Chapter 1 The Great Gatsby

What happens in this chapter?

 The narrative voice of Nick Carraway is introduced, expository
 Settings of West Egg and East Egg are introduced
 Nick goes to Daisy’s for dinner (main characters introduced: Tom, Daisy, Jordan)
 Sees Gatsby for the first time, green light motif introduced

 Nick’s transition from enthrallment to disillusionment; tension and yet also commonality between
Tom and Daisy; Gatsby’s distance from his goal

Form, Language and Characterisation

 Metafiction narrative- Nick controls how the events of the story are told
 Non-linear narrative: Nick refers to events in the future- his relationship with Gatsby and what the
man meant to him- yet does not elaborate on any specifics or reveal Gatsby’s fate
 Nick is characterised as a trustworthy narrator as he says he is ‘inclined to reserve all judgements’
o Yet says Gatsby ‘represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn’
o Signals to the reader that Nick may not be a reliable narrator
o Description of Tom: ‘he seemed to say ‘just because I’m stronger and more of a man than
you’
 Nick’s elevated prose style using complex lexis and sentences such as ‘most of these confidences
unsought, frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation or a hostile levity when I realised by some
unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon’
o Objective narrator
 Gatsby is referred to twice in conversation but we never learn more, except through the tantalising
glimpse of him at the end of the chapter which establishes a sense of romance and mystery
 Tom’s physical description
 Musical imagery used for Daisy’s voice
o Her voice described as ‘low’, ‘thrilling’, a ‘murmur’, rumoured to make ‘people lean towards
her’
o Siren like quality
 The imagery of lightness and innocence surrounding Daisy and Jordan, angelic qualities
o White dress; the breeze; as ‘if they had been blown back in after a short flight around the
house’
 Daisy mainly speaks in simple sentences, ‘What do people plan?’
o Innocence and naivety
 Similarities in the characterisation of Tom and Daisy
o ‘a look of defiance’
 Tom controlling of Daisy, domineering, possible antagonist
o Change from ‘buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon’ to ‘ballooned slowly to the
floor’
o Characterised as having ‘two shining arrogant eyes’ and ‘a hard mouth’
 Contrast with the characterisation of Gatsby
o More secure and steadfast through his stance
o ‘Trembling’

Structure
 Intensification of tension as Tom’s infidelity and Daisy’s unhappiness become apparent
 Nick moves from excitement an enthrallment with Daisy to disillusionment with her ‘basic
insincerity’, acting out in microcosm the journey of understanding he undertakes in the rest of the
novel

Narrative Perspective
 First person, retrospective narration which begins with reflection and foreshadows tragedy
 Nick seems self-conscious and keen to defend his own moral superiority
 All perspectives on characters are focalised through Nick’s judgemental perspective
  His initial reflections act as a framing device and prejudice us against Daisy, Tom and the world that
they represent
 Nick is either established as a moral figure who will guide us on a journey through a dark world
o Or can be perceived as an unreliable narrator who forces events into a moralistic patter (‘a
single window’)

Setting
 Gatsby and Tom’s homes both symbolic of the nature of their wealth
o Gatsby’s desire to emulate a world of tradition
o Tom’s arrogance
 Gatsby’s mansion as a symbol for his persona
o ‘imitation’
o The metaphorical description of the house having a ‘thin beard of raw ivy’ suggesting
disguise
o Gatsby is not what he appears to be
 The physical divide between East and West Egg but their similarity from the air
o Two luxuries which represent symbols for the larger idea of the separation between the
classes in America
o West Egg as ‘the less fashionable of the two’ which gives the impression that East Egg’s
‘white palaces’ that ‘glittered’ represent established wealth and the fashionable
o The separation of East and West Egg could have been used to foreshadow the symbolic
distance between Daisy and Gatsby
 The introduction of the symbol of the green light
Chapter 2 The Great Gatsby
What happens in this chapter?
 Valley of Ashes introduced, as well as the symbol of Dr Eckleburg/ Eyes
 Tom’s violent personality/ Nick dragged to meet Myrtle
 Wilson introduced
 Tom and Myrtle’s party/ apartment in New York
 Tom breaks Myrtle’s nose
 Nick’s drunken ambiguity

