Gatsby vs Michaelis--Someone's Lying

[Monty J]

People have tried to discredit Michaelis' testimony at the inquest that a man was behind the wheel of the death car by pointing out that he wasn't sure of the color of the car, so anything he says must be suspect. Michaelis testified under oath that it was a man behind the wheel and he thought the car was a light green color. Obviously, if a man was driving, then Daisy could not have been Myrtle's killer as asserted by Gatsby.

The key to Michalis' doubt about the car's color is revealed in an earlier chapter when Nick first sees Gatsby's new roadster. (It's the scene where Gatsby drives Nick to the city to meet Wolfsheim and spins that absurd yarn about being from a wealthy family, inheriting a lot of money and being educated at Oxford.) Nick describes the car as an open roadster (a convertible) with green upholstery.

(IV,64)
[Nick, narrating] “...a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraces with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns. Sitting down behind many layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservatory, we started to town."

Below is a clear illustration of the car Michaelis saw from the rear immediately after it fatally struck Myrtle before accelerating around the curve into the lingering dusk.

Nick had said the car was a neutral "rich cream" color, not the bright yellow depicted below. Note also that none of the film adaptations accurately depicts Gatsby's car as described by Nick, whereas the one below fits his description perfectly except for the deeper shade of yellow:

In the half-light of dusk, a fast-moving vehicle viewed mostly from behind, green was the predominant color a bystander would have noticed.

Take a close look and decide for yourself whether Michaelis is a reliable witness, especially when his story is corroborated by Myrtle's husband George Wilson.

How could Michaelis be less reliable than Gatsby, the narcissistic criminal with a history of lying and multiple motives for saying Daisy was driving? Gatsby's story is uncorroborated. He is the only witness who says a woman was at the wheel. Why would you believe him over Michaelis and Myrtle's husband who have no reason to lie?

We know why Nick believes Gatsby because his adoration for him was established the first time Nick describes him, "If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life." It was Nick's concern for Gatsby that prompted him to interrupt his 9:30PM confession in the Buchanan's garden with an alibi, offering the suggestion that Daisy was driving. which Gatsby immediately seized (with feigned gallantry) because it would divert police attention from his illicit "business" activities. Nick sacrificed his own cousin to protect Gatsby.

There was no need to have Michaelis (and Wilson) say they say a man driving unless a man was indeed driving, which means it had to be Gatsby, not Daisy. There was no reason to have Nick remark about the car's green upholstery in an earlier chapter unless it was important, which indeed it was, for it explains Michaelis' subsequent confusion over the car's color.

If you accept the Nick/Gatsby falsehood that Daisy was driving, Gatsby gets shot in an absurd case of mistaken identity, making the novel a romantic tragicomedy. If you believe Michaelis and Wilson, Gatsby's death was just punishment for his multiple crimes and the novel stands as a social critique of the material excess and corruption of the Roaring Twenties.

Hollywood and generations of academics and critics have got this novel all wrong.