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.