The Great Gatsby

Gatsby is drawn to Dan Cody because Cody represents the life Gatsby desperately wants: wealth, adventure, and a complete escape from his humble origins.

When Gatsby is still James Gatz, he is working as a struggling laborer along Lake Superior, already imagining a more glamorous future for himself—“a universe of ineffable gaudiness” that exists only in his dreams. Cody arrives at exactly the right moment. As a wealthy, self-made man with a yacht and a life of travel, Cody embodies the dream Gatsby has been inventing in his head. Meeting him gives that dream a real, visible form.

Gatsby’s attraction is partly practical: Cody offers opportunity. Gatsby becomes his assistant and spends five years with him, learning how wealth works and how a rich man lives. For someone with no money or social standing, Cody is a gateway into a different world—a chance to transform himself.

But the pull is also deeper than opportunity. Gatsby has already begun to reinvent himself, even changing his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby at 17 to match the more glamorous identity he imagines. Cody validates that reinvention in addition to helping Gatsby materially. Traveling with Cody allows Gatsby to practice being the kind of man he wants to become: confident, wealthy, and socially powerful. In that sense, Cody is both a mentor and a blueprint for Gatsby’s future.

Even so, the relationship foreshadows the limits of Gatsby’s dream. Cody leaves him money when he dies, but Gatsby never receives it due to legal complications. The lesson is blunt: access to wealth and the appearance of success don’t guarantee lasting security. Gatsby learns how to look rich before he learns how fragile that status can be.

Cody’s influence stays with Gatsby long after his death. It sets Gatsby on the path of self-invention and pursuit of wealth that will eventually define his life—and shape his belief that money can build him a new identity and win back his past relationship with Daisy. That belief becomes the novel’s central tension, where ambition and illusion are almost impossible to separate.