Form, Language and Characterisation

 Further references to Gatsby from Catherine build up the myth that surrounds the character
 Nick informs us from the outset that this chapter will be about meeting Tom’s mistress
o Arguably prejudices us against Myrtle and Tom

Structure
 The move from the Valley of Ashes to the apartment emphasising the ability of privileged characters
to escape into fantasy worlds
 However the atmosphere of theatricality and falsity, and the eventual explosion of violence, warns
the reader that this can only be a temporary escape

Narrative Perspective
 Perspectives on characters continue to be focalised through Nick
 Nick demonstrates ambivalence about what he discovers, reflecting that he is still in a state of
conflict over the duality of pleasure and dangerous excess
 Nick’s status as an outsider is summed up by his being ‘within and without’
 Yet Nick’s obsession with aesthetic considerations calls into question how far he can really
disassociate himself from privilege
o He feels the garage must conceal ‘sumptuous and romantic apartments’, as though he
cannot endure the reality of squalor
 He feels compelled to remove the spot of lather from Mr McKee’s face

Setting
 The Valley of Ashes associated with the ‘grotesque’ corruption of nature and with death
o Foreshadowing subsequent tragedy
o Further emphasised by Myrtle’s words ‘you can’t live forever, you can’t live forever’
 A strong contrast with the world of wealth in the previous chapter and with Tom’s secret apartment
 The motif of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg’s eyes
 The tastelessness and over-decoration of Tom’s apartment intensifying our awareness of his dual
existence
Chapter 3 The Great Gatsby
What happens in this chapter?
 Nick invited to Gatsby’s party
 Gossip surrounding Gatsby creates sense of illusiveness/mystery
 Owl Eyes in the library
 Meets Gatsby
 Return to narrative on everyday life

Form, Language and Characterisation

 Dialogue highlights that the guests are obsessed with image and with rumours
o Imagery of moths for the guests
 Imagery associated with consumption
o the ‘ravages’ that have to be repaired
o the oranges and lemons that are returned as ‘pulpless halves’
 Imagery and physical details associated with brightness, extravagance and excess
 Use of colour
o ‘blue gardens’, ‘yellow cocktail music’
 Language is used to create a sense of the loss of individual identity as voices become an ‘opera’,
‘spilled’, ‘tipped’, ‘dissolve and form’, ‘swirls’
 The sense that reality itself can be manipulated, adding to the sense of unreality, myth, bathos, of
falsity
o ‘premature moon, produced… no doubt, out of a caterer’s basket’
 Gatsby characterised as putting on an act
o ‘formality of speech’ as ‘just’ missing ‘being absurd’
o ‘picking his words with care’
o Fitzgerald also juxtaposes Daisy’s voice of being like a siren in chapter 1 with Gatsby having
‘one of those smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance’

Structure
 The first part of the chapter charts the growing chaos and loss of inhabitation at Gatsby’s parties,
creating a sense of moral collapse
 The escalation of rumours surrounding Gatsby instensifies the mystery and tension
 The chapter builds towards the arguably anti-climactic, bathetic moment when we meet Gatsby and
cannot help but be disappointed by his inability to live up to the preposterous myths surrounding him
o He is just ‘a man of about my age’
o Creates irony as Nick first presents nothing at all ‘great’ about Gatsby
 The breakdown of the party into discord is foreshadowing the destructive consequences of wealth
revealed later
o Especially the violent imagery used to describe the car crash
 The tantalising mystery of Jordan’s conversation with Gatsby

Narrative Perspective
 Nick’s growing seduction into the world of the party which could suggest his lack of moral fibre
o The ‘scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental and profound’
 He also demonstrates the ability to be self-deprecating and to admit to his own limitations
 The importance to Nick of his sense of connection with Gatsby upon their meeting
 Nick’s acknowledgement that his own story-telling is creating an illusion for the reader of the
importance of all the events related so far
 We learn about his lack of carelessness (in Jordan’s etes) and interior rules
o Which might draw attention to the deliberately constructed nature of his narration
 Nick’s aesthetic obsession, attention to detail and conviction of his own honesty

