Her expression was curiously familiar—it was an expression I had often seen on women's faces, but on Myrtle Wilson's face it seemed purposeless and inexplicable until I realized that her eyes, wide with jealous terror, were fixed not on Tom, but on Jordan Baker, whom she took to be his wife.
Chapter 7 · Narrator
Context
As they stop at Wilson's garage, Nick notices Myrtle watching from the window above. He recognizes the expression of jealous terror on her face but is initially confused because she appears to be looking at Jordan Baker rather than Tom—until he realizes Myrtle mistakes Jordan for Tom's wife.
Analysis
The dramatic irony operates on multiple levels: Myrtle's misidentification of Jordan as Daisy will directly cause her death, since she will later rush toward the yellow car believing Tom is driving it with his 'wife' beside him. This moment reveals how incomplete knowledge—the mistaken identity, the confused car—generates fatal consequences, positioning Myrtle's death not as divine punishment but as the product of a tragic chain of misrecognitions that the class system's segregations make inevitable.
How to Use in Essay
Critical for essays on fate and dramatic irony in the novel, or for arguing that Myrtle's death results from the information asymmetries that class barriers create—she dies because the social distance between her world and the Buchanans' prevents her from knowing what she needs to survive.