The Great Gatsby - Zusammenfassung, Zitate, Charakterisierung, Aufsätze - Abitur

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neighbors; whereas they lack social connections and aristocratic pedigrees, Nick graduated from Yale and has many connections on East Egg. One night, he drives out to East Egg to have dinner with his cousin Daisy and her husband, Tom Buchanan, a former member of Nick's social club at Yale. Tom, a powerful figure dressed in riding clothes, greets Nick on the porch. Inside, Daisy lounges on a couch with her friend Jordan Baker, a competitive golfer who yawns as though bored by her surroundings. Tom tries to interest the others in a book called The Rise of the Colored Empires by a man named Goddard. The book espouses racist, white-supremacist attitudes that Tom seems to find convincing. Daisy teases Tom about the book but is interrupted when Tom leaves the room to take a phone call. Daisy follows him hurriedly, and Jordan tells Nick that the call is from Tom's lover in New York. After an awkward dinner, the party breaks up. Jordan wants to go to bed because she has a golf tournament the next day. As Nick leaves, Tom and Daisy hint that they would like for him to take a romantic interest in Jordan. When Nick arrives home, he sees Gatsby for the first time, a handsome young man standing on the lawn with his arms reaching out toward the dark water. Nick looks out at the water, but all he can see is a distant green light that might mark the end of a dock. CHAPTER 2 Halfway between West Egg and New York City sprawls a desolate plain, a gray valley where New York's ashes are dumped. The men who live here work at shoveling up the ashes. Overhead, two huge, blue, spectacle-rimmed eyes-the last vestige of an advertising gimmick by a long-vanished eye doctor-stare down from an enormous sign. These unblinking eyes, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, watch over everything that happens in the valley of ashes. The commuter train that runs between West Egg and New York passes through the valley, making several stops along the way. One day, as Nick and Tom are riding the train into the city, Tom forces Nick to follow him out of the train at one of these stops. Tom leads Nick to George Wilson's garage, which sits on the edge of the valley of ashes. Tom's lover Myrtle is Wilson's wife. Wilson is a lifeless yet handsome man, colored gray by the ashes in the air. In contrast, Myrtle has a kind of desperate vitality; she strikes Nick as sensuous despite her stocky figure. Tom taunts Wilson and then orders Myrtle to follow him to the train. Tom takes Nick and Myrtle to New York City, to the Morningside Heights apartment he keeps for his affair. Here they have an impromptu party with Myrtle's sister, Catherine, and a couple named McKee. Catherine has bright red hair, wears a great deal of makeup, and tells Nick that she has heard that Jay Gatsby is the nephew or cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm, the ruler of Germany during World War I. The McKees, who live downstairs, are a horrid couple: Mr. McKee is pale and feminine, and Mrs. McKee is shrill. The group proceeds to drink excessively. Nick claims that he got drunk for only the second time in his life at this party. The ostentatious behavior and conversation of the others at the party repulse Nick, and he tries to leave. At the same time, he finds himself fascinated by the lurid spectacle of the group. Myrtle grows louder and more obnoxious the more she drinks, and shortly after Tom gives her a new puppy as a gift, she begins to talk about Daisy. Tom sternly warns her never to mention his wife. Myrtle angrily says that she will talk about whatever she chooses and begins chanting Daisy's name. Tom responds by breaking her nose, bringing the party to an abrupt halt. Nick leaves, drunkenly, with Mr. McKee, and ends up taking the 4 a.m. train back to Long Island. CHAPTER 3 One of the reasons that Gatsby has become so famous around New York is that he throws elaborate parties every weekend at his mansion, lavish spectacles to which people long to be invited. One day, Gatsby's chauffeur brings Nick an invitation to one of these parties. At the appointed time, Nick makes the short walk to Gatsby's house and joins the festivities, feeling somewhat out of place amid the throng of jubilant strangers. Guests mill around exchanging rumors about their host-no one seems to know the truth about Gatsby's wealth or personal history. Nick runs into Jordan Baker, whose friend, Lucille, speculates that Gatsby was a German spy during the war. Nick also hears that Gatsby is a graduate of Oxford and that he once killed a man in cold blood. Gatsby's party is almost unbelievably luxurious: guests marvel over his Rolls-Royce, his swimming pool, his beach, crates of fresh oranges and lemons, buffet tents in the gardens overflowing with a feast, and a live orchestra playing under the stars. Liquor flows freely, and the crowd grows rowdier and louder as more and more guests get drunk. In this atmosphere of opulence and revelry, Nick and Jordan, curious about their host, set out to find Gatsby. Instead, they run into a middle-aged man with huge, owl-eyed spectacles (whom Nick dubs Owl Eyes) who sits poring over the unread books in Gatsby's library. At midnight, Nick and Jordan go outside to watch the entertainment. They sit at a table with a handsome young man who says that Nick looks familiar to him; they realize that they served in the same division during the war. The man introduces himself as none other than Jay Gatsby. Gatsby's speech is elaborate and formal, and he has a habit of calling everyone "old sport." As the party progresses, Nick becomes increasingly fascinated with Gatsby. He notices that Gatsby does not drink and that he keeps himself separate from the party, standing alone on the marble steps, watching his guests in silence. At two o'clock in the morning, as husbands and wives argue over whether to leave, butler tells Jordan that Gatsby would like to see her. Jordan emerges from her meeting with Gatsby saying that she has just heard something extraordinary. Nick says goodbye to Gatsby, who goes inside to take a phone call from Philadelphia. Nick starts to walk home. On his way, he sees Owl Eyes struggling to get his car out of a ditch. Owl Eyes and another man climb out of the wrecked automobile, and Owl Eyes drunkenly declares that he washes his hands of the whole business. Nick then proceeds to describe his everyday life, to prove that he does more with his time than simply attend parties. He works in New York City, through which he also takes long walks, and he meets women. After a brief relationship with a girl from Jersey City, Nick follows the advice of Daisy and Tom and begins seeing Jordan Baker. Nick says that Jordan is fundamentally a dishonest person; he even knows that she cheated in her first golf tournament. Nick feels attracted to her despite her dishonesty, even though he himself claims to be one of the few honest people he has ever known. CHAPTER 4 Nick lists all of the people who attended Gatsby's parties that summer, a roll call of the nation's most wealthy and powerful people. He then describes a trip that he took to New York with Gatsby to eat lunch. As they drive to the city, Gatsby tells Nick about his past, but his story seems highly improbable. He claims, for instance, to be the son of wealthy, deceased parents from the Midwest. When Nick asks which Midwestern city he is from, Gatsby replies, "San Francisco." Gatsby then lists a long and preposterously detailed set of accomplishments: he claims to have been educated at Oxford, to have collected jewels in the capitals of Europe, to have hunted big game, and to have been awarded medals in World War I by multiple European countries. Seeing Nick's skepticism, Gatsby produces a medal from Montenegro and a picture of himself playing cricket at Oxford. Gatsby's car speeds through the valley of ashes and enters the city. When a policeman pulls Gatsby over for speeding, Gatsby shows him a white card, and the policeman apologizes for bothering him. In the city, Gatsby takes Nick to lunch and introduces him to Meyer Wolfsheim, who, he claims, was responsible for fixing the 1919 World Series. Wolfsheim is a shady character with underground business connections. He gives Nick the impression that the source of Gatsby's wealth might be unsavory, and that Gatsby may even have ties to the sort of organized crime with which Wolfsheim is associated. After the lunch in New York, Nick sees Jordan Baker, who finally tells him the details of her mysterious conversation with Gatsby at the party. She relates that Gatsby told her that he is in love with Daisy Buchanan. According to Jordan, during the war, before Daisy married Tom, she was a beautiful young girl in Louisville, Kentucky, and all the military officers in town were in love with her. Daisy