Setting
 The isolation of Gatsby’s mansion, to which people have to be ‘borne out’, reflecting a sense of his
own isolation
 The voice of Owl Eyes used to draw attention to the theatricality of the books (‘a regular Belasco’)
o Specifically praising the ‘realism’ of the illusion that they provide
o Gatsby is no more than a stage show who is using his house as a prop to disguise his real
personality
o Owl Eyes has moral vision, connotations of wisdom
o ‘if one brick was removed the whole library was liable to collapse’- foreshadows how
Gatsby’s life will collapse around him once his true character is revealed by Tom
o ‘Mr. nobody from nowhere’
 The library as a symbol of Gatsby himself
o Gatsby has gone to the effort of buying ‘real’ books but the fact that the books are not ‘cut’
suggests he has not tried to read them and they are simply there for aesthetic purposes
o Materialism
 The house foreshadows future revelations about Gatsby’s own fabricated identity
o Mansion made out to seem ostentatious and brash
o Although full of glamorous people the guests are ultimately empty, ‘pulpless halves’
 The mystical language that makes the home seem untouched after the party
o Emphasising that none of these people are truly important to Gatsby- we have not yet
learned what motivates him
 The exciting yet sinister characterisation of New York City as reflective of the ambivalence of Nick’s
thinking
Chapter 4 The Great Gatsby
What happens in this chapter?
 List of people attending Gatsby’s parties
 Gatsby’s partial life history- dialogue with Gatsby
 Lunch with Wolfsheim, bumps into Tom
 Jordan’s narrative about how Gatsby and Daisy know each other

Form, Language and Characterisation

 Opening line of the chapter juxtaposes the church bells and the ‘mistresses’, emphasising that
immorality is universal
 Dialogue between Gatsby’s guests shows their obsession with gossip
 The disintegrating railway timetable symbolises the guests’ ultimate insignificance, at least in Nick’s
eyes
o Relates this to the news we hear of their unpleasant fates after main events of the story
 Gatsby’s restlessness (possibly paralleling Tom) which is in perpetual war with his manners
 The ‘monstrous’ excess of the car representing Gatsby’s theatricality and vulgarity
o Prolepsis for association with the car that was the ‘death car’ in chapter 7, destroys Myrtle
 The use of Gatsby’s voice, yet its authenticity is undermined immediately by his blatant lies
 The fact that G reminds Nick of ‘skimming hastily through a dozen magazines’
o Highlighting his overzealous desire to achieve success in the eyes of society
 The loss of Gatsby’s ‘elegant sentences’ and composure as they leave his home behind and his
regaining of self-consciousness as they near the city
 Anti-Semitic physical stereotypes used to convey the appearance of Wolfsheim, his cuffs made of
molars
 Wolfsheim’s references to ‘friends dead and gone’ foreshadowing Gatsby’s own death
 Daisy further characterised as pure and ethereal: ‘dressed in white’
o Irony as Fitzgerald later shows she is not completely pure, but materialistic
o Reveal of her maiden name, ‘Fay’, meaning “Fairy”- which connotes to being fickle, childlike,
a siren figure, mythical and enchanting Gatsby like a fairy
 Tom as a hypocrite
o In a basement illegal drinking speakeasy
o Corrupted personality
o Hypocrite as he later condemns Gatsby for being a ‘bootlegger’ even though Tom is
complicit with the illegal activities
 Nick’s transformation of perspective on Gatsby after he hears the story
o ‘He came alive to me’
o Gatsby as mythical: ‘he was no longer there’; ‘delivered suddenly from the womb of his
purposeless slendour’
 Jordan as ‘she’d never do anything that wasn’t right’ juxtaposed with how Nick defines her as
‘incurable dishonest’
o Sets Gatsby’s character apart from Nick’s
o Involves intrusive retrospect

Structure
 3 parts: ludicrous sounding guests at Gatsby’s parties; Nick’s trip to NY with Gatsby; Jordan’s
perspective
o Slows the pace of the novel and builds excitement and tension as the reader is slowly told
pieces of Gatsby’s story
 Nick is initially somewhat disillusioned with Gatsby, who has ‘little to say’ and is dismissed as not
being a person of ‘consequence’ to him
o ‘and then came the disconcerting ride’
 o Inaccurately refers to ‘San Francisco’ as being in the mid-west; ‘a young raja’; ‘hunting wilde
game’ ‘in all the capitals of Europe’: made to sound incredulous and hyperbolic
 The car journey as a turning point for his view of Gatsby
o ‘proof’ of Gatsby’s war medal from ‘little Montenegro’
o Confusion over Gatsby’s character
o We are briefly given the hope that we will learn the truth about Gatsby but this is dashed
quickly when doubt is cast on the honesty of his words
 The sense of hope and expectation when they view the city from the bridge
o ‘Anything can happen…’ contrasting sharply with what they encounter in the cellar
 The use of analapsis to reveal Gatsby and Daisy’s history and the ease with which Daisy got over
her apparent change of heart on her wedding day
o Set apart from other characters who are directionless and corrupted by the Jazz Age

