The Great Gatsby doesn't explicitly name an inheritor for Gatsby's fortune, but it's implied his father, Henry C. Gatz, might have, as he's his only known living relative, though the novel leaves it deliberately vague, emphasizing Gatsby's lack of close ties and the transient nature of his wealth, with hints that his dubious money might not even be easily claimed.
After Cody's death, Gatsby was supposed to receive a $25,000 inheritance, he never saw any of the money. Instead, it went entirely to Cody's mistress. After five years of emulating Dan Cody, even without the Ivy League education, Gatsby had learned everything that he needed to know.
When Cody died, he left Gatsby $25,000, but Cody's mistress prevented him from claiming his inheritance. Gatsby then dedicated himself to becoming a wealthy and successful man.
Though Cody left $25,000 to Gatsby in his will, he never received it, suspecting that Ella Kaye absconded with it along with the rest of Cody's immense fortune. However, even in his death, Cody left a valuable message to Gatsby: that wealth is often accompanied by some amount of danger.
Royalties from The Great Gatsby totaled only $8,397 during Fitzgerald's lifetime. Today Gatsby is read in nearly every high school and college and regularly produces $500,000 a year in [F. Scott Fitzgerald's daughter] Scottie's trust for her children. The article this comes from goes into great detail into F.
Gatsby isn't as rich as Tom. Gatsby has money, but Tom is old (by American standards) money. This is, by and large, the theme of the novel: the American version of the difference between wealth and money.
Family wealth
He reveals that he is from a 'prominent, well-to-do' family in America's Midwest region. The family's wealth comes primarily from a hardware business, which Nick's father still runs.
Relationship with Gatsby
The novel suggests that they slept together. Daisy had a breakdown the day before her wedding to Tom where she got drunk. This seems to have happened because she realised she did not really love Tom but in fact loved Gatsby.
Dan Cody was a middle-aged millionaire who gave James Gatz—later, Jay Gatsby—his first taste of the lives of the uber-wealthy. According to Gatsby, Cody had made his money through the mining of precious metals, striking it rich during the iconic Gold Rush of the late 19th century.
Now known as Gatsby, he served as Cody's protégé over the next five years and voyaged around the world. When Cody died in 1912, he left Gatsby $25,000 in his will (equivalent to $814,569 in 2024), but Cody's mistress Ella Kaye cheated Gatsby out of the inheritance.
Dan Cody dies in Boston. He leaves $25,000 to Gatsby, but Ella Kaye uses legal means to take away this inheritance. Gatsby is penniless but has learned polished manners and how the rich operate.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby (1925) Jay Gatsby acquires his wealth through bootlegging, selling illegal alcohol at drugstores in Chicago with his business partner Meyer Wolfsheim after Prohibition laws went into effect.
Gatsby changed his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby at the age of 17 because he wanted to symbolize more than he did, more power and wealth. "I suppose he'd had the name ready for a long time, even then.
In the course of the novel, and no doubt the new film version, we find out what Gatsby is hiding: not only his criminal bootlegging, but also his family name, Gatz, and his poor, ethnic-American roots, which in the end exclude him from the upper-class Anglo-American social circles he hoped to enter.
Gatsby lost Daisy for good when she found out how he built his fortune. Gatsby and Daisy killed someone with their car. Tom shoots Gatsby for revenge, and then shoots himself.
His lower to middle-class Midwestern parents do not fit with the affluent, educated character Gatsby attempts to embody, so he doesn't truly consider them his parents. Instead, Gatsby looks to wealthy figures who are more suited to his vision, like Dan Cody, to take the place of his birth parents.
Jay Gatsby was supposed to receive $25,000 from Dan Cody's will, but he never got the money because of. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. She used legal tricks after Cody died to make sure Gatsby didn't get anything. She took control of Cody's fortune, leaving Gatsby with nothing.
If Gatsby had kept all his assets in cash he would have been worth only $1.25 million in 1922 — the year the book takes place. With his net-worth in mind, Roose posits that Gatsby would have been living and spending entirely beyond his means.
Gatsby believed in the promise of his inheritance, yet, Dan Cody's mistress got it instead. This is just as Gatsby believed that he and Daisy would be together but she marries Tom instead.
Mansell Pattison's network schema suggests that Gatsby was a seriously deranged individual, in the range of a Skid Row alcoholic, an institutionalized psychotic, or a disabled borderline, whose efforts at resolution had run their course (1, 2).
The fact that Daisy, a woman of wealth and class, has chosen him makes her even more desirable in Gatsby's eyes (Fitzgerald 155). Even though he has not reached the social status needed to marry her, Gatsby sees her as his wife: “He felt married to her, that was all” (Fitzgerald 155).
In F. Scott Fitzgerald's book, The Great Gatsby, Daisy Buchanon is the most unlikeable character because of her selfishness, leading Gatsby on, and lack of responsibility. She loves Gatby's attention but likes his wealth more than actual love.
The Great Gatsby isn't explicitly LGBTQ+, but it's frequently read through a queer theory lens, particularly focusing on narrator Nick Carraway's complex feelings for Gatsby, suggesting homoerotic undertones, closeted sexuality, and intense, possibly romantic, longing that transcends typical friendship in a repressive era. While F. Scott Fitzgerald never confirmed Nick as gay, interpretations point to Nick's detailed descriptions of men, his avoidance of intimacy with women like Jordan, and his fascination with Gatsby as hints of his hidden sexuality.
Assuming that, like many parents, the Reiners left most of their fortune – which reportedly was worth some US$200 million – to their children, including Nick, then California's slayer statute may come into play. The couple had two other children together, Romy and Jake.
In addition to furthering his music career, Nick also focused on growing his investment portfolio. From 2021 to 2025, he reportedly increased his net worth from $50 million to $80 million by investing in food, fashion and technology companies, Fortune reported in May 2025.