fell in love with Lieutenant Jay Gatsby, who was stationed at the base near her home. Though she chose to marry Tom after Gatsby left for the war, Daisy drank herself into numbness the night before her wedding, after she received a letter from Gatsby. Daisy has apparently remained faithful to her husband throughout their marriage, but Tom has not. Jordan adds that Gatsby bought his mansion in West Egg solely to be near Daisy. Nick remembers the night he saw Gatsby stretching his arms out to the water and realizes that the green light he saw was the light at the end of Daisy's dock. According to Jordan, Gatsby has asked her to convince Nick to arrange a reunion between Gatsby and Daisy. Because he is terrified that Daisy will refuse to see him, Gatsby wants Nick to invite Daisy to tea. Without Daisy's knowledge, Gatsby intends to come to the tea at Nick's house as well, surprising her and forcing her to see him. CHAPTER 5 That night, Nick comes home from the city after a date with Jordan. He is surprised to see Gatsby's mansion lit up brightly, but it seems to be unoccupied, as the house is totally silent. As Nick walks home, Gatsby startles him by approaching him from across the lawn. Gatsby seems agitated and almost desperate to make Nick happy-he invites him to Coney Island, then for a swim in his pool. Nick realizes that Gatsby is nervous because he wants Nick to agree to his plan of inviting Daisy over for tea. Nick tells Gatsby that he will help him with the plan. Overjoyed, Gatsby immediately offers to have someone cut Nick's grass. He also offers him the chance to make some money by joining him in some business he does on the side- business that does not involve Meyer Wolfshiem. Nick is slightly offended that Gatsby wants to pay him for arranging the meeting with Daisy and refuses Gatsby's offers, but he still agrees to call Daisy and invite her to his house. It rains on the day of the meeting, and Gatsby becomes terribly nervous. Despite the rain, Gatsby sends a gardener over to cut Nick's grass and sends another man over with flowers. Gatsby worries that even if Daisy accepts his advances, things between them will not be the same as they were in Louisville. Daisy arrives, but when Nick brings her into the house, he finds that Gatsby has suddenly disappeared. There is a knock at the door. Gatsby enters, having returned from a walk around the house in the rain. At first, Gatsby's reunion with Daisy is terribly awkward. Gatsby knocks Nick's clock over and tells Nick sorrowfully that the meeting was a mistake. After he leaves the two alone for half an hour, however, Nick returns to find them radiantly happy-Daisy shedding tears of joy and Gatsby glowing. Outside, the rain has stopped, and Gatsby invites Nick and Daisy over to his house, where he shows them his possessions. Daisy is overwhelmed by his luxurious lifestyle, and when he shows her his extensive collection of English shirts, she begins to cry. Gatsby tells Daisy about his long nights spent outside, staring at the green light at the end of her dock, dreaming about their future happiness. Nick wonders whether Daisy can possibly live up to Gatsby's vision of her. Gatsby seems to have idealized Daisy in his mind to the extent that the real Daisy, charming as she is, will almost certainly fail to live up to his expectations. For the moment, however, their romance seems fully rekindled. Gatsby calls in Klipspringer, a strange character who seems to live at Gatsby's mansion, and has him play the piano. Klipspringer plays a popular song called "Ain't We Got Fun?" Nick quickly realizes that Gatsby and Daisy have forgotten that he is there. Quietly, Nick gets up and leaves Gatsby and Daisy alone together. CHAPTER 6 The rumors about Gatsby continue to circulate in New York-a reporter even travels to Gatsby's mansion hoping to interview him. Having learned the truth about Gatsby's early life sometime before writing his account, Nick now interrupts the story to relate Gatsby's personal history-not as it is rumored to have occurred, nor as Gatsby claimed it occurred, but as it really happened. Gatsby was born James Gatz on a North Dakota farm, and though he attended college at St. Olaf in Minnesota, he dropped out after two weeks, loathing the humiliating janitorial work by means of which he paid his tuition. He worked on Lake Superior the next summer fishing for salmon and digging for clams. One day, he saw a yacht owned by Dan Cody, a wealthy copper mogul, and rowed out to warn him about an impending storm. The grateful Cody took young Gatz, who gave his name as Jay Gatsby, onboard his yacht as his personal assistant. Traveling with Cody to the Barbary Coast and the West Indies, Gatsby fell in love with wealth and luxury. Cody was a heavy drinker, and one of Gatsby's jobs was to look after him during his drunken binges. This gave Gatsby a healthy respect for the dangers of alcohol and convinced him not to become a drinker himself. When Cody died, he left Gatsby $25,000, but Cody's mistress prevented him from claiming his inheritance. Gatsby then dedicated himself to becoming a wealthy and successful man. Nick sees neither Gatsby nor Daisy for several weeks after their reunion at Nick's house. Stopping by Gatsby's house one afternoon, he is alarmed to find Tom Buchanan there. Tom has stopped for a drink at Gatsby's house with Mr. and Mrs. Sloane, with whom he has been out riding. Gatsby seems nervous and agitated, and tells Tom awkwardly that he knows Daisy. Gatsby invites Tom and the Sloanes to stay for dinner, but they refuse. To be polite, they invite Gatsby to dine with them, and he accepts, not realizing the insincerity of the invitation. Tom is contemptuous of Gatsby's lack of social grace and highly critical of Daisy's habit of visiting Gatsby's house alone. He is suspicious, but he has not yet discovered Gatsby and Daisy's love. The following Saturday night, Tom and Daisy go to a party at Gatsby's house. Though Tom has no interest in the party, his dislike for Gatsby causes him to want to keep an eye on Daisy. Gatsby's party strikes Nick much more unfavorably this time around-he finds the revelry oppressive and notices that even Daisy has a bad time. Tom upsets her by telling her that Gatsby's fortune comes from bootlegging. She angrily replies that Gatsby's wealth comes from a chain of drugstores that he owns. Gatsby seeks out Nick after Tom and Daisy leave the party; he is unhappy because Daisy has had such an unpleasant time. Gatsby wants things to be exactly the same as they were before he left Louisville: he wants Daisy to leave Tom so that he can be with her. Nick reminds Gatsby that he cannot re-create the past. Gatsby, distraught, protests that he can. He believes that his money can accomplish anything as far as Daisy is concerned. As he walks amid the debris from the party, Nick thinks about the first time Gatsby kissed Daisy, the moment when his dream of Daisy became the dominant force in his life. Now that he has her, Nick reflects, his dream is effectively over. CHAPTER 7 Preoccupied by his love for Daisy, Gatsby calls off his parties, which were primarily a means to lure Daisy. He also fires his servants to prevent gossip and replaces them with shady individuals connected to Meyer Wolfsheim. On the hottest day of the summer, Nick takes the train to East Egg for lunch at the house of Tom and Daisy. He finds Gatsby and Jordan Baker there as well. When the nurse brings in Daisy's baby girl, Gatsby is stunned and can hardly believe that the child is real. For her part, Daisy seems almost uninterested in her child. During the awkward afternoon, Gatsby and Daisy cannot hide their love for one another. Complaining of her boredom, Daisy asks Gatsby if he wants to go into the city. Gatsby stares at her passionately, and Tom becomes certain of their feelings for each other. Itching for a confrontation, Tom seizes upon Daisy's suggestion that they should all go to New York together. Nick rides with Jordan and Tom in Gatsby's car, and Gatsby and Daisy ride together in Tom's car. Stopping for gas at Wilson's garage, Nick, Tom, and Jordan learn that Wilson has discovered his wife's infidelity-though not the identity of her lover-and plans to move her to the West. Under the brooding eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, Nick perceives that Tom and Wilson are in the same position. In the oppressive New York City heat, the group decides to take a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Tom initiates his planned confrontation with Gatsby by mocking his habit of calling people "old sport." He accuses Gatsby of lying about having attended Oxford. Gatsby responds that he did attend Oxford-for five months, in an army program following the war. Tom asks Gatsby about his intentions for Daisy, and Gatsby replies that Daisy loves him, not Tom. Tom claims that he and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could