The Great Gatsby reading journal: Chapter 9

Chapter nine; in which Nick arranges Gatsby's funeral, Gatsby's father is met and the story comes to an end.

Reader's thoughts:

• In this chapter, while arranging Gatsby's funeral, Nick receives a call from Mr Klipspringer, a guest of Gatsby's who had stayed in the Gatsby house earlier in the novel. He doesn't want to attend Gatsby's funeral (he has a "picnic or something") but instead asks whether the Butler can send him his tennis shoes. This putting material goods before people seems to be quite a theme in The Great Gatsby. Consider, for example, George Wilson, who, whenever he sees Tom, asks when he will sell his car to him, yet pays very little attention to his wife, who, it has to be said, pays her husband very little regard and, instead, looks out for Tom because he is rich and will buy her a fancy flat by Central Park.

Miscellaneous points:

• Nick sees himself as alone on the side of Gatsby, so despite "disproving of him from beginning to end", Nick was Gatsby's only friend.
• Nick tells us of how he imagines Gatsby talking to him. "Look here, old sport" Nick imagines him saying. This isn't the first time that Nick has imagined a person saying something when in actuality, they have not. He imagines the Buchanan's butler saying that "the body" was "too hot to touch" when he wanted Tom to be out of the way in chapter seven also. It would seem that, whenever Nick really wants anybody to say something, he would put the words in their mouths. He wants Daisy to get rid of Tom just as he wants to hear Gatsby's voice again.
• Nick talks to several people over the telephone to ask if they are planning on attending Gatsby's funeral in this chapter and when speaking on the phone, he even mentions the pauses in conversation. Could this mean that Nick is very lonely after loosing his friend? That he remembers every conversation that he has with anyone after the murder, even if it was just with their voice. Also consider that every phone conversation in the book is quite important to the plot, from us finding out that Tom is having an affair all the way to Klipspringer asking for his shoes instead of feeling sorry for Gatsby. 
• Gatsby conducted his business over the phone, as we find out in this chapter when "Slagle" calls Nick accidentally and tells him that "Young Parke" is in trouble. He was "picked up" after "handing bonds over the counter". When Nick tells Slagle that Gatsby is dead, he hangs up. This means that he didn't care about Gatsby as much as the money that Gatsby made him and his partners in crime.
• In the first chapter, when Gatsby stretches his arms towards Daisy's green light, he "trembles". In chapter nine, when we see Henry C Gatz, Gatsby's father, he "trembles" too. Does it run in the family, or is it just a sign of weakness?
• Henry C Gatz reads of Gatsby's death in a "Chicago Newspaper". Gatsby has also read a Chicago paper "for years" just on the off chance of seeing of Daisy’s name.
• When Gatsby dies, his importance to everyone but Nick and Henry C Gatz dies with him. Jay Gatsby was only important to the mass character of the crowd at his parties because he had money and gave them free alcohol. Now, while he has nothing because of his death, he is only important to those that loved him and not his money. Those people, incidentally, are Westerners, proving Nick's thoughts that the West is better that the East because people care about people in the West, as opposed to how much money they have. Fitzgerald/Nick hates the Eastern materialist culture.
• Meyer Wolfshiem's voice tells the story of Gatsby when he first knew him after the war, just like Gatsby's voice tells the story of Gatsby's last few days with Daisy before the war in chapter eight and Jordan Baker's voice tells the story when Daisy first met Gatsby in chapter four. 
• There is pathetic fallacy in the rain falling on Gatsby's funeral. The weather is mirroring Nick's feelings.
• "Life was beginning over again in the summer" is a quote from Nick in chapter one. If life begins in the summer, then that means that it must be dieing or dead in the Autumn, just like Gatsby.
• Gatsby's father speaks as if he was uneducated "oggsford". Gatsby speaks as though he was educated at Oxford "old sport".
• Maybe Gatsby didn't actually love Daisy as much as see her as a link to how he was before the war and the start of his criminal activity? A link back to his own innocence before he had seen the horrors of war. This could explain why Daisy always wears white because one of the connotations of the colour white is innocence.
• When Nick remembers his University days in the Mid-West, they are heavily romanticized. Everyone knows each other and it is Christmas.
• The last time that Nick sees Tom, he is looking in the window of a jewelery shop. He could be buying jewelery for a new mistress, but this theory is not explored. Nick mentions that he might have bought a "pearl necklace" as this is what he bought for Daisy for their wedding, but then takes that back and says that he might just have bought some "cuff buttons". The thing is that Nick simply doesn't know. Tom's ending is ambigous.
• Tom and Daisy "smash things" up before "retreating into their money" and make others take the blame and clean up after them, says Nick. By things he could well mean people, as both Myrtle's nose and Gatsby's dream are smashed by the couple before they retreat into their money and run away.
• The penultimate sentance in the novel meantions "streatching our arms out further" just like Gatsby did in the first chapter to try and reach Daisy's green light.
• At the begining of the novel, Nick is alone in the East and friendless, at the end of the novel, Nick is alone in the East and friendless. The book goes full circle.

