This is a cheatsheet on The Great Gatsby for English Literature and Language students (A Level). This is under the WJEC Exam board. The Great Gatsby will be on the third paper of this subject, you'll have a choice to answer 1 of 2 questions.
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Summary
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Nick Carraway introduces himself as the narrator and gives insight into his moral position. He's just moved to West Egg, a 'commuting town' near New York, to start a career in bonds (finance). He goes to dinner in East Egg with the Buchanans - his cousin Daisy and her husband Tom. At dinner he meets Jordan Baker - a professional golfer. Tom is revealed to be a racist. He is also having an affair with an unnamed woman. Nick returns home and sees Gatsby next door, reaching out across the water towards a green light.
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Key Terminology
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Self-conscious narrator (narrator is aware they're telling the story); grammatically complex sentences; detached authorial stance (makes themselves seem detached from the story); retrospective first-person narrator; unreliable narrator; moral framework (setting up moral values of characters); gradual introduction to setting and Gatsby; contrasts; setting; dialogue; romantic imagery; first character descriptions; use of light; poetic prose.
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Style
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Fitzgerald's use of an episodic structure and use of chaptering to set the scene of the novel is established; Fit's use of retrospective narration signals to us that the characters' fates have already been decided; Fitz's focus on characterisation is also established, as most of the main characters are introduced; Fitz's references to 'Midas and Morgan and Maecenas', mixing real and mythical people in relation to incredible wealth, hints that myth and reality will be mixed throughout the narrative; Fitz establishes the moral framework of the novel through Nick's words on judgements and 'fundamental decencies'; Fitz's use of an unreliable narrator who sometimes misreads situations, and Fitz's mixing of self-awareness and arrogance in Nick's character, establish the novel's focus on complex contradictions; Fitz contrasts Gatsby's powerful desire (for a mysterious aim) with the East Eggers' lack of motivation or drive. Because this is the first thing we learn about Gatsby, the suggestion is that this is the most important aspect of his character; Fitz uses a shift in his presentation of light at the Buchanans' - from 'rosy coloured' to 'the glow faded' to 'artificial light' to reflect the fact that Nick's romantic views of Tom & Daisy's life have been shattered.
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Key Lines
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"Foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams"; "Don't believe everything you hear Nick"; "The unquiet darkness"; "Their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house"; "In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’"; "Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction"; "You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy"; ""
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Summary
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Nick meets Tom's mistress Myrtle and her husband George. They own a garage on the edge of the valley of ashes between West Egg and New York. Myrtle agrees to go to New York with Nick and Tom. Myrtle hosts an impromptu party in Tom's NY apartment. She invites her sister and the McKees, who live in the apartment below. They all get drunk. Tom and Myrtle argue and he breaks her nose.
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Terminology
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Imagery of Dr TJ Eckleburg; geographical description; images of waste; colloquial expressions of the Jazz Age; character description; use of precise detail; dialogue; reported speech; ghost imagery; sexual imagery; contrast of speech patterns; authorial intrusion; first person narrative voice; retrospective voice; simulation of scene through Nick's drunken eyes; violence of verb to describe Tom who broke Myrtle's nose with his open hand, etc.
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Style
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Fitzgerald somewhat distances Nick from the action to suggest that Nick wants to be seen as an objective narrator rather than a participant in their immoral lifestyle - but his judgemental language reflects his failure to do so; Ambiguities and oxymorons ("enchanted and repelled", etc) remind us of the novel's focus on complex contradictions; Fitz's use of bleak and barren language in relation to the VofA provides a contrast to the brightness and beautiful exterior of the two Eggs: but also symbolises the moral decay and ugliness hidden underneath their sufaces. Long lists of objects made from ash emphasis the scale of the decay; Fitz' image of the "transcendent effort" in the VofA signals how all men's energy is exhausted by just existing, in great contrasts to the opulence we've read of (and are about to read of) in the Eggs/NY; Fitz's use of colour imagery places Myrtle in direct contrast with Daisy; Fitz establishes the prevalent theme of appearance vs. reality; Nick's alcohol consumption confuses and fragments his narration of events, in contrast with the poetic prose of chapter 1, signalling a loss of control and introducing the themes of self-control, greed and carelessness.
