I think you've missed a person in your account. The guy Daisy marries is not working to make ends meet, he's an old-money racist (Tom mixes up Henry Goddard, one of the most famous proponents of eugenics in the 1910's and 1920's, and Lothrup Stoddard's book _The Rising Tide of Color_ which inspired Adolf Hitler, but liked both, even if he can't remember who wrote what). Tom Buchanan is just as fantastically wealthy as Gatsby but in the understated old-money ways, contrasting with Gatsby's new money extravagance. Tom conducts an affair with a nearby, much poorer woman, but is enraged at the hint that Daisy is having an affair with Gatsby. The combination of his affair and his anger at the possibility of her affair is what drives the novel to its explosive climax.

The guy who is working to make ends meet is the narrator, Nick Carraway. Daisy is his cousin, which is why he gets to hang around these much more wealthy people. Of course, the way he is working to make ends meet is as a bond salesman on Wall Street, but at the time bonds were a sleepy corner of the financial system, it didn't become the ticket to enormous wealth until the 1980s.

Similarly, another reference that made sense at the time but is lost to the modern reader is the book's reference to Gatsby making his money in drug stores- that meant he was a bootlegger. You could get a doctor's order for alcohol so drug stores were legal speakeasy's. Walgreen's in particular did absurdly well under prohibition, growing from 20 stores in 1920 to 400 stores in 1930, on the basis of its medicinal whiskey, available to anyone with a prescription.

I read a fascinating discussion the other week that Tom's racism may not be incidental to the plot, but one of the keys to unlocking some other deeper/semi-hidden insights into it. The innocuous sounding question at the top of that rabbit hole was "Is Gatsby white?" It's a fascinating question and there's lots of evidence that Gatsby is at least white-passing (seemingly no problem in the segregated at the time Seelbach Hotel, for instance), but that doesn't necessarily mean white, especially to the sort of old-money racist that Tom is portrayed to be.

With Sinners doing so well in cinemas this month, it's an interesting time to question if there is a racial component to The Great Gatsby that hasn't been so obvious even after decades of (somewhat) close reads by at least High Schoolers.

One longer read on the subject: https://www.contrabandcamp.com/p/gatsbys-secret

It also got me thinking about the possible reasons why F. Scott Fitzgerald dedicated The Great Gatsby to his wife and the Deep South rumors that she wasn't white but only white-passing.

>reference to Gatsby making his money in drug stores- that meant he was a bootlegger.

You don't have to dig that far into it for the reference, Gatsby's business associate is a mobster who Gatsby says "fixed the World Series back in 1919". Even if you don't know exactly what kind of crime he is up to it is kind of obvious that he is in a criminal enterprise based on who he works with.

Oops, you are indeed right. I was mixing in Tom and Nick in my memories. Needed to use 3 dudes to properly sell my horrible cliff notes.

Yeah, looking back there's a lot of history sprinkled in that I didn't appreciate when I was 16 and reading this for a teacher I really didn't like to begin with.