The big question:

• I looked at Yale univercity (where Nick was educated) on a map and, would you believe it, it is actually FURTHER EAST than Long Island and therefore further away from Nick's beloved Mid-West. Is this just a coincidence, does it mean anything?

Something to remember:

• Nick says of West Egg that he "sees it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a lustreless moon." This is the painting that he is talking about. The clouds probably symbolise the lack of morals.

The Great Gatsby reading journal: Chapter 8

Chapter eight; in which the summer comes to an end, Gatsby tells Nick his life's story and Gatsby takes a dip in his pool.

Reader's thoughts:

• In this chapter, Fitzgerald uses rather a lot of references to time and he even counts down in the last two sections before Gatsby is murdered! The penultimate section begins with "By six O'clock". Michaelis, the Greek restaurant owner who was Wilson's neighbour went to sleep and "four hours later" he returned to Wilson's garage to find him gone. For "three hours" Wilson "disappeared from view". By "half-past two" he was in West Egg. The story then goes backwards slightly to "two o'clock" when Gatsby puts on his bathing costume. Fitzgerald cheats slightly with the one. In fact, he doesn't write one, but "once" instead as Gatsby disappears into the yellowing leaves.

Sectional notes:

• There are eight mini-sections within this one chapter. 
• The first section tells us of Nick going to warn Gatsby and being told about Gatsby's past after the warnings fall on deaf ears. 
• The second section tells us of Gatsby leaving Daisy to go to war in Gatsby's own words. 
• The third section tells of the reason that Daisy married Tom, practicality because "there was a certain bulkiness about his person" and Daisy was "flattered".
• The fourth section tells us of Gatsby's trip to Louisville while Daisy was on her honeymoon, Gatsby's decision to use his pool for the first time and Nick's final words to Gatsby "I enjoyed breakfast, Gatsby". 
• The fifth section tells us of Nick's telephone conversation with Jordan Baker.
• The sixth section tells us of Michaelis's conversation with Wilson and that the a mad George Wilson  believed T.J. Eckleburg to be God.
• The seventh section tells us of Wilson's path to Gatsby's mansion
• The eighth section tells of Nick and the servants discovering Gatsby's body

Miscellaneous notes:

• Gatsby says that, at four o'clock in the morning, Daisy went to her window. Gatsby was in the drive, so Daisy's window probably would have been on the front of the house for Gatsby to see it. This would mean that she was looking away from the Sound as the Buchanan household's back garden leads out onto it. All of this is a convoluted way of saying that, to contrast with Gatsby stretching his arms towards Daisy's house in the first chapter, Daisy looks the other way from Gatsby's house. She has left him behind and is willing for him to take the blame for the mess that she had created.
• In the second section, Gatsby's speech tells the story, just like Jordan in chapter four.
• There is some unpleasant plant imagery used by Nick imagining what Gatsby's last few thoughts were. There are "frightening leaves", "grotesque roses" and "scarcely created grass".
• Suspense is built up in the first section.  "morning would be too late"
• The tone of this chapter is slow and tired, just like the characters. Nick, Wilson and Gatsby all didn't sleep the night before, so the tone is reflecting this fact.
• The summer is over. There is a definite "autumnal feeling" in the air and all of the leaves have turned yellow just one night after the hottest day of the summer.

