Which Characters are the Worst Human Beings in The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises? A Ranking of Jerks

Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Creators of Jerks

I recently read a message board comment where someone asserted that the characters in The Sun Also Rises might be shittier people than the characters in The Great Gatsby. After I read this, I thought to myself, “man, in spite of my many robes, degrees, and learnings, I have no idea how to decide that one.” 

And so, as part of my enduring quest for knowledge, I have produced this, the EG Revue’s rankings of the most awful people in the LGGANU (Lost Generation Great American Novelistic Universe). Their particular sins are noted in parentheses.

1. Tom Buchanan (accessory to murder; accessory to manslaughter; racism; infidelity; domestic violence; went to Yale)

2. Daisy Buchanan (vehicular manslaughter; shirt fetish; was probably drunk the whole time she was pregnant)

3. Mike Campbell (defaults on debts to friends; terrible restaurant patron; is more anti-Semitic than his friends, which is saying something)

4. George Wilson (straight-up murders a dude; amazingly this only gets him to #4 on the list)

5. Lady Brett Ashley (relishes producing chaos; selfish in relationships; leaves the bloody ear of a bull in the drawer of hotel nightstand for maid to find; probably didn’t tip)

6. Bill Gorton (shit-stirrer; uses a lot more racial slurs than you remember)

7. Jay Gatsby (oversees vast criminal enterprise; fails to respect boundaries with neighbors; has spent nearly a century being a bad influence on Lloyd Dobler types)

8. Robert Cohn (infidelity; assault and battery; writes mediocre novels)

9. Owl Eyes (symbolically linked to distant indifferent God; judges people by the contents of their bookshelves)

10. Jake Barnes (enabler; betrays the ethical code of bullfight aficionados; wastes the valuable time of a Parisian sex worker)

11. Myrtle Wilson (infidelity; fails to respect rules of the road)

12. Jordan Baker (cheats at golf; tells long-winded Kentucky-based anecdotes)

13. Meyer Wolfsheim (fixes the World Series in such a way that it is won by a team from Ohio)

14. Nick Carraway (finance bro; went to Yale; is “Minnesota nice”)

15. Pedro Romero (tortures animals for a living)

16. The Green Light (launched a thousand tedious term papers)

17. Frances Clyne (has a point; won’t let it go)

18. Montoya (kinda judgy)

19. Klipspringer (leaves shoes everywhere)

20. Count Mippipopolous (honestly, the Count seems like a good hang)

In conclusion, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway are important works of American fiction which contain many jerks. This has been demonstrated first with an introduction, and then with a ranking of twenty jerks. As I look back at the list, I see that four of the top six are from Gatsby, and Fitzgerald’s classic has the higher body count (well, human body count anyway). So I guess The Great Gatsby contains worse people than The Sun Also Rises.