Myrtle Wilson's death is one of the main themes of the Great Gatsby

The argument

Myrtle Wilson's death is the hinge of the novel. Before the hit and run the book is a story about longing and social position; after it, it is a story about consequences, and every subsequent event follows from it. That structural role is the first reason to read it as central rather than incidental: a theme that organises the plot is doing more work than one that merely appears in it. The death also sets the characters against each other as nothing earlier does. It arrives as an accident and immediately becomes a question of blame, and the handling of that question exposes everyone involved. Daisy was the person who hit Myrtle, and she was driving Gatsby's car; Gatsby takes responsibility and claims to have been at the wheel in order to protect her. Tom knows the truth and does nothing with it except lead Myrtle's angry husband George straight to Gatsby. In a few pages the novel establishes who will shield someone else at their own cost and who will let another man absorb the consequences of his wife's act. The chain then closes on Gatsby. Because Myrtle died, George goes looking for the driver; because Gatsby claimed the blame and Tom confirmed it, George finds him; because George finds him, Gatsby dies. The causation is direct and unbroken, and the novel's ending is produced by it. The death of a minor character reaches up and kills the title character. This is why death reads as the novel's subject rather than its conclusion. Myrtle's death is not a device that clears the way for the real ending; it is the event that makes the ending inevitable, and the book traces its consequences from the moment it occurs. On this reasoning The Great Gatsby is about death, and Myrtle Wilson's is where the theme becomes unavoidable.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Even if Myrtle Wilson didn't die, another tragic event would have happened in its place. There was already tension between the characters, starting in New York City when Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby fight over who Daisy loves more. The characters were already having issues between them and would have most likely split up regardless.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] A plot mechanism is not a theme: the premise identifies what moves the story rather than what the novel is about, which is the question at issue. [Rejecting P2] The detail supports a different reading. What the episode shows is Daisy protected by wealth and Gatsby willing to be ruined for her, which belongs to the class and American-dream positions in this debate rather than to death. [Rejecting P3] That one death causes another establishes a chain of events, not that mortality is the novel's subject; on the counter's account the collision between these characters was already set and would have found another form.