Narrative Perspective
 Retrospective, homodiegetic first person narrator of Nick
 We are reminded of the distance between Nick’s present self and past self by the age of the
disintegrating railway timetable and by the knowledge he provides of the fates of many of the guests
(drowning, divorce, suicide)
o Intensifying our sense that he has put the revelry of the partis into a bleak long-term
perspective
 Nick is perhaps revealed as an intuitive character
o As he observes, before learning of his woes, that Gatsby’s love of rubies might exist to
‘ease… the gnawings of his broken heart’
 Alternatively, this could be seen as his desire to romanticise Gatsby
 Jordan’s first person narrative
o Diegesis, divulged at a very slow pace
o Less literary and less complex, more straightforward writing style contrasts with the mimetic
style of Nick’s description in the chapter
o Filtered through Nick’s perspective, yet specifics such as ‘October’ ‘nineteen-seventeen’
helps the reader trust the reliability of this perspective
 At the end of the chapter Nick shows a desire to move away from Gatsby and Daisy and to enjoy
his own romantic life, but there is a sense in which he is doomed to feel inferior to Gatsby and Tom
because he lacks a love that he can idealise to the same extent
o ‘No girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs’
o Is Nick doomed to live through others because he cannot feel with sufficient intensity?

Setting
 Having to pass through the Valley of Ashes to reach the bridge
o ‘the city seen from the bridge is always the city seen for the first time’
o Romanism, exciting and thrilling, new beginnings,
o Beginning of Nick’s relationship with Gatsby
o Juxtaposes Valley of Ashes
 The encounter with the hearse
o ‘I was glad that the sight of Gatsby’s splendid car was included in their sombre holiday’
o 1920s America materialist conspicuous consumption was viewed more important than life
itself
 The darkness of the cellar where they meet Wolfsheim
o ‘half darkness’, connotations with sinister behaviour and criminal activity’
Chapter 5 The Great Gatsby
What happens in this chapter?
 Gatsby’s house illuminated
 Nick encounters Gatsby, pool reference and Coney Island
 Gatsby asks for Nick’s help, to hook him up with Daisy
 Reunion scene
 Ends with shirts and Klipspringer playing the piano

Form, Language and Characterisation

 Temporal marker ‘after half an hour’ indicating Nick’s absence from Daisy and Gatsby’s
conversation
o Creates excitement and tension
 Characterises Gatsby by his appearance
o ‘silver shirt and gold coloured tie’
o Eagerness to impress Daisy, especially as the colours show wealth
o Colours reflect her flower’s namesake
 ‘pale’ complexion and tired eyes suggest the harmful effect Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy has on
him
o Foreshadows the tragic end to Gatsby’s obsession
 Gatsby’s usually calm exterior replaced by ‘suppressed eagerness’
o Carefully considered language with an ‘automotive quality’
o Even his well-rehearsed phrase ‘old sport’ is almost forgotten ‘he added hollowly… old sport’
 Daisy presented in a positive light, innocent tone
o Voice described as ‘artificial’
o ‘frightened but graceful’
o Crying ‘stormily’ at Gatsby’s shirts suggests deep emotions
o Daisy’s materialism to the shirts
o Voice described as ‘a wild tonic in the rain’, ‘a deathless song’
 Her focus on nature could imply there is moer to Daisy that materialism
o Admires the ‘sparkly’ and the ‘pale gold odour’ of flowers
o ‘pink and golden billow of foamy clouds’
 Nick’s morality questioned
o Nick less concerned that Gatsby’s offer of business seems illegitimate than that it is being
offered out of a sense of duty
o Inconsistent: chapter 1 explains that his tolerance has a limit, however in this chapter he also
characterises Nick as having a limit to his morality
o Nick’s disgust for the hedonistic behaviour of the east have been overturned by his
fascination with it
 Questions whether Nick has become part of the society he claims he has such distaste for, ‘a sense
of fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth’
o Some of the people in East Egg have no ‘fundamental decencies’
o Fitzgerald questions whether Nick is losing some of his ‘decencies’
 Time as an important symbol
o Gatsby has ‘waited five years’
o Nick describes Gatsby as being ‘like an over wound clock’
 Motif of clocks, the already ‘defunct’ clock
o The relationship was already ‘defunct’, too long has passed
o ‘smashed to pieces on the floor’
o ‘all believed for a moment that the clock had actually broken’
 o Willingness to accept Gatsby’s dream of being able to stop time and ‘repeat the past’
o Gatsby characterised as fixated with the past as the clock is ‘defunct’, mirroring how Gatsby
has spent all his time living in the past
 Perceptions of time
o Daisy is vague about the ‘many years’ that have passed
o Gatsby knows ‘five years next November’