Something to remember:

• The last time that Jay Gatsby is described alive, he is disappearing through yellowing leaves. Fitzgerald wants this to be our lasting image of him. As an extra comment here, I will add that I didn't actually realise that Gatsby was dead here. I thought that he had murdered Wilson. I was, it turns out, wrong.

The Great Gatsby reading journal: Chapter 7

Chapter seven; in which Gatsby goes to Daisy's house, the main characters all go to the Plaza hotel for an argument and Myrtle Wilson gets hit by a car.

Reader's thoughts:

• How come, in moments of drama, Nick's usual exhaustive descriptions of things, for example, his train journey to the Buchanan's house takes 21 lines to describe (in my edition), just stops? When Tom breaks Myrtle's nose, that only takes two lines. When Myrtle is hit by a car, it only takes seven words("The car...wavered tragically for a moment"). Could it be to highlight the event by making us readers read it again (blink and you'll miss it) or could it be, by leaving the event un-blurred by "flowery description", Fitzgerald wants us to see it clearly, without stopping to describe the blueness  of T.J. Eckleburg's eyes or the numerous boxes on Gatsby's car.

The heat and what it could mean:

• The day is described as "broiling", which is like coming to the boil, much like this book in this chapter.
• The heat causes Tom to block out all of the light from the Buchanan home. This could represent him shutting out all the light from Gatsby's life by staying with Daisy.
• The day gets hotter as Tom gets angrier. 
• Could it be the heat before a thunder storm?

• In this humble reader's opinion, the heat of the day that the Buchanan's, Nick and Gatsby travel to New-York is probably meant to foreshadow the "prolonged and tumultuous argument" that occurs there in the Plaza hotel.
• Another reason that it could be so hot is so that it represents the heat of the moment that Tom decided to have an affair with Myrtle and Daisy decided to have an affair with Gatsby.
• Yet another reason could be that everything seems less real in the heat-haze, and it keeps getting hotter until the evening when Myrtle is murdered by Daisy when everything gets cooler and clearer.
• Naturally, it could also represent the Buchanan's marriage, with things getting hotter and more uncomfortable as Daisy murmurs how much she loves Gatsby, Gatsby sees Daisy's daughter, who he didn't believe existed before and Gatsby and Daisy stare into each other's eyes (which apparently proves how much they love each other).

Other, non-heat related points:

• In the first paragraph, there is personification of cars. "Automobiles which turned expectantly" and then "drove sulkily away". 
• Despite "reserving judgement", Nick tells us after one glance at Gatsby's new butler that he has a villainous face. Could this be him remembering him with the knowledge that he was somehow connected to Meyer Wolfshiem, or actually what he thought at the time.
• Nick fantasises about the butler of chateau Buchanan talking on the telephone about how Tom's dead body could not be touched because of the temperature. The important thing here is that he imagines things about telephones and modern technology plays such an important role in the novel. 
• When Tom stands in the doorway, he "blocks out the space", just like Myrtle in chapter two. He is blocking out the hope for Gatsby.
• Nick, just like he was at college, is the middle man wile Tom, Gatsby and Daisy are arguing.
• The novel moves from a romantic tone to more tragic in this chapter when we realise that Gatsby's dream will never be fulfilled. I think that Fitzgerald/Nick first lets us in on this when Gatsby sees Daisy's "bles-sed pre-cious", Pammy and realises that there is more to Daisy's relationship with Tom than just love.
• When there are pauses in the dialogue during the argument in the Plaza hotel, Nick mentions them.
• The first few pages take place in the Buchanan's house. These are full of tension, just like the other time that Nick goes there and is told that Daisy thinks of everything as terrible. She also acts as though she and Tom were part of their own little secret society. Could this have anything to do with why she stays with Tom and not Gatsby?
• There is a contrast between Gatsby's politeness and Tom's rudeness. This seems to turn stereotypes on their head, as the stereotype of the criminals who made their money during the prohibition is that of being money-grabing and rude and the stereotype of the old-money millionaires is that of a paternal politeness.
• Gatsby uses the same "familiar yet unrecognisable look" as he does in chapter five.
• Gatsby offends Tom by calling him his term of endearment, "old sport".
• There is a theme of giving up in this chapter. Tom whimpers when Myrtle is murdered, George Wilson slumps and Nick says that he has had enough of all of them. The exception to this rule is Gatsby who, even after Tom won the argument and Daisy is back in the house with him, he waits outside at the end of the Buchanan's drive just in case Daisy needs help with Tom. He doesn't want to give up because his dream of running away with Daisy has failed and he has nothing else to do. If he gives up his dream, he has nothing left. Tom still has Daisy and Nick still has the Mid-West, but, like Gatsby, George has nothing left.
• Gatsby's car with Daisy driving comes out of the "gathering darkness". This MUST symbolise something! The gathering darkness of Gatsby's life perhaps, or was it just an embellishment by Nick who wanted the event to seem to forecast some major event that is yet to come in the story.

