Gatsby says she is leaving Tom for him. Tom then makes more specific allegations about Gatsby — that he sold alcohol in drug stores in New York and Chicago with Meyer Wolfshiem remember the novel is set during Prohibition , as well as being involved in gambling. It is at this point that Gatsby 'loses' Daisy. We then hear about the accident that occurred just after this point. The narrative briefly switches to a court of inquest. In Tom's elitist mind, Gatsby is common and therefore his existence is meaningless: He comes from ordinary roots and can never change that.
By chapter's end, Gatsby has been fully exposed. Gone are the mysterious rumors and the self-made myth. Stripped of all his illusions, he stands outside Daisy's house, vulnerable and tragically alone. Although he begins the chapter with his customary Gatsby dignity, when he comes up against Tom's hardness, the illusion of Jay Gatsby comes tumbling down.
In all of Gatsby's years of dreaming, he never once suspected that he might not have his way as is the nature of dreaming; one never dreams of having people stand in the way, preventing fantasies from coming true. As soon as Gatsby has to contend with people whose parts he can't script, he's at a loss. Instead, he will try, at all costs, to hold on to his dream. It is, in a sense, the only thing that is real to him. Without it sadly , he is no longer able to define himself; therefore, the dream must be maintained at all costs even when the dream has passed its prime.
The best example of Gatsby's last-chance efforts to save his dream come after he tries to get Daisy to admit she never loved Tom. When she admits to having actually loved Tom, Gatsby, unwilling to give up, pushes the situation forward, abruptly telling Tom "Daisy's leaving you. By following Tom's command, the lovers, in effect, admit defeat and Gatsby's dream disintegrates. In addition to getting the real scoop on Gatsby, one also sees the real Daisy.
She has relatively few lines, but what she utters, and later what she does, changes her persona forever. Whereas in the previous chapters she has come off as shy and sweet, a little vapid, but decidedly charming, here, there is a bit more depth to her — but what lies beneath the surface isn't necessarily good.
Daisy's reasons for having an affair with Gatsby aren't at all the same reasons he is in love with her. By boldly kissing Gatsby when Tom leaves the room early in Chapter 7, then declaring "You know I love you" loudly enough for all to hear much to Jordan and Nick's discomfiture Daisy has, in effect, shown that to her, loving Gatsby is a game whose sole purpose is to try and get back at Tom. She's playing the game on her own terms, trying to prove something to her husband her response to Tom's rough questioning later at the hotel also supports this idea.
The other early vision of Daisy is of the peacekeeper although one wonders why she would want Tom and Gatsby both at the same outing. On the hot summer day, it is Daisy who suggests they move the party to town largely in an attempt to keep everyone happy.
Strange things, however, always happen in the city — in the land of infinite possibilities. By changing the location, the action also shifts.
As the chapter continues and the party moves to the neutral, yet magical, land of the city, the real Daisy begins to emerge, culminating in her fateful refusal to be part of Gatsby's vision. In a sense, she betrays him, leaving him to flounder helplessly against Tom's spite and anger. Finally, by the end of the chapter, the mask of innocence has come off and Daisy is exposed. Her recklessness has resulted in Myrtle's brutal death. To make matters worse, one even senses that Daisy, in fact, tried to kill Myrtle.
Gatsby has a hard time admitting that the object of his love has, in fact, not merely hit and killed another person, but has fled the scene as well. Myrtle's death by Gatsby's great car is certainly no accident. The details are sketchy, but in having Myrtle run down by Gatsby's roadster, Fitzgerald is sending a clear message. Gatsby's car, the "death car," assumes a symbolic significance as a clear and obvious manifestation of American materialism.
What more obvious way to put one's wealth and means on display than through the biggest, fanciest car around. Yes, it is tragic that Myrtle dies so brutally, but her death takes on greater meaning when one realizes that it is materialism that brought about her end. Looking back to Chapter 2, it is clear that Myrtle aspires to wealth and privilege. She wants all the material comforts money can provide — and isn't at all above lording her wealth over others such as her sister, or Nick, or the McKees.
Her desire for money which allows access to all things material led her to have an affair with Tom she got involved with him initially because of the fashionable way he was dressed. Myrtle's death is sadly poetic; a woman who spent her life acquiring material possessions by whatever means possible has been, in effect, killed by her own desires.
Dwelling too much on material things, Fitzgerald says, can not bring a positive resolution. Materialism can only bring misery, as seen through Myrtle. Wilson, too, becomes more dimensional in the chapter, which is necessary in order to prepare adequately for the chapter to follow. While Wilson isn't necessarily good, he is pure. On the other hand, Jordan is a pragmatic and realistic person, who grabs opportunities and who sees possibilities and even repetitive cyclical moments of change.