Structure
 Unlike previous chapters which tend to be episodic, chapter 5 is written in chronological order
focusing on the reunion of Daisy and Gatsby
o Before this event, the story of their relationship only exists in prospect
o The romance between Gatsby and Daisy and the tensions in their relationship actualise
themselves
 The initial build-up of tension helps establish the meeting between Gatsby and Daisy as a pivotal
one
 The tension is relieved after their private conversation and their visit to Gatsby’s house but we still
have a sense of danger/ concern thanks to Nick’s narration
 Time gaps/ narrative gaps create tension as the reader has to ppiece things together for
themselves/ some of it is left to their own imagination
o ‘leaves them there together’ invites romantic speculation
o ‘it was the hour of a profound human change, and excitement was generating on the air’
establishes this as the high point in the novel/ of Gatsby’s dream

Narrative Perspective
 Nick’s first person homodiegetic perspective
o Positions the reader alongside Nick
 Retrospect provides us with hints of warning that all will not be well
o ‘the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever’
o ‘a faint doubt had occurred to him as the quality of his present happiness’
o Daisy must have ‘tumbled short of his dreams’
 Fitzgerald only uses the voice and point of view of Nick
 Nick’s perpective initially used to highlight the magnitude of the event about to take place in this
chapter
o ‘I was afraid for a moment that my house was on fire’
o Sets the tone for something dramatic
 Nick’s awkwardness during the encounter between Daisy and Gatsby helping to emphasise the
tension and the oddity of Gatsby’s conduct
o ‘my face had now assumed a deep tropical burn’
 Nick tends to analyse Gatsby’s emotions and actions on a deep level but presents Daisy’s
behaviour in a shallow, simple manner
o ‘at an inconceivable pitch of intensity’
o ‘Daisy took the brush with delight and smoothed her hair

Setting
 Gatsby’s house ‘blazing with light’, Nick feared his house was ‘on fire’
o Imagery of artificial light vs natural light
o House represents Gatsby’s ‘blazing’ love for Daisy, a way of attracting her
o Later, Gatsby is presented to have ‘literally glowed’ and the room fills with ‘twinkle bars of
sunshine’- contrasts with artificial light
 Gatsby and Nick characterised by their lawns
o Gatsby’s neatly mown ‘expanse’ of grass meets Nick’s ‘ragged lawn’
o Gatsby’s glossy lifestyle covers up his less respectable ‘little business on the side’
o Nick is more down to earth
 The ‘bleared’ misted windows of Nick’s bungalow during the meeting could symbolise Nick’s inability
to see that his complicity in the affair is immoral and dishonest
 The rain could symbolise Gatsby’s lack of control over the situation
o Contrast with in chapter 3 with the ‘premature moon, produced… no doubt, out of a caterer’s
basket’
  Rain
o Convey the initial atmosphere of strain
o Could be viewed as positive, cleansing, offering opportunity in contrast to the ‘stagnant’ heat
by Chapter 7
o The end to the rain and emergence of the sun could relate to a release of tension, but is also
the start of the terminal decline of Gatsby’s dream

Chapter 6 The Great Gatsby

What happens in this chapter?
 Gatsby’s actual life history
 Time gap
 Tom and Gatsby meet briefly
 Time gap
 Daisy and Tom go to Gatsby’s party
 Gatsby is upset
 Nick reflects that Gatsby’s dream is over bc it has been obtained

