George Wilson discovers that his wife, Myrtle, has been having an affair. He does not know with whom, but he acts quickly to lock Myrtle inside her room to prevent her from leaving him. He tells Tom they intend to go west, whether Myrtle wants to or not. “I just got wised up to something funny,” he says. It becomes evident to Nick that George does not know that his wife is involved with Tom, which is why he talks so freely about his revelation.
George had previously had no clue about his wife’s infidelity. Whenever she had plans with Tom, she told her husband that she was going to see her sister. He had no reason not to trust her, so he believed every story she told him. Now, he is having trouble breathing, and his face looks green because he is so devastated by this shocking news. Ironically, George unknowingly confides in his wife’s lover, which adds to the pathos of the scene. The reader cannot help but feel sorry for George.
Fitzgerald juxtaposes George’s discovery with Tom’s parallel discovery that Daisy and Gatsby have been having an affair. Just as George reacts with shock and physical illness, Tom reacts with panic and confusion, as he recognizes that he is losing both his wife and his mistress.
Wilson learns that his wife has a lover. In the chapter, Tom stops at Wilson's garage for gas, driving Gatsby's car. Tom is there with Jordan and Nick. Wilson is sick with the knowledge that Myrtle has a life outside of the one that they share; he is determined to move away with her. This is why he is so insistent on getting Tom's old car—he thinks he can sell it for a profit.
There is a diabolical symmetry in Tom's and Wilson's situations, despite all of Tom's upper-class snobbery. Like Wilson, Tom has only just realized that his wife has been unfaithful (Daisy is in love with Gatsby), and his anger over this causes him to brag to Wilson about the yellow car he is driving—despite the fact that the car is, in fact, Gatsby's.
Like Wilson (who locked Myrtle in the upstairs of the garage until he can finalize his plans to move), Tom has "locked up" Daisy, forcing her and their whole party into a kind of "imprisonment" at the Plaza hotel. Gatsby's flight with Daisy from New York happens at the same time Myrtle escapes from her imprisonment and rushes into the street. When Daisy then hits and kills her with Gatsby's car, it not only marks the end of Tom's affair with Myrtle, but also marks the end of Daisy's affair with Gatsby.
By the end of the chapter, Tom has reasserted his control over Daisy, and Gatsby—still in love with her—is then left waiting anxiously outside the house: "watching over nothing."
In Chapter 7 , George Wilson has just learned that his wife, Myrtle, is having an...
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affair. "I just got wised up to something ..." is how he puts it to Tom. However, he doesn't know who Myrtle has been having an affair with—only that he, Wilson, is going to move with her far away whether she likes it or not. George Wilson also "learns" that the car Tom is driving—Gatsby's car—is Tom's, because Tom lies and tells him it is his.
The irony of Wilson's discovery about his wife ("Myrtle had some sort of life apart from him") occurring at the same time as Tom's discovery of Daisy's affair is not lost on Nick, who comments,
there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.
What Nick means is that although they are from completely different classes and circumstances, Tom and George are alike in being "sick" over their wives' affairs. Both men want to save their marriages. George learns, however, how little power he has over his wife when she breaks out of the room where he has locked her and rushes in front of Gatsby's car, getting killed.
The first thing that George Wilson has learned is that apparently Myrtle has been spending time with another man and so he has decided to close up the shop and move somewhere, perhaps out west. He doesn't know who the man is, only that she has been unfaithful to him.
The other things he learns are perhaps consequences of the horrible accident when Daisy runs down Myrtle and kills her because Myrtle runs out thinking the car is driven by Tom. Wilson learns that powerful and wealthy people don't face the same consequences as regular people. This knowledge comes at the horrible price of the loss of his wife, and even though he knew she had been seeing someone else, he is obviously still devastated by the loss.