Jordan Baker
Jordan is well known for being a golf champion. Nick had had seen her photograph in magazines many times:
Everyone knew her name.
Nick admits he is flattered to escort her.
Jordan is attractive, but in a non-conventional way, perhaps even somewhat like a young cadet
. Fitzgerald uses striking imagery to express Jordan's tanned, healthy beauty:
slender golden arm
hair the colour of an autumn leaf
her voice came over the wire as something fresh and cool as if a divot from a green golf-links had come sailing in at the office window.
Nick describes her as incurably dishonest
and remembers hearing a critical, unpleasant story
about her when he first meets her, and recalls later that she was accused of cheating in a golf tournament. She also lied about ruining a friend's leather car upholstery. At first Nick is too dazzled by her fame to condemn her for this.
Jordan drives so close to some workmen she flicked a button on one man's coat
, an incident which anticipates the death of Myrtle. Nick teases Jordan about being a rotten driver
. This becomes a metaphorAn imaginative way of describing something by associating it with something else. A metaphor differs from a âsimileâ as it is not a straight comparison (with the use of the words âlikeâ or âasâ). A good metaphor creates a vivid picture â for example, âmy life is a roller coasterâ. for her careless attitude to life and other people.
After Myrtle's death, Jordan wants to go on socialising, and reproaches Nick for wanting to go home, saying It's only half past nine
. This causes the scales to fall from Nick's eyes and he ends the relationship soon after.