Form, Language and Characterisation

 The way in which we are told of Gatsby’s abrupt transformation of James Gatz highlights how
complete and sudden was his utter reinvention of himself
 Vivid descriptive language is used to describe Gatsby’s state of mind in the past, helping to
characterise Gatsby as a wild fantasist
o ‘his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot’
 Dialogue between Tom and Gatsby demonstrating a potentially possessive and competitive streak
within Gatsby
o He is ‘moved by an irresistible impulse’ to talk to Tom and does so ‘almost aggressively’
 Slightly more sinister character of Daisy which helps to prepare the reader for her betrayal of
Gatsby
o Her voice was ‘playing murmurous tricks in her throat’
o The way Daisy is ‘offended’ by all aspects of the party apart from the ‘lovely’ movie star
o ‘blossomed for Gatsby like a flower’ foregrounding her beauty and charm but also implying
that now the best part of Daisy has gone, like a flower in bloom
o Daisy will never be able to live up to the ‘colossal vitality’ of Gatsby’s ‘illusions’
 Gatsby’s conversation with Nick in which he outlines his desires
 Bathos foregrounds the fantasised basis of Gatsby’s dreams and discredits any hopes of its
realisation
o ‘the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing’
o Paradoxical ‘unreality of reality’ adding to the construction of Gatsby’s dream as an illusion

Structure
 Episodic in structure
 Focuses on many separate events leading up to Gatsby’s final party
 The mention of the reporter and that ‘Gatsby’s notoriety… had increased all summer until he fell just
short of being news’ helps to highlight his success
o Also suggestive of dangerous excess
o As though Gatsby’s story is about to spiral out of control
 Fitzgerald uses Gatsby’s memories to start and end the chapter with an account of Gatsby’s life with
Dan Cody and Gatsby’s first kiss with Daisy
 Nick returns to the main time frame of the novel and explains how little he saw Gatsby ‘for several
weeks’, continuing with chapter 6’s theme of Nick as an outsider
 The first official meeting between Gatsby and Tom which is somewhat anticlimactic
 Dialogue with Tom in which he questions who Gatsby is
o Mirrors the conversations back in Chapter 3 and highlights Tom’s ignorance at this stage
 Nick’s reconstruction about the past,dreamlike
 o A night Gatsby spent with Daisy five years before
o Ends with his realisation that ‘if he climbed alone’, he could position himself in ‘a secret place
above the trees’ and ‘gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder’

Narrative Perspective
 Fitzgerald uses Nick as a retrospective, involved homodiegetic first person narrator
o Allows for a developed opinion of the plot
o Enables Nick’s character to divulge information to the reader in a proleptic manner
 The tone in which Nick reveals information about Gatsby’s past life reflects his ambivalence as there
is mingled disgust with admiration
o ‘he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious
beauty’
o Vs ‘he was faithful to the end’
 The retrospective narration also provides us with hints that Gatsby will die during the events of the
novel, ‘to the end’
o Interesting that Nick seems to be imagining part of this backstory, rather than choosing to
provide us with Gatsby’s voice directly
o Establishes his habit of superimposing himself over Gatsby and deciding what he thinks his
thoughts and feelings must be (‘looking up at the railed deck, the yacht represented all the
beauty and glamour in the world’
 Nick manipulates the story by explaining that Gatsby only revealed information to him ‘very much
later’ but ‘I’ve put it down here with the idea of exploding those first wild rumours about his
antecedents’
 Nick’s complaint that seeing something through someone else’s eyes is ‘invariably saddening’
o Highlights, perhaps, how controlling and unreliable he has been as a narrator so far

Setting
 Contrast in time settings
 Gatsby’s party and the more sinister way in which Nick sees it because he is observing it from
Daisy’s perspective
o ‘I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness’
o All foreshadowing the division between Daisy and Gatsby and the unravelling of the dream
 Gatsby’s remembrance of ‘one autumn night, five years before’
o Leaves falling and ‘a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with
moonlight’
o A sense that this setting symbolised Gatsby’s dream and represented his most important
memory of Daisy
Chapter 7 The Great Gatsby
What happens in this chapter?
 Gatsby calls off parties and fires servants
 Sees Pammy for the first time
 Plaza hotel scene
 Myrtle killed
 Nick watching Daisy and Tom eating dinner, encounters Gatsby