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Key Lines
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"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... His eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground"; "they look out of no face"; "thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door"; "Here's your money- go and buy ten more dogs with it"; "unpropitious and bare"; "they say he's a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm"; "About half way between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat . . . where ashes take the forms of houses"; "‘It’s really his wife that’s keeping them apart. She’s a Catholic, and they don’t believe in divorce.’ Daisy was not a Catholic, and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie.";
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Summary
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Nick receives an invitation to one of Gatsby's famous parties and visits his neighbour's mansion for the first time. Nick spends the evening with Jordan Baker trying to find the host of the party, Jay Gatsby, but they just hear a lot of wild gossip and rumours. When Nick finally meets Gatsby he's nothing like what he expected. Gatsby speaks to Jordan about a private matter but Jordan refuses to tell Nick what Gatsby said. After the party Nick gives a brief description of his life in NY and his developing relationship with Jordan.
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Terminology
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Exotic description; use of first-person retrospective; unreliable narrator; setting; use of time; contrasts; dialogue; choric voices of rumour mongers (talking ambience from many people); drunken discourse; topical references (e.g. David Belasio, Roosevelt); colour imagery; Gatsby's idiolect; self-conscious narration; romantic prose; structure; movement from the general to Nick's personal relationship with Jordan Baker, etc.
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Style
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Fitzgerald's poetic, sensory language lends a magical atmosphere to Gatsby's party; the initial description is romantic and poetic, but the narration increases in pace as the evening progresses until we get a sense of the wild excess and drunkenness of the party, reflecting the depravity and hedonism of the wealthy in 1920s America; There's a sharp contrast between the guests' bad behaviour and the magical surroundings which highlights Nick and Fitzgerald's simultaneous attraction and repulsion for the era; Fitz uses objects and props to reflect on some of the novel's key themes: the "oranges and lemons" are "reduced to pulp" to signify the emptiness of the lifestyle (as an example); Fitz provides early hints that Gatsby has deliberately crafted, for himself, a persona - his books have never been read, etc; Fitz contrasts the popularity of Gatsby's party with his loneliness in the empty house to foreshadow chapter 9; Fitz has developed his characterisation of Nick, who has now begun to embrace the hedonism of Eastern life.
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Key Lines
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"Casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each others' names"; "I was one of the few actually invited. People were not invited—they went there. . . . Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission."; "In the ditch beside the road, right-side up, but violently shorn of one wheel, rested a new coupe which had just left Gatsby's drive not two minutes before"; "I was immediately struck by the number of young Englishmen dotted about. . . . I was sure they were selling something: bonds or insurance or automobiles. They were at least agonizingly agonisingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity and was convinced that is was theirs, for a few words in the right key"; "Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known"; "‘Gatsby. Somebody told me—’” The two girls and Jordan leaned together confidently. ‘Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once.’ A thrill passed over all of us. The three Mr. Mumbles bent forward and listened eagerly.";
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Summary
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Nick makes a list of some of the people who attended Gatsby's parties in the summer of 1922. Gatsby invites Nick to lunch in NY. Gatsby tells Nick a story about his past that includes going to Oxford: Gatsby "hurried the phrase" and "swallowed it" as if he was lying. At lunch in "half-darkness" Nick meets Meyer Wolfsheim, a notorious gambler and cheat who "fixed the World Series". Nick meets Jordan for dinner and she explains that Gatsby and Daisy used to be in love.
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Terminology
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Use of Jordan's account to tell the story of Daisy's past and her character (shift in narrative voice); use of French "amour"; use of the children's song; setting of Central Park; balance of Gatsby's and Daisy's pasts; use of contrast; use of voices to reveal Gatsby; poetic prose; use of symbolism; use of timetable for Nick to write names of Gatsby's guests; importance of July 5th (day after Independence Day); use of exotic or bizarre names; movement from general overview to specific date (9am, late July 1922); use of Gatsby's direct address; use of "old sport"; irony; slow pace for unravelling mystery; use of Wolfsheim to heighten the seediness; use of asterisk to signal time passing; unreliable narration, etc.
