Jay Gatsby is many things, but he is not honest. He manufactured his entire personality the moment he met Dan Cody, leading to a lifetime of deceit and deception, he and Wolfsheim ran an unlawful alcohol distribution business during prohibition, he bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of books, but never read any of them, and he used his massive wealth to throw ragers so that Daisy would notice him. Even on the final day of his life, to show his love for Daisy, Gatsby takes the blame for killing Myrtle. All of these falsehoods catch up with Gatsby when he is shot by Wilson. After dying, it is clearly impossible to have a relationship with someone. But, even if he had lived, Gatsby’s lies would have eliminated any chance of him having a deep and intimate relationship with Daisy. Obviously, most instances of dishonesty do not end up with someone dead. But, where do we see this kind of behavior in the real world and how does it harm us?

Bella DePaulo, Ph.D. has done significant research (in 1996) to determine when, and how often, people lie. She found that “most people […] lie once or twice a day—almost as often as they snack from the refrigerator or brush their teeth. Both men and women lie in approximately a fifth of their social exchanges lasting 10 or more minutes; over the course of a week they deceive about 30 percent of those with whom they interact one-on-one.” Of course, this is not the only study done on the ubiquity of lying; many of them show similar rates. Additionally, anyone who has spent any significant amount of time in America knows how much we lie. Just look around us, our politicians equivocate, our news organizations spin, and people cherry-pick statistics to prove their points.

There are two types of people who lying harms: the liar and the person being deceived. I’ll talk about the victim first. After being lied to, the victim often feels like they’ve been made out to be a fool. We see this most clearly in the characters of Tom and Wilson, who both do terrible things when they recognize that their reality is crumbling around them. In the moment of realization, the victim goes back and tries to understand how the liar could have done this for so long. One common reaction to discovering a major lie is to ‘poison’ all the memories that were affected by that lie. For example: if I had a longtime girlfriend cheat on me, I might look back on all the good times we had with disdain and disappointment, even though we would have had a great time together. Although it is possible that this sense of betrayal was a factor in Daisy’s ‘decision’ to abandon Gatsby and Nick, I doubt that her feelings were the deciding factor. I believe that Tom was so angry at Gatsby that he would have taken Daisy kicking-and-screaming if she had fought him.

But, lying doesn’t just hurt the victim, it also hurts the liar. A study performed by University of Notre Dame (Indiana) professor Anita Kelly found that health measurably improved when people consciously changed their behavior to lie less. Kelly proposes that health improves because “telling the truth improves relationships […] and research has long indicated that people with good relationships have better physical and mental health” Another study, this one done by a professor emeritus at Loyola University named Linda Stroh, suggests that it is physically draining to maintain a lie for long periods of time.

Although Gatsby’s character was alluring and interesting, think of how taxing it must have been for James Gatz to maintain that persona for so many years. I believe that he must have felt trapped within his character. I know that I’ve had friends who’ve felt trapped by lies before, so I wonder where can we go to help for this? Well, there are several different crisis helplines (Crisis Text Line: 471471, Crisis Call Center: 800-273-8255, etc), and all of them are free and anonymous. Finally, there is no shame in needing help, we all do sometimes. If family and friends aren’t helpful in this way for you, these resources are always available.