Something to remember:

•  Daisy says to Gatsby "you resemble the advertisement of the man". I presume this means the T.J. Eckleburg who looks down over the ash heaps and the story. He is always mentioned by Fitzgerald whenever anything amoral is going on, for example, when Tom and Myrtle go and have a drunken party on Sunday, the holy day.

The Great Gatsby reading journal: Chapter 6

Chapter 6; in which Jay Gatsby is revealed to be an act, Daisy attends a party and Gatsby wants to repeat the past.

Reader's thoughts:

•  This chapter is strange in that it starts out of chronological order! Nick tells us about James Gatz and Jay Gatsby's former life at the start of this chapter, despite the fact that he was told about it all "much later". Why? He says it's because he wants to stop us believing in the rumours that the crowd at Gatsby's parties pedal, but considering that he didn't know any of the stuff he tells us at the time, why does he bother telling us? Can't we make our own mind up about Gatsby before Nick ruins it for us!

Jay Gatsby is a character:

•  Jay Gatsby is a character who was invented by James Gatz. James Gatz was born in North Dakota but then moved to the shores of lake Superior to work as a "clam-digger" and a "salmon fisher". He was 17 when he changed his name to Jay Gatsby and with the new name came a new personality. James Gatz "knew women early" and grew tired of them whereas I believe Jay Gatsby is scared of getting on the wrong side of women. "He wouldn't even look at a friend's wife" and, when a random woman of the crowd at one of his many parties accidentally (and presumably, drunkardly) rips her dress, Gatsby sends her a new one worth a lot of money being but two pieces of evidence for this theory.
• James Gatz seems to be a good actor and sees Jay Gatsby as the main character in his own personal play. He seems to act very well and keeps the compulsive (he rows out into the middle of a bay to tell someone he doesn't know that a storm's a'coming) James Gatz from cropping up in public and this puts a metaphorical curtain between him and reality. One of the only times the façade is dropped involuntarily is in this chapter when he says "I know your wife" to Tom! 

Theme:

• "Sticking your head in the stand" seems to be the theme for this chapter. For example, when told that "you can't repeat the past", Gatsby says "why of course you can". Only an idiot would actually believe this, and Gatsby is no idiot, he is simply hiding from the truth. 

Other Miscellaneous points:

• Dan Cody, the multi-millionaire was Jay Gatsby's "fate". He made him into a non-drinker by his extreme drinking, a fearer of women because Dan Cody's mistress murdered him and stole his money and gave him his classical education.
• Daisy is "appalled" by West egg which she sees as a shadow of a shadow. She thinks of it as an "unprecedented place that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village".
• Nick is very much a judgemental character. His tone changes and lots of sympathy is shown towards Gatsby.
• The East corrupts Nick's moral
• Gatsby points people out to Daisy at his party to make Tom feel unimportant.
• Tom takes an instant dislike to Gatsby because he knows his wife. Tom says that he doesn't like how his wife talks to people without him knowing. This is old fashioned and sexist.
• Most of the actions that Gatsby makes are defensive (hands in pockets ect.) bar when he says to Tom that he "knows" his wife.
• West Egg and it's residents symbolise the idea that money/power is more important than thoughts and feelings, or so Daisy thinks anyway. This is not true of Gatsby, who's feelings for Daisy cause him to buy a large  mansion and hold extravagant parties so that he can see her green light at the end of her pier.