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Style
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Fitzgerald's reported use of references tot he misbehaviour of Gatsby's party guests emphasises the darkness and criminality beneath the seemingly carefree and lavish lifestyle: Gatsby symbolises the luxury/corruption of the age; Fitz uses this chapter to give Nick and the readers their first real insight into the 'real Gatsby'- a man with such outrageous stories that we wonder what he's hiding- but, this is in contrast with Jordan's description, adding another layer of mystery; Fitz's shift in narrative voice, from Nick to Jordan, reminds the reader that the telling of this narrative is biased; Gatsby's obsession with Daisy symbolises the American Dream- but the fact that she's shallow, snobbish and fickle reflects the corruption of the American Dream, focused on the shallow pursuit of wealth, not reaping the rewards of hard work.
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Key Lines
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"[Gatsby] was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American—that comes, I suppose, with the absence of lifting work or rigid sitting in youth and, even more, with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games."; "‘I’m going to make a big request of you to-day,’ he said . . . ‘so I thought you ought to know something about me. I didn’t want you to think I was just some nobody. You see, I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad thing that happened to me.’ He hesitated. ‘You’ll hear about it this afternoon.’"; "[Wolfsheim] flipped his sleeves up under his coat. ‘Yeah, Gatsby’s very careful about women. He would never so much as look at a friend’s wife.’"; "It was dark now, and as we dipped under a little bridge I put my arm around Jordan’s golden shoulder and drew her toward me and asked her to dinner. Suddenly I wasn’t thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more, but of this clean, hard, limited person, who dealt in universal scepticism, and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm. A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: ‘There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.’"; "But I can still read the grey names, and they will give you a better impression than my generalities of those who accepted Gatsby's hospitality and paid him the subtle tribute of knowing nothing whatever about him"; "It was the first time he had called on me"; "He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendor"
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Summary
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Nick and Gatsby arrange a date to invite Daisy for tea. Nick tells her to not bring Tom. The reunion between Gatsby and Daisy is awkward and uncomfortable so Nick leaves the room. After a while he returns and they decide to visit Gatsby's mansion. After a brief tour of the mansion Nick leaves Daisy and Gatsby to be alone together. Nick claimed disgust at Tom's affair in chapters 1 & 2, but here he is complicit - but fails to see so (perhaps his house's "misted windows" reflects this).
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Terminology
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Romantic prose; use of naïve; first-person retrospective narrator; metaphysical imagery; self-conscious narrator; reminders that a story is being told; contrast of speech styles; unreliable narrator; musical imagery; use of Gatsby's speech idioms; symbolism of the clock; use of time; use of pathetic fallacy; innuendo; ambiguous lines; authorial intrusion; dialogue; use of colour; use of short statements and questions; use of details, etc
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Style
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Fitz use of imagery of light throughout the chapter - Gatsby's mansion is "blazing with light", he "literally glowed" when he saw Daisy, the room fills with "twinkle bells of sunshine" and the chapter ends with "all the lights were going on in West Egg now". In chapter 1 the Buchannan dinner party ended with "artificial light" and we can contrast this with the natural light Fitz uses in this reunion, which emphasises Nick's sympathetic (biased) perception of the lovers' joy and his presentation of gentle innocence; Fitz uses pathetic fallacy to suggest that the affair won't last ("pouring rain", "damp mist"); Nick's dramatic tone (he worries if his house is "on fire" etc) is contrasted with G's distracted, preoccupied tone ("I have been glancing into some of the rooms...") G is presented as vulnerable and his façade begins to crumble; Fitz's use of the falling "defunct" clock symbolises how time has stopped for G, a man fixated on the past; Fitz suggests again that G is "unAmerican"- he imports his shirts from Europe and has replicas of English/French architecture: the implicit rejection of American values and culture corrupts the core of the American Dream; Fitz compares Daisy's materialism when she admires G's possessions with G's idealism.