not possibly understand. He then accuses Gatsby of running a bootlegging operation. Daisy, in love with Gatsby earlier in the afternoon, feels herself moving closer and closer to Tom as she observes the quarrel. Realizing he has bested Gatsby, Tom sends Daisy back to Long Island with Gatsby to prove Gatsby's inability to hurt him. As the row quiets down, Nick realizes that it is his thirtieth birthday. Driving back to Long Island, Nick, Tom, and Jordan discover a frightening scene on the border of the valley of ashes. Someone has been fatally hit by an automobile. Michaelis, a Greek man who runs the restaurant next to Wilson's garage, tells them that Myrtle was the victim-a car coming from New York City struck her, paused, then sped away. Nick realizes that Myrtle must have been hit by Gatsby and Daisy, driving back from the city in Gatsby's big yellow automobile. Tom thinks that Wilson will remember the yellow car from that afternoon. He also assumes that Gatsby was the driver. Back at Tom's house, Nick waits outside and finds Gatsby hiding in the bushes. Gatsby says that he has been waiting there in order to make sure that Tom did not hurt Daisy. He tells Nick that Daisy was driving when the car struck Myrtle, but that he himself will take the blame. Still worried about Daisy, Gatsby sends Nick to check on her. Nick finds Tom and Daisy eating cold fried chicken and talking. They have reconciled their differences, and Nick leaves Gatsby standing alone in the moonlight. CHAPTER 8 After the day's traumatic events, Nick passes a sleepless night. Before dawn, he rises restlessly and goes to visit Gatsby at his mansion. Gatsby tells him that he waited at Daisy's until four o'clock in the morning and that nothing happened-Tom did not try to hurt her and Daisy did not come outside. Nick suggests that Gatsby forget about Daisy and leave Long Island, but Gatsby refuses to consider leaving Daisy behind. Gatsby, melancholy, tells Nick about courting Daisy in Louisville in 1917. He says that he loved her for her youth and vitality, and idolized her social position, wealth, and popularity. He adds that she was the first girl to whom he ever felt close and that he lied about his background to make her believe that he was worthy of her. Eventually, he continues, he and Daisy made love, and he felt as though he had married her. She promised to wait for him when he left for the war, but then she married Tom, whose social position was solid and who had the approval of her parents. Gatsby's gardener interrupts the story to tell Gatsby that he plans to drain the pool. The previous day was the hottest of the summer, but autumn is in the air this morning, and the gardener worries that falling leaves will clog the pool drains. Gatsby tells the gardener to wait a day; he has never used the pool, he says, and wants to go for a swim. Nick has stayed so long talking to Gatsby that he is very late for work. He finally says goodbye to Gatsby. As he walks away, he turns back and shouts that Gatsby is worth more than the Buchanans and all of their friends. Nick goes to his office, but he feels too distracted to work, and even refuses to meet Jordan Baker for a date. The focus of his narrative then shifts to relate to the reader what happened at the garage after Myrtle was killed (the details of which Nick learns from Michaelis): George Wilson stays up all night talking to Michaelis about Myrtle. He tells him that before Myrtle died, he confronted her about her lover and told her that she could not hide her sin from the eyes of God. The morning after the accident, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, illuminated by the dawn, overwhelm Wilson. He believes they are the eyes of God and leaps to the conclusion that whoever was driving the car that killed Myrtle must have been her lover. Wilson decides that God demands revenge and leaves to track down the owner of the car. Wilson looks for Tom, because he knows that Tom is familiar with the car's owner-he saw Tom driving the car earlier that day, but he knows Tom could not have been the driver since Tom arrived after the accident in a different car with Nick and Jordan. Wilson eventually goes to Gatsby's house, where he finds Gatsby lying on an air mattress in the pool, floating in the water and looking up at the sky. Wilson shoots Gatsby, killing him instantly, then shoots himself. Nick hurries back to West Egg and finds Gatsby floating dead in his pool. Nick imagines Gatsby's final thoughts, and pictures him disillusioned by the meaninglessness and emptiness of life without Daisy, without his dream. CHAPTER 9 Writing two years after Gatsby's death, Nick describes the events that surrounded the funeral. Swarms of reporters, journalists, and gossipmongers descend on the mansion in the aftermath of the murder. Wild, untrue stories, more exaggerated than the rumors about Gatsby when he was throwing his parties, circulate about the nature of Gatsby's relationship to Myrtle and Wilson. Feeling that Gatsby would not want to go through a funeral alone, Nick tries to hold a large funeral for him, but all of Gatsby's former friends and acquaintances either have disappeared-Tom and Daisy, for instance, move away with no forwarding address-or refuse to come, like Meyer Wolfsheim and Klipspringer. The latter claims that he has a social engagement in Westport and asks Nick to send along his tennis shoes. Outraged, Nick hangs up on him. The only people to attend the funeral are Nick, Owl Eyes, a few servants, and Gatsby's father, Henry C. Gatz, who has come all the way from Minnesota. Henry Gatz is proud of his son and saves a picture of his house. He also fills Nick in on Gatsby's early life, showing him a book in which a young Gatsby had written a schedule for self-improvement. Sick of the East and its empty values, Nick decides to move back to the Midwest. He breaks off his relationship with Jordan, who suddenly claims that she has become engaged to another man. Just before he leaves, Nick encounters Tom on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Nick initially refuses to shake Tom's hand but eventually accepts. Tom tells him that he was the one who told Wilson that Gatsby owned the car that killed Myrtle, and describes how greatly he suffered when he had to give up the apartment he kept in the city for his affair. He says that Gatsby deserved to die. Nick comes to the conclusion that Tom and Daisy are careless and uncaring people and that they destroy people and things, knowing that their money will shield them from ever having to face any negative consequences. Nick muses that, in some ways, this story is a story of the West, even though it has taken place entirely on the East Coast. Nick, Jordan, Tom, and Daisy are all from west of the Appalachians, and Nick believes that the reactions of each, himself included, to living the fast-paced, lurid lifestyle of the East has shaped his or her behavior. Nick remembers life in the Midwest, full of snow, trains, and Christmas wreaths, and thinks that the East seems grotesque and distorted by comparison. On his last night in West Egg before moving back to Minnesota, Nick walks over to Gatsby's empty mansion and erases an obscene word that someone has written on the steps. He sprawls out on the beach behind Gatsby's house and looks up. As the moon rises, he imagines the island with no houses and considers what it must have looked like to the explorers who discovered the New World centuries before. Nick imagines that America was once a goal for dreamers and explorers, just as Daisy was for Gatsby. He pictures the green land of America as the green light shining from Daisy's dock, and muses that Gatsby-whose wealth and success so closely echo the American dream- failed to realize that the dream had already ended, that his goals had become hollow and empty. Nick senses that people everywhere are motivated by similar dreams and by a desire to move forward into a future in which their dreams are realized. Nick envisions their struggles to create that future as boats moving in a body of water against a current that inevitably carries them back into the past. CHARACTERIZATION NICK CARRAWAY Represents one of Fitzgerald's personality: quiet, reflective Lives in West Egg, is 29 - 30 years old Daisy is his cousin He's a perfect choice of the narrator, because he knows Daisy and Gatsby, is rational and can observe Tolerant, open-minded, quiet and a good listener → people tell him secrets Is attracted to the fast-paced, fun-driven lifestyle of New York but also finds that lifestyle grotesque and damaging → symbolizes through the affair with Jordan Baker → attracted to her vivacity and her sophistication, but repelled by her dishonesty and lack of consideration Nick states that there is a "quality of distortion" to life in New York, and this lifestyle makes him lose his equilibrium, especially early in the