Something to remember: 

• Gatsby is frightened of women and specifically, mistresses and the act of having an affair because Dan Cody, Gatsby's old "best friend" was murdered by his.

The Great Gatsby reading journal: Chapter 5

Chapter5; in which Gatsby goes to tea at Nick's house with Daisy, Gatsby shows his weaker side and Daisy loves the beautiful shirts.

Reader's thoughts: In this chapter, Daisy cries stormily into Gatsby's shirts. Now she says that this is because they are "such beautiful shirts", but what could the real reason be? Does she still have feelings for Jay Gatsby, or could it be that she doesn't and is just pretending in order to annoy her husband, who she knows has a mistress?

Times the weather is mentioned in this chapter:

• "The day agreed upon was pouring rain"
• Gatsby says that "the rain will stop about four", the same time, it turns out, that Daisy turns up.Could it be that Fitzgerald, when he makes Nick say that it's two to four just before Daisy arrives, is trying to tell us that when Daisy comes, everything will be alright and the rain will stop? It doesn't end up that way, in fact, the rain increases when Daisy comes in, but when the rain does stop and Nick goes back inside after standing under a tree in his garden, everything IS alright. Gatsby is literally glowing and Daisy is crying, her throat telling of her unexpected joy.
• There were "twinkle bells" of sunshine in the room, as if the weather were mimicking Gatsby's glowing mood. This is called pathetic fallacy and it was also used with the rain. Gatsby was nervous when it was raining, nervous about talking to Daisy. Nervousness is a negative emotion and what negative weather could be used to show this? Why, rain of course. The rain increases when Daisy first enters Nick's house, as if to show us Gatsby's nervousness increasing. The way that the weather is used to underline Gatsby's feelings just goes to show us that he is the most important character in the novel and that you should be interested in him because even the weather is.
•  Daisy cries "stormily" into Gatsby's shirts, as if the clouds that had been clouding her true feelings towards Gatsby had broken.
• An actual storm happens later in the evening while Gatsby and Daisy are listening to Gatsby's pianist playing. Could the weather have left them and started doing what it wants, like Nick?

Other Miscellaneous points:

•  There is a contrast between Gatsby's clothes and his appearance.
• Gatsby shows his weaker side publicly for the first time. Nick saw him like that in Chapter one, but Gatsby didn't know anything about it.
• There is a thorough description of Gatsby's house and some of his possessions for the first time wile Daisy is being shown around. It's almost as if Gatsby has it all just for her.
• There is a second reference to the Palace of Versailles (after chapter two in Myrtle's flat)
• Daisy never searched for Gatsby. She only wants him now that he is rich. She is a materialist.
• Daisy just wants to score points against Tom. He has a mistress, so why shouldn't she have Gatsby. She wants to use him.

 Something to remember:

• Is there anything in the fact that all of Gatsby's shirts that are described are in soft colours? Could this say something about the character, or was it just the fashion?

The Great Gatsby reading journal: Chapter 4

Chapter 4; in which Nick "finds out a little" about Gatsby's life, goes to lunch with Gatsby in New York and Jordan Baker tells the story of Daisy's marriage to Tom and first meeting Gatsby.

Reader's thoughts: This chapter seems to concentrate on Jay Gatsby's past. Does the fact that, in the very third paragraph, Nick goes back to the present and tells us readers of an "old timetable" he wrote back in that one Summer in New York giving a list of party goers somehow summarise the rest of the chapter; looking back into the past? Also, on a completely unconnected point, Gatsby has a Cream coloured car and Daisy has a white one; is there any significance in this?