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Key Lines
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"[Gatsby] hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real."; "‘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. . . .’ 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."; "There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, addition to it all the time. . . . No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart."; "I carry a little business on the side, a sort of sideline"; "And he added hollowly... 'old sport'", "'Don't bring Tom', 'what?', 'Don't bring Tom', 'Who is Tom?' she asked innocently"
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Summary
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Nick explains that Gatsby is actually James Gatz from North Dakota who left home at a young age to seek his fortune. Gatsby changed his name at seventeen when he met Dan Cody, a self-made millionaire. Tom is invited to one of Gatsby's parties and arrives with Daisy. Daisy is offended by West Egg and the debauchery of the party, while Tom gets the names and addresses of the pretty women. Gatsby wants Daisy to say that she never loved Tom so they can "wipe out" her marriage and start again. Readers suspect that Daisy is unlikely to want to leave the security and respectability of being married to Tom.
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Terminology
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Romantic prose; innuendo; naïve retrospective narrator; ambiguous lines; metaphysical imagery; self-conscious narrator; reminders of story writing; contrast of speech styles; authorial intrusion; unreliable narrator; use of imagery; sequence of drunken voices like voices in a play; poetic prose; musicality, etc
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Style
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Fitzgerald's use of authorial intrusion in this chapter (when Nick rearranges the order of events in his telling of G's created persona to help the reader understand why G may be the way he is now) once again signals his unreliability; Fitz foreshadows Daisy's treachery and G's death in the story of Cody's death (betrayed by the women he loved); Fitz contrasts G's politeness and civility at the riding event with East Eggers' rudeness and lack of gratitude; At G's party, Nick's style of narration changes, reasserting it through Daisy's eyes. His language is sparse and dark compared to the poetic descriptions that made the earlier parties seem magical. Here it seems confusing and discordant ("many-coloured, many-keyed commotion"): Daisy's presence has reminded Nick that he's become too used to the West Eggers' hedonistic lifestyle; Fitz doesn't provide a first-hand account of D&G's affair, affording it a degree of privacy (unlike with Tom's) to suggest that, according to Nick, it is more respectable and sincere.
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Key Lines
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"James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career—when he saw Dan Cody’s yacht drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior. It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach . . . but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a rowboat . . . and informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour."; "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."; "‘My God, I believe [Gatsby is] coming,’ said Tom . . . ‘I wonder where in the devil he met Daisy. By God, I may be old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days to suit me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish.’"; "‘Who is this Gatsby anyhow?’ demanded Tom suddenly. ‘Some big bootlegger?’ ‘Where’d you hear that?’ I inquired. ‘I didn’t hear it. I imagined it. A lot of these newly rich people are just big bootleggers, you know.’ ‘Not Gatsby,’ I said shortly."; "‘I wouldn’t ask too much of her,’ I ventured. ‘You can’t repeat the past.’ ‘Can’t repeat the past?’ he cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can!’"; "They were hysterical about things which in his overwhelming self-absorption he took for granted. But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night"; "His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful- his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all"
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Summary
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Gatsby stops holding parties and replaces all of his servants to prevent any gossip about Daisy's visits. Nick, G and J go for lunch at T & D's. Tom realises that Gatsby and Daisy are in love. They all go to NY. Tom stops for petrol and Wilson reveals that he knows Myrtle has been having an affair. In NY, Tom confronts Gatsby about his past and accuses him of being a bootlegger. Gatsby tells Tom that Daisy never loved him (him, being Tom), but she claims that she did and decides to stay with Tom. Daisy and Gatsby drive home ahead of the others (Tom decides Daisy should ride back to Gatsby, essentially to rub it in Gatsby's face that Daisy chose him and not Gatsby). On the way back they hit Myrtle, Tom finds out that Gatsby's car was involved in the accident. Gatsby tells Nick that Daisy was driving but he'll take the blame. For some reason, Tom drove Gatsby's car to NY so he had to convince Wilson it wasn't him? There's a lot of confusing choices happening in this chapter
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Terminology
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Fierce dramatic dialogue; theatrical tension of Tom's violent discourse; irony of Mendelssohn's Wedding March (?); use of pathetic fallacy; climax of Myrtle's death; reflective dreamlike ending; use of first person; use of contrast; weaving of the two stories (VofA and Eggs); haziness of prose to reflect drunkenness; colloquial expression; imagery off cars; contrast of male and female speech patterns; random voices; dramatic tension; use of natural imagery; musical imagery to describe Daisy/key single statements ("her voice is full of money"); ghost imagery of Dr TJ Eckleburg; reference to time; setting; use of Michaelis and free indirect speech; quiet doom laden ending to chapter, etc.
