingly both sentimental and hard-boiled, we know very little. Wolfsheim is an inhabitant of New York’s seedy underworld, and though he himself is something of a mystery, we end up learning quite a lot about other characters through him. First of all, his business “goneggtions” with Gatsby shine a rather dubious light upon the latter’s dealings – even though Gatsby wants everyone to believe that he’s the real deal, we begin to wonder how Gatsby really earned that fortune.

Wolfsheim also reveals some rather unfortunate things about one of our other main characters, Nick. Our narrator's innately judgmental nature emerges in his description of Wolfsheim; while Nick is clearly intrigued by the guy, he is also full of disdain for his shady dealings. Nick’s distaste for Wolfsheim also betrays the bias against the foreign “Other” (Wolfsheim is Jewish) prevalent in so-called “respectable” society of the time; the way in which Nick describes Wolfsheim demonstrates his own prejudice.