Form and Language

 Daisy and Jordan are like ‘silver idols’
 The imagery of the first chapter is repeated but now corrupted, as the room is ‘dark and cool’ and
they are ‘weighing down their own white dresses against the singing breeze’
 Gatsby is surprised at the appearance of Pammy
 Contrast with the way in which Gatsby ‘floats’ and the coolness
 The way in which Daisy relates him to an advert, too good to be true
 Gatsby’s observation that Daisy’s voice is ‘full of money’ and relating her to medieval imagery,
idealised and unobtainable, royalty
 The use of dialogue to convey Tom’s enflamed temper and the build towards his climactic contest
with Tom
 Wilson compared to a ‘doll’ and his grief at Myrtle’s death
o With the ‘doll’ analogy perhaps conveying how he will become Tom’s puppet

Structure
 The opening conveys, simultaneously, the height of Gatsby’s hopes and yet a sense of something
ominous to come
o As he signals his belief that he’s achieved his goal by turning off his lights, ordinarily a
symbol of hope
 The intensity of the heat creating pathetic fallacy and reflecting the build-up of tension
 Jordan’s denial of Daisy’s morbidity and assertion that life starts over in the Fall
o But her words are belief by the contents of the chapter
 The rising tension throughout
 Myrtle’s death and Gatsby’s continued naïve hope even though he is ‘watching over nothing’

Narrative Perspective
 Nick seems to feel that codes of behaviours cannot endure in the heat
o Reflecting, perhaps, his belief that events at this point are so extraordinary that normal moral
standards do not apply
 Nick emphasises his own fallability in this chapter as he admits he is becoming confused by the
heat
 The way in which Nick relates events he was not directly part of when it comes to Myrtle’s death
o Creating a sense of narrative distance
 Nick becoming ‘sick’ of the lot of them and refusing to go with them into the house
 Nick sees Tom and Daisy through the window and knows they have re-established their bond but
chooses not to share this with Gatsby

Setting
  The changes in the house due to Daisy’s influence, perhaps reflecting something destructive about
her impact on Gatsby
o ‘the whole caravansary had fallen in like a card house at the disapproval in her eyes’
 The wind in the Buchanans’ house is only ‘faint’ and the breeze is now artificial, coming from fans,
perhaps symbolising stagnation
 The intensification of pressure as they move into New York
 The Valley of Ashes as a symbolic setting for Myrtle’s death, with the imager of her blood in the dust
 The Buchanan’s house ‘floating’ at the end

Chapter 8 The Great Gatsby

What happens in this chapter?
 Gatsby is sad, but still hopeful
 Gatsby’s narrative about Louisville
 Gatsby’s gardener plans to drain the pool
 Nick talks about events following Myrtle’s death
 Gatsby dead

Form and Language

 The motif of dust re-enters the novel in this chapter
o Interestingly it is not only present in Gatsby’s house but also in his memories of Daisy’s
childhood home
o ‘the shining dust’
 The motif of flowers (orchids) and the language of extravagance, materialism and excess
associated with Daisy
 Nick’s changed attitude towards Jordan, evident in the way he no longer finds her voice ‘fresh and
cool’
o Reflects his disillusionment with the charms that she and Daisy represent
 The motif of eyes and their impact upon Wilson
 The description of Gatsby’s final shift in perspective before his death as he looks up at the sky
 The language used to describe Gatsby’s death, with the attention to detail on the water within the
pool and what the ‘ripples’ could represent about Gatsby’s life and dreams

Structure
 Nick’s initial restlessness, his inability to sleep, sets the tone for this as either the climactic chapter
or the post-climactic resolution to the novel
o Depending on your perspective
 The way in which Jay Gatsby is describe as having broken ‘like a glass’ in chapter 7, reflecting that
Gatsby’s persona and confidence have been shattered
o Effectively he is already dead at this point
 The use of analapsis when Gatsby relates more of his history with Daisy
o And the implication that he is only able to speak frankly now his persona has been destroyed
 Gatsby’s confidence in himself seems to be declining when he discusses Daisy with Nick, as though
he now has to work hard to talk himself into his delusion
 The phone acts as a device that builds tension, symbolising Gatsby’s hopes
 The seasons symbolise the state his hopes are in