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Style
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Fitzgerald converges different strands of the narrative here in the climax of the novel; the tone of the entire chapter is unsettling and sinister (the butler with the "villainous face" and G's lifestyle "fallen in like a card house at the disapproval in her eyes"); Fitz uses conflict between G and T to bring to the surface the flaws in each character; Heat is used as a symbol of how everything is brought to the boil; Fitz gives G a new literary identity as the modern Trimalchio of the American Dream- whereas Petronius' Trimanlchio made his fortune through hard work, G's has been made via immoral, criminal activities; Gatsby's careful, secretive behaviour is contrasted with Daisy's recklessness (openly flirting with G, kissing him at lunch in front of J and N); Fitz compares the two cuckolded men (a man whose wife is cheating on him), T and W- one internalises his grief, the other expresses it. Myrtle is absent from the meeting between T and W as a symbol of how she has no control over her destiny; Fitz shifts the narrative back to first-person perspective for her final sections of the chapter to describe the reaction to M's death. G retreats back, returning to his "isolated vigil", echoing his first appearance in chapter 1.
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Key Lines
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"[Wilson] had discovered that Myrtle had some sort of life apart from him in another world, and the shock had made him physically sick. I stared at him and then at Tom, who had made a parallel discovery less than an hour before—and it occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well."; "Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark bridge . . . the formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand. So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight."; "Michaelis and this man reached [Myrtle] first, but when they had torn open her shirtwaist, still damp with perspiration, they saw that her left breast was swinging loose like a flap, and there was no need to listen for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide open and ripped at the corners, as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long."; "[Daisy and Tom] weren’t happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale—and yet they weren’t unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together."; "As obscurely as it had begun, his career as Trimalchio was over"; "I wanted somebody who wouldn't gossip. Daisy comes over quite often- in the afternoon."; "Daisy and Jordan lay upon an enormous couch, like silver idols weighing down their own white dresses against the singing breeze of the fans" (reference to chapter 1's similar depiction of them);
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Summary
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Gatsby waits all night outside the Buchannan's house in case Daisy needs him, but nothing happens. G tells N the truth about his past and his relationship with Daisy. Nick goes to work where he recieves a phone-call from J and makes an excuse not to see her. Nick describes the events that occurred just after Myrtle's death and hints that Wilson is headed to Gatsby's house. Nick returns from work and finds that Gatsby has been killed. Wilson's body is found nearby.
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Terminology
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Ambiguous lines; diminuendo (the fall/consequence) following Myrtle's death; metaphysical imagery; foreboding imagery; self-conscious narrator; reminders of story writing; contrast of speech styles; sensory imagery; narrative intrusion; use of Michaelis' voice; unreliable narrator; use of imagery; poetic prose; musicality; theatrical tension; use of pathetic fallacy; use of first person; use of contrast; imagery of cars; dramatic tension; use of natural images (once bright, now "grey-turning, gold-turning"); Gatsby's references to chivalric love (to prove yourself by winning sets of challenges).