novel, as when he gets drunk at Gatsby's party in Chapter 2. After witnessing the unraveling of Gatsby's dream and presiding over the appalling spectacle of Gatsby's funeral, Nick realizes that the fast life of revelry on the East Coast is a cover for the terrifying moral emptiness that the valley of ashes symbolizes. Having gained the maturity that this insight demonstrates, he returns to Minnesota in search of a quieter life structured by more traditional moral values. TOM BUCHANAN is above all characterized by physical and mental hardness. Physically, he has a large, muscle-bound, imposing frame. Tom's body is a "cruel body" with "enormous power" that, as Nick explains, he developed as a college athlete. Tom's strength and bulk give him an air of danger and aggression, as when he hurts Daisy's finger and she calls him a "brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen..." Tom's physical appearance is echoed in his mental inflexibility and single-minded way of thinking about the world. Just as Tom uncritically repeats racist things he's read in books, he remains unshakable regarding his troubled marriage with Daisy. At the end of the book, even after it becomes clear that both Tom and Daisy have cheated on each other, Tom stubbornly maintains that they have always loved each other and that they always will, no matter what. Taken together, Tom's physical and mental hardness produce a brutish personality that uses threats and violence to maintain control. Tom's brutish personality relates to the larger arc of his life. According to Nick, Tom peaked very early in his life. He was a nationally known football star in his youth, but after his time in the spotlight ended and fame faded away, everything else in Tom's life felt like "an anticlimax." In Chapter 1 Nick posits that Tom has always sought to recapture the thrill of his youth, and his failure to do so infuses his life with a sense of melancholy. It is perhaps this sense of melancholy that contributes to Tom's evident victim complex. Early in the book Tom describes a racist book he's read. The book has clearly left him feeling anxious, and he even expresses his absurd belief that "the white race will be... utterly submerged." A rich man, Tom has no reason to feel victimized in this way. Nor does he have reasonable cause to feel victimized when he learns about Daisy's history with Gatsby, since he himself has engaged in a far worse extramarital affair. Nevertheless, jealousy gets the better of him and he once again uses threats and demands to reassert a sense of control DAISY BUCHANAN Partially based on Fitzgerald's wife, Zelda, Daisy is a beautiful young woman from Louisville, Kentucky. She is Nick's cousin and the object of Gatsby's love. As a young debutante in Louisville, Daisy was extremely popular among the military officers stationed near her home, including Jay Gatsby. Gatsby lied about his background to Daisy, claiming to be from a wealthy family in order to convince her that he was worthy of her. Eventually, Gatsby won Daisy's heart, and they made love before Gatsby left to fight in the war. Daisy promised to wait for Gatsby, but in 1919 she chose instead to marry Tom Buchanan, a young man from a solid, aristocratic family who could promise her a wealthy lifestyle and who had the support of her parents. After 1919, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back, making her the single goal of all of his dreams and the main motivation behind his acquisition of immense wealth through criminal activity. To Gatsby, Daisy represents the paragon of perfection-she has the aura of charm, wealth, sophistication, grace, and aristocracy that he longed for as a child in North Dakota and that first attracted him to her. In reality, however, Daisy falls far short of Gatsby's ideals. She is beautiful and charming, but also fickle, shallow, bored, and sardonic. Nick characterizes her as a careless person who smashes things up and then retreats behind her money. Daisy proves her real nature when she chooses Tom over Gatsby in Chapter 7, then allows Gatsby to take the blame for killing Myrtle Wilson even though she herself was driving the car. Finally, rather than attend Gatsby's funeral, Daisy and Tom move away, leaving no forwarding address. Like Zelda Fitzgerald, Daisy is in love with money, ease, and material luxury. She is capable of affection (she seems genuinely fond of Nick and occasionally seems to love Gatsby sincerely), but not of sustained loyalty or care. She is indifferent even to her own infant daughter, never discussing her and treating her as an afterthought when she is introduced in Chapter 7. In Fitzgerald's conception of America in the 1920s, Daisy represents the amoral values of the aristocratic East Egg set. JAY GATSBY The title character of The Great Gatsby is a young man, around thirty years old, who rose from an impoverished childhood in rural North Dakota to become fabulously wealthy. However, he achieved this lofty goal by participating in organized crime, including distributing illegal alcohol and trading in stolen securities. From his early youth, Gatsby despised poverty and longed for wealth and sophistication-he dropped out of St. Olaf College after only two weeks because he could not bear the janitorial job with which he was paying his tuition. Though Gatsby has always wanted to be rich, his main motivation in acquiring his fortune was his love for Daisy Buchanan, whom he met as a young military officer in Louisville before leaving to fight in World War I in 1917. Gatsby immediately fell in love with Daisy's aura of luxury, grace, and charm, and lied to her about his own background in order to convince her that he was good enough for her. Daisy promised to wait for him when he left for the war, but married Tom Buchanan in 1919, while Gatsby was studying at Oxford after the war in an attempt to gain an education. From that moment on, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back, and his acquisition of millions of dollars, his purchase of a gaudy mansion on West Egg, and his lavish weekly parties are all merely means to that end. Fitzgerald delays the introduction of most of this information until fairly late in the novel. Gatsby's reputation precedes him-Gatsby himself does not appear in a speaking role until Chapter 3. Fitzgerald initially presents Gatsby as the aloof, enigmatic host of the unbelievably opulent parties thrown every week at his mansion. He appears surrounded by spectacular luxury, courted by powerful men and beautiful women. He is the subject of a whirlwind of gossip throughout New York and is already a kind of legendary celebrity before he is ever introduced to the reader. Fitzgerald propels the novel forward through the early chapters by shrouding Gatsby's background and the source of his wealth in mystery (the reader learns about Gatsby's childhood in Chapter 6 and receives definitive proof of his criminal dealings in Chapter 7). As a result, the reader's first, distant impressions of Gatsby strike quite a different note from that of the lovesick, naive young man who emerges during the later part of the novel. Fitzgerald uses this technique of delayed character revelation to emphasize the theatrical quality of Gatsby's approach to life, which is an important part of his personality. Gatsby has literally created his own character, even changing his name from James Gatz to represent his reinvention of himself. As his relentless quest for Daisy demonstrates, Gatsby has an extraordinary ability to transform his hopes and dreams into reality; at the beginning of the novel, he appears to the reader just as he desires to appear to the world. This talent for self- invention is what gives Gatsby his quality of "greatness": indeed, the title "The Great Gatsby" is reminiscent of billings for such vaudeville magicians as "The Great Houdini" and "The Great Blackstone," suggesting that the persona of Gatsby is a masterful illusion. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. As the novel progresses and Fitzgerald deconstructs Gatsby's self-presentation, Gatsby reveals himself to be an innocent, hopeful young man who stakes everything on his dreams, not realizing that his dreams are unworthy of him. Gatsby invests Daisy with an idealistic perfection that she cannot possibly attain in reality and pursues her with a passionate zeal that blinds him to her limitations. His dream of her disintegrates, revealing the corruption that wealth causes and the unworthiness of the goal, much in the way Fitzgerald sees the American dream crumbling in the 1920s, as America's powerful optimism, vitality, and individualism become subordinated to the amoral pursuit of wealth. Gatsby is contrasted most consistently with Nick. Critics point out that the former, passionate and active, and the latter, sober and reflective, seem to represent two sides of Fitzgerald's personality. Additionally, whereas Tom is a cold-hearted, aristocratic bully, Gatsby is a loyal and good-hearted man. Though his lifestyle and attitude differ greatly from those of George Wilson, Gatsby and Wilson share the fact that they both lose their love interest to Tom. GEORGE WILSON Lifeless, exhausted owner of a run-down auto shop He loves and idealizes Myrtle and is devastated by her affair Comparable to Gatsby; both are dreamers and both are ruined by their unrequited love for women who love Tom MYRTLE WILSON Myrtle Wilson desperately seeks a better life than the one she has. She feels imprisoned in her marriage to George, a downtrodden and uninspiring man who she mistakenly believed had good "breeding." Myrtle and George live together in a ramshackle garage in the squalid "valley of ashes," a pocket of working-class desperation situated midway between New York and the suburbs of East and West Egg. Myrtle attempts to escape her social position by becoming a mistress to the wealthy Tom Buchanan, who buys her gifts (including a puppy) and rents her an apartment in Manhattan, where Myrtle play-acts an upper-class lifestyle, dressing up, throwing parties, expressing disgust for servants. Myrtle seems to believe Tom genuinely loves her, and would marry her if only Daisy would divorce him. Nick knows that Tom would never marry Myrtle, and the lopsidedness of the relationship makes Myrtle a more sympathetic character than she would be otherwise. To Tom, Myrtle is just another possession, and when she tries to assert her own will, he resorts to violence to put her in her place. Tom at once ensures and endangers her upwardly mobile desires. Although The Great Gatsby is full of tragic characters who don't get what they want, Myrtle's fate is among the most tragic, as she is a victim of both her husband as well as people she's never met. Myrtle is a constant prisoner. In the beginning of the book she's stuck in the figurative prison of her social class and her depressing marriage. Midway through, however, this immaterial prison becomes literal when George, suspicious that she's cheating on him, locks her in their rooms above the garage. This situation only amplifies her desperation to escape, which leads to her death in Chapter 7. When she escapes and runs out in front of Gatsby's car, she does so because she saw Tom driving it earlier in the day; she thinks he's behind the wheel. Daisy, who doesn't know Myrtle, is driving the car when it strikes Myrtle down; Daisy doesn't even stop to see what happened, and escapes without consequences. The lower class characters - Gatsby, Myrtle, and George - are thus essentially sacrificed for the moral failings of the upper class characters of Tom and Daisy. JORDAN BAKER From her very first appearance in the novel, strikes Nick as mysterious, at once aloof and alluring. Jordan belongs to the upper crust of society. Although she moved to the east coast from somewhere in the Midwest, she has quickly risen among the social ranks to become a famous golfer-a sport played mainly among the wealthy. Yet Jordan's rise to social prominence and affluence is founded on lies. Not only did she cheat to win her first major golf tournament, but she's also incurably dishonest. According to Nick, Jordan constantly bends the truth in order to keep the world at a distance and protect herself from its cruelty. Nick senses Jordan's aloof yet alluring nature when he initially encounters her lounging on a couch with Daisy in Chapter 1. He writes: "She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall." Here Jordan appears distant, statuesque, and beautiful, even regal with her chin tilted into the air. Yet Nick's description also lends her appearance an air of fragility, as if she's posing. Jordan's cynical and self-centered nature marks her as one of the "new women" of the Roaring Twenties. Such new women were called "flappers," and they became famous for flouting conventional standards of female behavior. Flappers distinguished themselves physically by bobbing their hair, dressing in short skirts, and wearing a lot of makeup. They also listened to jazz music, smoked cigarettes, openly drank alcohol, and drove cars. Most scandalous of all, flappers were known for their casual attitudes toward sexuality. Jordan's presence in the novel draws attention to the social and political turbulence of the Jazz Age. In this sense, Jordan calls forth the larger social and historical background against which the tragic events of the novel unfold. Unlike Daisy, who leads a conventional life of marriage and children and doesn't work (or even drink alcohol), Jordan represents a new path for women. Whereas Daisy is the object of men's fantasy and idealism, Jordan exhibits a hard-hearted pragmatism that, for Nick at least, links her more forcefully to the real world. IMPORTANT QUOTES CHAPTER 1: "A BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOL" I hope she'll be a fool-that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool. Daisy speaks these words in Chapter 1 as she describes to Nick and Jordan her hopes for her infant daughter. While not directly relevant to the novel's main themes, this quote offers a revealing glimpse into Daisy's character. Daisy is not a fool herself but is the product of a social environment that, to a great extent, does not value intelligence in women. The older generation values subservience and docility in females, and the younger generation values thoughtless giddiness and pleasure-seeking. Daisy's remark is somewhat sardonic: while she refers to the social values of her era, she does not seem to challenge them. Instead, she describes her own boredom with life and seems to imply that a girl can have more fun if she is beautiful and simplistic. Daisy herself often tries to act such a part. She conforms to the social standard of American femininity in the 1920s in order to avoid such tension-filled issues as her undying love for Gatsby. CHAPTER 3: GATSBY'S SMILE He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself. This passage occurs in Chapter 3 as part of Nick's first close examination of Gatsby's character and appearance. This description of Gatsby's smile captures both the theatrical quality of Gatsby's character and his charisma. Additionally, it encapsulates the manner in which Gatsby appears to the outside world, an image Fitzgerald slowly deconstructs as the novel progresses toward Gatsby's death in Chapter 8. One of the main facets of Gatsby's persona is that he acts out a role that he defined for himself when he was seventeen years old. His smile seems to be both an important part of the role and a result of the singular combination of hope and imagination that enables him to play it so effectively. Here, Nick describes Gatsby's rare focus-he has the ability to make anyone he smiles at feel as though he has chosen that person out of "the whole external world," reflecting that person's most optimistic conception of him- or herself. CHAPTER 6: HOW GATSBY CREATED HIMSELF The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God-a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that-and he must be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. 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. In Chapter 6, when Nick finally describes Gatsby's early history, he uses this striking comparison between Gatsby and Jesus Christ to illuminate Gatsby's creation of his own identity. Fitzgerald was probably influenced in drawing this parallel by a nineteenth-century book by Ernest Renan entitled THE LIFE OF JESUS. This book presents Jesus as a figure who essentially decided make himself the son of God, then brought himself to ruin by refusing to recognize the reality that denied his self-conception. Renan describes a Jesus who is "faithful to his self-created dream but scornful of the factual truth that finally crushes him and his dream"-a very appropriate description of Gatsby. Fitzgerald is known to have admired Renan's work and seems to have drawn upon it in devising this metaphor. Though the parallel between Gatsby and Jesus is not an important motif in THE GREAT GATSBY, it is nonetheless a suggestive comparison, as Gatsby transforms himself into the ideal that he envisioned for himself (a "Platonic conception of himself") as a youngster and remains committed to that ideal, despite the obstacles that society presents to the fulfillment of his dream. CHAPTER 9: A STORY OF THE WEST That's my Middle West... the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark.... I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all-Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unac ptable to Eastern life. This important quote from Nick's lengthy meditation in Chapter 9 brings the motif of geography in THE GREAT GATSBY to a conclusion. Throughout the novel, places are associated with themes, characters, and ideas. The East is associated with