Who is Gatsby Really?

A man throws the grandest parties that anyone has ever seen, yet nobody seems to know anything about him. He doesn't have to invite anyone, yet everybody will still come. His name is Jay Gatsby. In the novel, The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is this sort of mysterious character that very few people know about. When Nick first sees him he is "[stretching] out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and as far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling" (25-26). The trembling represents that his desire for this unknown thing across the water is so great that he literally cannot hold still, and it is a sharp juxtaposition from the cool, calm, and collected character that everybody seems to think he is. The reader can infer from this that Gatsby is a mystery that shows neither his true character nor his true intentions. So why do people find his mysteriousness so fascinating? Well, I think it is the same reason why super heroes never reveal their true identity. A quote from Disney's Hatching Pete,"The magic is in the mystery, and once the mystery is gone, so is the magic." People are enthralled by the unknown because it allows them to use their imagination; it allows them to create magical and extravagant scenarios and ideas. Heck, people love mysteries so much there is even an entire genre devoted to it. Fitzgerald intentionally creates Gatsby as a mystery because it allows the reader to develop their own bizarre ideas, along with the other characters in the novel, about him.