Times within this chapter that Gatsby's past is mentioned:

• When Gatsby is driving Nick to New York to have lunch. He lies about his family for example, he says that he was the "son of some wealthy people in the Mid-West" when in fact, his parents were farmers as we find out later in the novel. He also lies about "living like a young Rajah" before the war as we later discover that he, in fact, wandered around Lake Superior fishing for salmon and inventing the man he was to become, Jay Gatsby, the Oxford educated (he was there for two weeks after the war for his contribution to defeating the Axis) gentleman who "doesn't want trouble from anybody".
• Mr Wolfshiem describes Gatsby when he first met him as being a man of "fine breeding" who was the "sort of man you'd take home and introduce to your mother and sister". The most important piece of information that the character of Meyer Wolfshiem gives Nick is that Gatsby would "never so much as look at a friend's wife" and that he is "careful about women". As we know, however, Daisy is his one weakness in this area.
• Jordan tells Nick of when she first saw Daisy and Gatsby together when he was just an army lieutenant and she was 18. They were "engrossed in each other" (kissing) in Daisy's white roadster. Daisy was prevented from going to New York by her family. She was going to wave goodbye to Gatsby before the war. This shows that she loved him, but "by the next Autumn", she was "gay again" (probably meaning that she was in love with someone else) and, as if to prove this hypothesis, by next June, she was married to Tom Buchanan, but not before she could have a cry the day before her wedding when receiving a letter from Jay Gatsby, the man she used to love.

Cars:

• The Jay Gatsby of before the war (dare I say it, the "young pretender") and "by far the most popular young girl" in Louisville, Daisy Fay, become "engrossed in each other in Daisy's white roadster. White is the colour of goodness and innocence, could Daisy's car, and the fact that she always wore white be used to suggest that she has nothing to hide? Yes! Could Gatsby's "rich cream" coloured car be hinting at the exact opposite, that he has plenty to hide in his slightly murky past? Indeed. 
• Cars are very important in this novel and are often mentioned, along with other modern technology of the 20's, such as the telephone. In this one chapter alone, 8 separate automobiles are noted. 
• Other than Gatsby's cream machine, the most important car in this tale is the ONE that sits at the back of Wilson's garage, the "dust covered wreck of a Ford". Just an idle thought, but could the cars that the characters own contrast with them? Wilson's car is a dust covered wreck and, yes, when Nick first meets him, that's exactly what he is, but would a wreck of a man really avenge his wife's murder (O.K. I agree that that is a bit of a weak link, but it is just an idle thought, after all)? Daisy's car is white which epitomises innocence and goodness and, yes, again, when Nick meets her for the first time in the book, she seems to fill the description of her car perfectly. She is the faithful wife of the cheating scumbag and mother of his child. A woman who has known that she was being cheated on since her honeymoon and yet has never, herself, had an affair until she meets Gatsby again (the way Nick tells it). At the end of the story, she accidentally kills someone and lets the man she used to love take the blame. Not so innocent then! The most important car, Gatsby's, is a "rich cream" colour showing that he is rich and the cream-y bit saying that it is old (as in old paper going brown with age). The car makes the readers assume that Gatsby is one of the "old money" (someone who inherited everything he owns) and Gatsby himself insists that he inherited his fortune from his rich parents. Like the other cars though, this one lies, as Gatsby is a self-made man who was born a poor farmer's son, which, as with the other cars, we find out about at the end of the story.

Something to remember:

• In the 1920's it would have been quite rare to own a car, as most people (even Nick and he's not exactly the proletariat) couldn't afford one. They were items of desire and so that is why they are one of the main themes in the story. Fitzgerald might have also have been using the death of The American Dream as a motif in this book. Gatsby epitomises this way of thinking, the self made millionaire born to poor farmers, but then he is murdered through no fault of his own, showing the reading audience that even if you do make it to the very top of society by yourself, the American Dream is nothing but folly. Material goods cannot get you everything you want, which, in Gatsby's case, means Daisy.