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Style
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Fitzgerald began the novel in Spring - now it's the end of Summer, which coincides with the end of G's dream; The chapter is divided into short segments to suggest the novel is building to a climax; Fitz uses a series of incomplete accounts to increase the tension- because the narrative is told from a range of times, prompts us to make comparisons, such as when Nick interrupts Michaelis' description of what happened to juxtapose G & W's characters; Fitz merges images of illusion and the "grotesque" reality in the ominous description of Nick's inability to sleep; The darkness in the description of G's mansion contrasts with its earlier associations with light; Nick's claims that he "disapproved of [Gatsby] from beginning to end" shows that, although he has now grown tired of the Egg community and become repulsed by their lack of care and accountability, he is still self-unaware; Fitz punctures W's belief that TJ Eckleburg represents God and His judgement with Michaelis' blunt, "'That's an advertisement', Michaelis assured him"; Fitz creates a cliff-hanger at the end of the chapter; G is dead but it's not clear how.
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Key Lines
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"He might have despised himself, for [Gatsby] had certainly taken her under false pretenses . . . he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he let her believe that he was a person from much the same stratum as herself—that he was fully able to take care of her. As a matter of fact, he had no such facilities—he had no comfortable family standing behind him, and he was liable at the whim of an impersonal government to be blown anywhere about the world."; "Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor."; "Just before I reached the hedge I remembered something . . . ‘They’re a rotten crowd,’ I shouted . . . ‘You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.’ I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end."; "I thought of the night when I first came to his ancestral home, three months before. The lawn and drive had been crowded with the faces of those who guessed at his corruption—and he had stood on those steps, concealing his incorruptible dream, as he waved them good-by."; "[P]erhaps [Gatsby] no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream."; "the bought luxury of star shine"; "broken up like glass against Tom's hard malice"; "His house had never seemed so enormous to me as it did that night"; "He couldn't possibly leave Daisy until he knew what she was going to do. He was clutching at some last hope and I couldn't bare to shake him free."
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Summary
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Nick describes the events after Gatsby's death. He organises a funeral but only Gatsby's father, Owl Eyes, a few servants and the postman attend. Nick meets Jordan and they talk about why their relationship ended. Tom reveals that he told Wilson that Gatsby was driving the car that killed Myrtle. On Nick's last night before he moves back to the Midwest he reflects that Gatsby believed he was running towards his dream, and didn't realise it was already behind him.
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Terminology
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Retrospective narration; time leap - 2 years have passed; Nick's life seems suspended & about memory; Wilson described by a reporter; exotic language; use of French "racy pasquinade"'; dialogue; variations of page; use of Wolfsheim's letter; stray voice of Slagle for intrigue; mystery; description of Mr. Gatz; imagery of utopia; car imagery; valedictory quality; nature imagery; reflections on East vs West; final reference to the Dutch sailors; important use of the final word of the novel which is "past", etc.
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Style
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Fitz signals the hollowness and emotional cost of Gatsby's version of the American Dream via poor attendance at his funeral; Fitz' use of flat, morbid vocabulary ("Brittle leaves", "stiff" laundry, etc) emphasises Nick's distaste of the East; Fitz confirms Nick's lack of self-awareness by using the novel's ending to invert its beginning, where Nick has claimed not to judge anyone. Now he is at his most judgemental ("they were careless people, Tom and Daisy..."); Nick's reflective narration shows the irony/impossible dilemma in G's dream: to both escape and relive the past; Fitz closes the novel with Nick's characteristic poetic prose ("the orgastic future..." etc)
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Key Lines
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"But all this part of it seemed remote and unessential. I found myself on Gatsby’s side, and alone . . . as he lay in his house and didn’t move or breathe or speak, hour upon hour, it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no one else was interested—interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to which every one has some vague right at the end."; "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 possess some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life. Even when the East excited me most, even when I was most keenly aware of its superiority to the bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the Ohio . . . it had always for me a quality of distortion."; "After Gatsby’s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes’ power of correction. So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home."; "I couldn’t forgive [Tom] or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made"; "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 one fine morning—"; "After two years I remember the rest of that day, that night and the next day, only an endless drill of police and photographers and newspaper men in and out of Gatsby's front door"; "I wanted to go into the room where he lay and reassure him: 'I'll get somebody for you, Gatsby. Don't worry. Just trust me and I'll get somebody for you'"
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Cheatography n. The art of mapping complex subjects into clear, instantly navigable reference guides.