a fast-paced lifestyle, decadent parties, crumbling moral values, and the pursuit of wealth, while the West and the Midwest are associated with more traditional moral values. In this moment, Nick realizes for the first time that though his story is set on the East Coast, the western character of his acquaintances ("some deficiency in common") is the source of the story's tensions and attitudes. He considers each character's behavior and value choices as a reaction to the wealth-obsessed culture of New York. This perspective contributes powerfully to Nick's decision to leave the East Coast and return to Minnesota, as the infeasibility of Nick's Midwestern values in New York society mirrors the impracticality of Gatsby's dream. CHAPTER 9: THE GREEN LIGHT Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter-tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And then one fine morning- These words conclude the novel and find Nick returning to the theme of the significance of the past to dreams of the future, here represented by the green light. He focuses on the struggle of human beings to achieve their goals by both transcending and re-creating the past. Yet humans prove themselves unable to move beyond the past: in the metaphoric language used here, the current draws them backward as they row forward toward the green light. This past functions as the source of their ideas about the future (epitomized by Gatsby's desire to re-create 1917 in his affair with Daisy) and they cannot escape it as they continue to struggle to transform their dreams into reality. While they never lose their optimism ("tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther..."), they expend all of their energy in pursuit of a goal that moves ever farther away. This apt metaphor characterizes both Gatsby's struggle and the American dream itself. Nick's words register neither blind approval nor cynical disillusionment but rather the respectful melancholy that he ultimately brings to his study of Gatsby's life. KEY QUESTION HOW DOES NICK CARRAWAY FIRST MEET JAY GATSBY? Nick is Gatsby's neighbor, and he first sees him out on the lawn one dark night, reaching his arms toward a green light across the water. However, despite seeing his silhouette, and despite hearing many rumors about him, the two men do not meet until Nick attends one of Gatsby's summer parties. The actual moment of their acquaintance proves awkward. Nick mistakes Gatsby for another guest, telling the stranger that "this man Gatsby sent over his chauffeur with an invitation," but that he "hasn't even seen the host" yet. Gatsby announces himself and apologizes for being a poor host. Now knowing that this stranger is Gatsby, Nick notes a subtle contradiction in the man's behavior. On the one hand, Gatsby has an earnest smile that exhibits "a quality of eternal reassurance." Yet Gatsby's "elaborate formality of speech" also indicates "that he was picking his words with care," and hence may not be as earnest-or honest-as he first appears. WHY DID DAISY MARRY TOM? Even though she was still in love with Gatsby, Daisy most likely married Tom because she knew he could provide her with more material comforts. In Chapter 4 Jordan recounts how, the day before the wedding, she found Daisy drunk, sobbing, and clutching a letter. Daisy has thrown away a pearl necklace Tom gave her - a necklace that cost $350,000. Presumably, the letter is from Gatsby, who most likely has learned of the wedding and is begging Daisy to reconsider. While Tom has just given her an insanely expensive necklace, Gatsby is still a student, living abroad, and has yet to make his fortune. Daisy must know Tom will be far more likely to provide her with the lifestyle she's accustomed to. Once Daisy takes a bath and calms down, she consents to marry Tom, and appears, initially at least, happy with her decision. WHY DOES GATSBY ARRANGE FOR NICK TO HAVE LUNCH WITH JORDAN BAKER? Although Nick doesn't realize it at first, Gatsby arranges for him to have lunch with Jordan as part of his plan to get close to Daisy. More specifically, Gatsby wants to arrange it so that Daisy will come to West Egg, where she can be reunited with Gatsby and witness his wealth firsthand. Having Daisy come to West Egg has the advantage of isolating her from Tom, and also makes it possible for Gatsby to stage an apparently accidental encounter with her. In order for these events to happen, Gatsby needs Nick to invite Daisy over under the pretense of having tea. Instead of asking Nick to do this himself, Gatsby employs Jordan to convince Nick. The meeting between Nick and Jordan in Chapter 4 is part of a longer-term plan that Gatsby initiated before Daisy moved to East Egg. According to Jordan, Gatsby has kept tabs on Daisy for years and followed her when she and Tom moved from Chicago to the east coast. HOW DOES TOM FIND OUT ABOUT THE AFFAIR BETWEEN GATSBY AND DAISY? Tom finds out about the affair between Gatsby and Daisy in Chapter 7, just before the three of them, along with Nick, take a trip to New York. Although no one explicitly communicates this fact, Tom picks up on suspicious body language. Specifically, he notices Gatsby and Daisy exchange glances: "Their eyes met, and they stared together at each other, alone in space." Nick watches Tom as he, in turn, watches the exchange between his wife and Gatsby. Nick writes: "She had told [Gatsby] that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw. He was astounded." Even though Tom realizes the nature of Gatsby and Daisy's relationship early in Chapter 7, he does not confront Gatsby until later in the chapter, in a room at the Plaza Hotel. Nevertheless, the moment Tom sees what's going on marks the beginning of the end. WHY DOES MYRTLE RUN OUT IN FRONT OF GATSBY'S CAR? At the end of the Chapter 7, Myrtle runs out in front of Gatsby's car because she mistakes it for Tom's car. The mistake occurs because, earlier in the day, Tom suggests that he and Gatsby swap cars for the drive to New York. Gatsby drives straight to New York, but Tom, driving Gatsby's car, stops for gas at the Wilsons' garage. Myrtle sees Tom from the room where her husband has locked her up. Later that night, Tom and Gatsby drive their own cars back from the city. When Myrtle sees the yellow car coming down the road, she assumes it's Tom, breaks out of her room, and runs out to seek his help. Myrtle's mistake proves fatal when Daisy, who's driving Gatsby's car, accidentally hits her, killing her instantly. HOW DOES GATSBY MAKE HIS MONEY? Although Gatsby himself never explicitly says how he became wealthy, readers could assume his money comes from illegal or nefarious practices, working as either a German spy or a gambler. Readers know from Gatsby's relationship with Meyer Wolfsheim, the character in the novel who fixed the 1919 World Series, that Gatsby was involved in criminal activities. During Tom and Gatsby's fight in Chapter 7, Tom brings up Gatsby's business with Wolfsheim, saying he heard that they "sold grain alcohol over the counter" at drug stores in New York or Chicago. Gatsby responds to the accusation with "What about it?", suggesting that Tom is right, and that Gatsby likely made the majority of his money through bootlegging. HOW ARE WEST EGG AND EAST EGG DIFFERENT? Nick explains that West Egg is "the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them." While readers know that Gatsby's house is huge and opulent, West Egg is considered less fancy because the people who live there, including Gatsby, are "new money." While those in West Egg are eager to show off their money, like Gatsby, the residents of East Egg are more private about their wealth. WHAT IS THE IMPORTANCE OF THE CHARACTER OWL EYES? Before readers are introduced to the more prominent eyes in the novel-those of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg-Nick meets a character he knows only as "Owl Eyes" at the first party he attends at Gatsby's house. Nick comes across a drunk Owl Eyes in the library, in disbelief that all of the books in Gatsby's library are real. Owl Eyes is the only character, perhaps besides Nick, who is curious about Gatsby and wants to see him for who he truly is. Readers may note that Owl Eyes is also the only character apart from Nick to attend Gatsby's funeral, a detail that reveals that Owl Eyes cares for Gatsby beyond his wealth. DOES DAISY LOVE GATSBY OR TOM? Daisy seems unhappy with her marriage to Tom from the outset of the novel. Even the night before their wedding, she got drunk and told Jordan to tell everyone she had changed her mind. She tells Gatsby, "You always look so cool," and everyone else can see that "[s] he had told him that she loved him." However, Daisy chooses Tom in the end and even lets him tell George that it was Gatsby who killed Myrtle. Although Daisy may have loved Gatsby once, she does not love him more than the wealth, status, and freedom