Narrative Perspective
 Nick claims to have had a premonition of danger for Gatsby, although it is impossible to tell whether
he felt this at the time or whether it is just part of his retrospective construction
o His desire to position himself has having a unique role within Gatsby’s story
 Nick generally uses his own words to relate what Gatsby told him, with the premise that he is
bringing articulacy to the story but potentially in fact due to his control
 When Gatsby’s voice is allowed to reach us directly, it is presented as his desperate attempt to cling
to his belief that the past can be rewritten
  Nick’s use of evidence that he has not gathered first-hand to piece together events and his criticism
of the unreliability of narratives in general
o ‘some garrouless man telling over and over what had happened until it became less and less
real…’
 Nick’s decision to imagine and share with us what Gatsby’s final site would have been

Setting
 The house seems particularly enormous during Gatsby and Nick’s last night together and takes on a
sinister aspect, reflecting the state of Gatsby’s dreams at this stage of the novel
 The references to ghostliness foreshadow Gatsby’s physical death as well as underscoring his
dreams demis

Chapter 9 The Great Gatsby

What happens in this chapter?
 Events surrounding funeral, Klipspringer’s tennis shoes
 Henry Gatz
 Nick fully turned against Daisy and Tom
 Nick presents the East as grotesque
 Last night in East, reflections on dreams

Form, Language and Characterisation

 The media are associated with the same imagery of theatrical excess that was previously
associated with the carnival atmosphere of Gatsby’s own parties
o ‘a nightmare- grotesque…eager and untrue’
 The perspective of Gatsby’s father, who seems to prefer his photograph of the house to the reality
of being there
 Tom’s characterisation in terms of restlessness and, in Nick’s view, carelessness
 The fact that Nick has come to see Daisy and Tom as very much the same

Structure
 Nick’s attempts to contact Daisy and Gatsby’s other acquaintances are unsuccessful
 The telephone conversations to difference people mirror each other, so that the chapter slides into a
sense of hopelessness as it builds towards Gatsby’s funeral
 This is emphasised further by pathetic fallacy, such as the drizzle as he leaves Wolfsheim’s
 The knowledge we are provided to help fill in gaps in Gatsby’s childhood, as though Gatsby had to
die for the real Gatz to make a reappearance
 Arguably his childhood note emphasises the original purity of young Gatz’s dreams
 Nick appears trapped in his memories at the end of the chapter

Narrative Perspective
 Nick’s voice as a broadly sympathetic observer of Gatsby contrasts with the public attitudes we
encounter
 Nick observes with cynicism how the police and media construct a story that demonises Gatsby, so
that Fitzgerald perhaps intends Nick’s narration to be seen as insightful and truthful by comparison
 Nick’s growing awareness of his ‘intense persona; interest’ and responsibility
o Underscored by when he imagines Gatsby’s own voice addressing him
 The possibility that Nick wishes to portray himself as having a special role as the keeper of Gatsby’s
legacy
o Yet Nick is under no illusions about Gatsby, as demonstrated by his discomfort when Gatz
insists that his son would have ‘helped build up the country’ had he lived
 We receive the sense that Nick is no longer in control of the story he is telling, as the events have
exerted power over him
o ‘The East was haunted for me… distorted beyond my eyes’ power of correction
 Nick’s encounter with Jordan, in which she looks like ‘a good illustration’, arguably marks the death
of his obsession with aesthetic ideals over substance
 Nick’s reflections on how close Gatsby’s dream must have seemed to him arguably emphasises the
tragedy of the tale
Setting
 The lack of links to Gatsby’s real past in his house except for the picture of Dan Cody, which is
described as ‘a token of forgotten violence staring down from the wall’
o Perhaps linking to the motif of eyes and creating a connection between Gatsby and Wilson,
who could be seen as mirror opposites throughout the novel
 Nick’s somewhat idealised memory of the mid-West winters and his contrast between this and the
East
 West Egg compared to the paintings of El Greco, who famously painted madmen
 The contrast between this and the imagery Nick uses to imagine America when it was first colonised
as a land associated with nature and pure dreams
 Nick’s removal of the graffiti from Gatsby’s house, perhaps an attempt to preserve the purity of
Gatsby’s dreams