James Gatz is the real name of Jay Gatsby. He is born in North Dakota. He changed his name at the age of seventeen. At the same time it's the beginning of his career.

He saw Dan Cody's yacht drop anchor over the most insidious flat Lake Superior. He informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour.

So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.

He was in the small Luthran College of St Olaf's in southern Minnesota. He stayed there for two weeks and despising the janitor's work with wich he was to pay his way through. Then he went back to the Lake Superior and Dan Cody yacht dropped anchor.

To the young Gatz, that yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world. Cody took Gatsby to Duluth and bought him a blue coat, six pairs of white duck trouses, and a yachting cap. When the Tuolomee left for the West Indies and the Barbary Coast, Gatsby left too. He was with Dan for five years. Dan Cody died a week after Ella came on board.

Gatsby is supposed to inherite money . He didn't get it. He never understood the legal device but the remained money went intact to Ella Kaye.