that she has with Tom. WHY DOES TOM INSIST ON SWITCHING CARS WITH GATSBY WHEN THEY GO TO THE CITY? The group decides to go to the city shortly after Daisy "told [Gatsby] that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw." Wanting to belittle Gatsby, Tom insists that he take Gatsby's car while Gatsby takes his car, knowing that the suggestion would be "distasteful to Gatsby." Tom also expects Daisy to ride with him, thereby proving to Gatsby that she would choose him, her husband, over Gatsby. However, Daisy chooses to ride with Gatsby, and Nick and Jordan ride with Tom, setting off the night's tragic events. WHY IS NICK THE NARRATOR OF THE STORY? As the narrator, Nick offers a unique and revealing point of view. Coming from a "prominent, well-to-do" yet humble family from the Midwest to the comparatively riotous East of the 1920s, Nick is able to look at the debauchery and brazen displays of wealth with fresh eyes. Viewing the story through Nick's point of view allows one of the novel's main themes-the hopelessness of the American dream-to shine through. Had the narrator been a character who enjoyed wealth, like Tom, or aspired to it, like Myrtle, readers may not have been able to see the emptiness of their dreams and values. WHY DOES DAISY CRY OVER GATSBY'S SHIRTS? As Gatsby shows Daisy around his house, she sees the "Marie Antoinette music-rooms and Restoration salons" and "period bedrooms swathed in rose and lavender silk and vivid with new flowers," but Daisy does not react until Gatsby shows Daisy the shirts that a man in England sends to him each season. Upon seeing the shirts, Daisy cries and explains, "It makes me sad because I've never seen such-such beautiful shirts before." One reason for Daisy's reaction could be that she only cares about material goods, and so something like fine clothing can make her feel affection for Gatsby. However, the shirts more likely symbolize how far Gatsby has risen since she last knew him, and she may feel emotional that she doesn't have the chance to marry him now. WHY DOES TOM BRING UP RACE SO OFTEN? During Nick's first dinner with the Buchanans, Tom responds to Nick's comment about Daisy making him feel "uncivilized" by starting a conversation about how "civilization's going to pieces," referencing a book titled The Rise of the Colored Empires and insisting that the white race is becoming "submerged." Later in the novel, he finds a way to shoehorn in the topic of race by saying the institution of marriage is being so disrespected that "next they'll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white." Tom's racism reveals his belief that there are only a few people in the world-himself included-who deserve wealth and power and that he feels threatened by the idea of others rising to his level. WHY IS MYRTLE ATTRACTED TO TOM? Although George Wilson seems to be a car hardworking husband, Myrtle claims to have regretted marrying him from the day after their wedding. Since George did not have a suit of his own to get married in and had to borrow one from a friend, Myrtle thought that "he wasn't fit to lick [her] shoe." Tom, on the other hand, is powerful and wealthy and promises the lifestyle Myrtle craves. Despite her own modest background, Myrtle believes she deserves more without actually working for it, and as Tom's mistress, she can at least act as though she is of a higher social class. WHAT DOES THE ENDING MEAN? Although the main events of the novel end with Gatsby's murder and George's suicide, The Great Gatsby concludes with a chapter in which Nick reflects on the aftermath of Gatsby's death. This final chapter furnishes Nick with more information about the mysterious Gatsby and his struggle to climb the social ladder. Nick meets Gatsby's father, Henry C. Gatz, a "solemn" and "helpless" old man who believed his son had a bright future. Mr. Gatz also discovers and shares with Nick records of Gatsby's self-improvement routines, saying: "Jimmy was bound to get ahead." In addition to shedding light on Gatsby's character, the final chapter also demonstrates just how alone Gatsby really was in life. Although Nick contacts many of Gatsby's acquaintances as he organizes the funeral, almost no one shows up to pay respects. Daisy, who has run away with Tom, doesn't even bother to send flowers or a note. The only person to appear, aside from Nick and Mr. Gatz, is Owl Eyes, who concludes the funeral with words that sum up Gatsby's tragic life: "The poor son-of-a-bitch." In the book's final pages, Nick ties his story of Gatsby to the idea of the American Dream, a notion that Nick imagines was born when Dutch sailors first arrived in the place that would become New York. Nick recreates the historical moment of discovery: "I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes-a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams..." The Dutch both literally and figuratively cleared the way for Gatsby. Not only did they cut down the trees where his house would later be built, but in doing so they also laid the foundations for a "new world" that would later become the United States of America. In Nick's mind, the moment of initial discovery was perhaps "the last time in history" when humans encountered something expansive enough to match their natural "capacity for wonder." Hence, the American Dream was born before America even came into being. Nick links the American Dream to Gatsby's love for Daisy, in that both are unattainable. As Nick explains on the novel's final page, Gatsby spent years hoping for a happy future with Daisy, but this future always receded into the distance. Nick claims that Gatsby's hopes for the future were elusive because they didn't relate to the future at all. Instead, these hopes actually bore him "back ceaselessly into the past," back to that promise-filled moment when the Dutch sailors first set eyes on America. Nick puts the matter thus: "[Gatsby] had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him." In the end, then, both Gatsby and America are tragic because they remain trapped in an old dream that has not and may never become a reality. THE AMERICAN DREAM [H]E STRETCHED OUT HIS ARMS TOWARD THE DARK WATER....I... DISTINGUISHED NOTHING EXCEPT A SINGLE GREEN LIGHT, MINUTE AND FAR WAY.... WHEN I LOOKED ONCE MORE FOR GATSBY HE HAD VANISHED.... Nick observes Gatsby standing alone on his dock before he formally meets them. Gatsby is stretching his arms toward the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. For Gatsby, this light represents Daisy, his lost love; in the wider context of the book and its arguments about the American Dream, the green light can also be seen as symbolizing money, success, and the past. The inaccessibility of the green light is an important element of its symbolism. 'ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN NOW THAT WE'VE SLID OVER THIS BRIDGE,' I THOUGHT; 'ANYTHING AT ALL.... EVEN GATSBY COULD HAPPEN, WITHOUT ANY PARTICULAR WONDER. This passage comes as Nick and Gatsby drive into New York City for lunch. Gatsby has just revealed to Nick the mostly false story of his life as the son of a wealthy family in the Midwest and a wealthy young man in Europe, which Nick has a hard time believing. Gatsby's ability to achieve seems limitless to Nick, especially in the large and liberated city of New York. The quote also suggests that America in general, and New York City in particular, are essential to Gatsby's success. Nick implies that becoming successful without having a verified connection to a wealthy family is only possible in the United States. WE DREW IN DEEP BREATHS ... AS WE WALKED BACK... THROUGH THE COLD VESTIBULES, UNUTTERABLY AWARE OF OUR IDENTITY WITH THIS COUNTRY FOR ONE STRANGE HOUR, BEFORE WE MELTED INDISTINGUISHABLY INTO IT AGAIN. This quote comes at the end of the novel, when Nick recalls being in college and taking the train home to the Midwest with his fellow students. After the train leaves Chicago and begins heading west, Nick and his friends are aware of themselves as true Westerners, which to Nick is very different from being an Easterner. The novel, he says, is really a novel about the West, where he and the other primary characters came from, and goes so far as to blame their inability to adapt to the East for all that happened. WHY THEY CAME EAST I DON'T KNOW.... I HAD NO SIGHT INTO DAISY'S HEART, BUT I FELT THAT TOM WOULD DRIFT ON FOREVER SEEKING, A LITTLE WISTFULLY, FOR THE DRAMATIC TURBULENCE OF SOME IRRECOVERABLE FOOTBALL GAME. Nick's early criticism of Tom expresses a fundamental attribute of Tom's personality: his aimlessness. Tom had great success as a football player at Yale, but he now tends to focus on that accomplishment instead of moving forward in life. Thanks to Tom's wealth, athleticism, and good looks, the "dramatic turbulence" of the old football game may be the only challenge that he ever really faced in life. Although Tom is the book's antagonist, this quote reveals that, like the other characters, he is consumed by nostalgia and a desire to relive the past. This passage does have a critical tone, since Nick implies that Tom could remedy his nostalgia by ceasing to coast on his privilege and success. BUT [DOCTOR ECKLEBURG'S] EYES, DIMMED A LITTLE BY MANY PAINTLESS DAYS UNDER THE SUN AND RAIN, BROOD ON OVER THE SOLEMN DUMPING GROUND. This passage describes an old advertisement for Doctor T.J. Eckleburg's optometry practice that is along the road through the "valley of ashes" between Long Island and New York City. Nick first sees this advertisement when he goes to the valley of ashes to meet Tom's mistress, Myrtle. In this section, the eyes seem to represent the superficiality of wealth and fame, as the once-majestic advertisement suffers under the inevitable onslaught of weather. Later in the novel, Myrtle's husband compares the giant eyes to the eyes of God, suggesting that the faded, weather-beaten eyes symbolize the breakdown of religious institutions such as the church, and a loss of faith following the end of the First World War. Another interpretation is that the eyes symbolize self-awareness and clarity of vision, as a major theme of the book is Gatsby's blindness to reality. THE GREEN LIGHT HJE STRETCHED OUT HIS ARMS TOWARD THE DARK WATER IN A CURIOUS WAY, AND, FAR AS I WAS FROM HIM, I COULD HAVE SWORN HE WAS TREMBLING. INVOLUNTARILY I GLANCED SEAWARD-AND DISTINGUISHED NOTHING EXCEPT A SINGLE GREEN LIGHT, MINUTE AND FAR AWAY, THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN AT THE END OF A DOCK. Nick relates how, after arriving home from his first dinner with Tom, Daisy, and Jordan, he sees his neighbor, Gatsby, standing on the lawn, reaching toward the green light that Nick eventually learns is situated at the end of Daisy's dock. Nick has not yet met Gatsby but has noted his opulent house and extravagant parties. Nick also notes that, despite his material possessions and wealth, Gatsby is still yearning for something just beyond his grasp as his trembling arms stretch out toward the green light. "IF IT WASN'T FOR THE MIST WE COULD SEE YOUR HOME ACROSS THE BAY," SAID GATSBY. "YOU ALWAYS HAVE A GREEN LIGHT THAT BURNS ALL NIGHT AT THE END OF YOUR DOCK." Gatsby speaks to Daisy during their first meeting as he shows her around his house. This statement is the first time Gatsby explicitly states that the green light belongs to Daisy's house, revealing why Nick has seen him reaching out for it. Gatsby, believing that Daisy has been in love with him all these years as he has been with her, does not feel self-conscious admitting that he watches her dock all night long. He seems to feel that just by being in her presence, he has won her affection as well. POSSIBLY IT HAD OCCURRED TO HIM THAT THE COLOSSAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THAT LIGHT HAD NOW VANISHED FOREVER. COMPARED TO THE GREAT DISTANCE THAT HAD SEPARATED HIM FROM DAISY IT HAD SEEMED VERY NEAR TO HER, ALMOST TOUCHING HER. IT HAD SEEMED AS CLOSE AS A STAR TO THE MOON. NOW IT WAS AGAIN A GREEN LIGHT ON A DOCK. HIS COUNT OF ENCHANTED OBJECTS HAD DIMINISHED BY ONE. After Gatsby mentions to Daisy that he can see her green light from his house, Nick notices that Gatsby is absorbed in his own thoughts. Now that Gatsby has Daisy in his company, Nick considers the possibility that the green light has no meaning anymore. It seems that for Gatsby, the yearning for and dreaming of Daisy may be more satisfying than actually being with her in person. AND AS I SAT THERE BROODING ON THE OLD, UNKNOWN WORLD, I THOUGHT OF GATSBY'S WONDER WHEN HE FIRST PICKED OUT THE GREEN LIGHT AT THE END OF DAISY'S DOCK. On Nick's last night in Long Island, he looks into the sky and contemplates how the early American settlers must have felt when they first saw the same shoreline he is currently on. He compares their wonder at the new world and its infinite possibilities with that of Gatsby's wonder at having Daisy just out of his reach. The green light is a symbol not only of Gatsby's desire for Daisy but also of the American dream in general, which is often just out of most people's grasp. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. Here, Nick explains what made Gatsby so different from most of the characters in the novel: his sense of hope and belief in the American dream. More than anyone else in the novel, Gatsby attained great social mobility, starting from a modest childhood and becoming an extremely wealthy man. Although he didn't achieve his ultimate goal in marrying Daisy, his steadfast and almost childlike belief in the green light and the American dream is what made him, in Nick's words, "[turn] out all right at the end" and "worth the whole damn bunch put together." THE EYES OF DOCTOR T. J. ECKLEBURG BUT ABOVE THE GRAY LAND AND THE SPASMS OF BLEAK DUST WHICH DRIFT ENDLESSLY OVER IT, YOU PERCEIVE, AFTER A MOMENT, THE EYES OF DOCTOR T. J. ECKLEBURG. THE EYES OF DOCTOR T. J. ECKLEBURG ARE BLUE AND GIGANTIC-THEIR RETINAS ARE ONE YARD HIGH. THEY LOOK OUT OF NO FACE, BUT, INSTEAD, FROM A PAIR OF ENORMOUS YELLOW SPECTACLES WHICH PASS OVER A NON-EXISTENT NOSE. EVIDENTLY SOME WAG OF AN OCULIST SET THEM THERE TO FATTEN HIS PRACTICE IN THE BOROUGH OF QUEENS, AND THEN SANK DOWN HIMSELF INTO ETERNAL BLINDNESS, OR FORGOT THEM AND MOVED AWAY. After Nick describes the valley of the ashes, he describes a pair of eyes that turns out to belong to an advertisement. The beginning of Nick's description of Doctor Eckleburg's giant, disembodied eyes gives the impression that the eyes are all-seeing and cast judgment. However, Nick's dismissal of the actual doctor as a "wag" who wanted to "fatten his practice" before letting the billboard decay suggests that the ad is just another example of the emptiness of American consumerism. I FOLLOWED HIM OVER A LOW WHITEWASHED RAILROAD FENCE, AND WE WALKED BACK A HUNDRED YARDS ALONG THE ROAD UNDER DOCTOR ECKLEBURG'S PERSISTENT STARE. Nick explains that after he and Tom get off the train so that Tom can bring Myrtle into the city, he notices the "persistent stare" of the eyes in the billboard as they walk toward George Wilson's car repair shop. Nick knows he is about to meet Tom's mistress, a married woman, although he has "no desire to meet her" due to the immorality of the situation. Nick's guilt manifests in what he deems a judgmental look from the billboard eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, the closest representation he sees of God during his time in New York. THEN AS DOCTOR T. J. ECKLEBURG'S FADED EYES CAME INTO SIGHT DOWN THE ROAD, I REMEMBERED GATSBY'S CAUTION ABOUT GASOLINE. Nick explains why seeing the billboard causes him to tell Tom to stop at George Wilson's car repair shop for gas before he, Tom, and Jordan continue their ill-fated trip into the city. Here, Doctor T. J. Eckleburg's eyes serve as a foreshadowing, seeming to caution Nick or admonish him for taking part in a night that cannot possibly end well. And if Nick had not reminded Tom to stop for gas, Myrtle never would have seen Jordan or Gatsby's car, which would later strike and kill her. THAT LOCALITY WAS ALWAYS VAGUELY DISQUIETING, EVEN IN THE BROAD GLARE OF AFTERNOON, AND NOW I TURNED MY HEAD AS THOUGH I HAD BEEN WARNED OF SOMETHING BEHIND. OVER THE ASHHEAPS THE GIANT EYES OF DOCTOR T. J. ECKLEBURG KEPT THEIR VIGIL, BUT I PERCEIVED, AFTER A MOMENT, THAT OTHER EYES WERE REGARDING US WITH PECULIAR INTENSITY FROM LESS THAN TWENTY FEET AWAY. While Nick, Tom, and Jordan are stopped at George Wilson's shop, Nick reveals that the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are almost supernaturally pulling his attention toward something, which turns out to be Myrtle. Again, the billboard foreshadows the tragic events to come and almost seems to be warning Nick away from the situation. Although Nick never explicitly compares the advertisement to God or any other sort of higher power, in his recounting of the story, he bestows on the billboard some sort of inexplicable powers. STANDING BEHIND HIM, MICHAELIS SAW WITH A SHOCK THAT HE WAS LOOKING AT THE EYES OF DOCTOR T. J. ECKLEBURG, WHICH HAD JUST EMERGED, PALE AND ENORMOUS, FROM THE DISSOLVING NIGHT. The night of Myrtle's death, George's friend Michaelis recalls George telling him that he warned his wife, while pushing her into the window, "You may fool me, but you can't fool God!" Here, and while George was threatening Myrtle, George literally sees the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg as those of God. As a working-class man who lost his wife's love to a wealthy, though violent and cruel, man, George has been driven nearly to insanity. In his state, as someone who has been the victim of capitalism in several ways, a physical manifestation of capitalism such as the billboard seems to him to be God, a being who sees and controls all.