For example here, although fall and winter are most often linked to sleep and death, whereas it is spring that is usually seen as the season of rebirth, for Jordan any change brings with it the chance for reinvention and new beginnings.
That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it. High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl. Nick notes that the way Daisy speaks to Gatsby is enough to reveal their relationship to Tom. Once again we see the powerful attraction of Daisy's voice.
For Nick, this voice is full of "indiscretion," an interesting word that at the same time brings to mind the revelation of secrets and the disclosure of illicit sexual activity.
Nick has used this word in this connotation before—when describing Myrtle in Chapter 2 he uses the word "discreet" several times to explain the precautions she takes to hide her affair with Tom. But for Gatsby, Daisy's voice does not hold this sexy allure, as much as it does the promise of wealth , which has been his overriding ambition and goal for most of his life.
To him, her voice marks her as a prize to be collected. This impression is further underscored by the fairy tale imagery that follows the connection of Daisy's voice to money. Much like princesses who is the end of fairy tales are given as a reward to plucky heroes, so too Daisy is Gatsby's winnings, an indication that he has succeeded. Maybe you don't believe that, but science——" 7.
Nick never sees Tom as anything other than a villain ; however, it is interesting that only Tom immediately sees Gatsby for the fraud that he turns out to be. Almost from the get-go, Tom calls it that Gatsby's money comes from bootlegging or some other criminal activity. It is almost as though Tom's life of lies gives him special insight into detecting the lies of others. The relentless beating heat was beginning to confuse me and I had a bad moment there before I realized that so far his suspicions hadn't alighted on Tom.
He 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.
Wilson was so sick that he looked guilty, unforgivably guilty—as if he had just got some poor girl with child. You will also often be asked to compare Tom and Wilson , two characters who share some plot details in common.
This passage, which explicitly contrasts these two men's reactions to finding out their wives are having affairs , is a great place to start. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that's the idea you can count me out. Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions and next they'll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white. Flushed with his impassioned gibberish he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization.
I don't give big parties. I suppose you've got to make your house into a pigsty in order to have any friends—in the modern world. Angry as I was, as we all were, I was tempted to laugh whenever he opened his mouth. The transition from libertine to prig was so complete. Nick is happy whenever he gets to demonstrate how undereducated and dumb Tom actually is. It was a terrible mistake, but in her heart she never loved any one except me! Gatsby throws caution to the wind and reveals the story that he has been telling himself about Daisy all this time.
In his mind, Daisy has been pining for him as much as he has been longing for her, and he has been able to explain her marriage to himself simply by eliding any notion that she might have her own hopes, dreams, ambitions, and motivations. Gatsby has been propelled for the last five years by the idea that he has access to what is in Daisy's heart. However, we can see that a dream built on this kind of shifting sand is at best wishful thinking and at worst willful self-delusion.
Just tell him the truth—that you never loved him—and it's all wiped out forever. She hesitated. Her eyes fell on Jordan and me with a sort of appeal, as though she realized at last what she was doing—and as though she had never, all along, intended doing anything at all. But it was done now. It was too late…. I can't help what's past. Gatsby wants nothing less than that Daisy erase the last five years of her life. He is unwilling to accept the idea that Daisy has had feelings for someone other than him, that she has had a history that does not involve him, and that she has not spent every single second of every day wondering when he would come back into her life.
His absolutism is a form of emotional blackmail. For all Daisy's evident weaknesses, it is a testament to her psychological strength that she is simply unwilling to recreate herself, her memories, and her emotions in Gatsby's image. She could easily at this point say that she has never loved Tom, but this would not be true, and she does not want to give up her independence of mind. Unlike Gatsby, who against all evidence to the contrary believes that you can repeat the past, Daisy wants to know that there is a future.
She wants Gatsby to be the solution to her worries about each successive future day, rather than an imprecation about the choices she has made to get to this point. We've known this ever since the first time we saw them at the end of Chapter 1 , when he realized that they were cemented together in their dysfunction. It passed, and he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything, defending his name against accusations that had not been made.
But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room.
In just the same way, Tom's explanations about who Gatsby really is and what is behind his facade have broken Daisy's infatuation. Take note of the language here— as Daisy is withdrawing from Gatsby, we come back to the image of Gatsby with his arms outstretched, trying to grab something that is just out of reach. In this case it's not just Daisy herself, but also his dream of being with her inside his perfect memory.
Myrtle fights by provoking and taunting. So what do we make of the fact that Myrtle was trying to verbally emasculate her husband? Maybe yelling at him is her only recourse in a life where she has no actual ability to control her life or bodily integrity.
The "death car" as the newspapers called it, didn't stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment and then disappeared around the next bend.
Michaelis wasn't even sure of its color—he told the first policeman that it was light green. The other car, the one going toward New York, came to rest a hundred yards beyond, and its driver hurried back to where Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick, dark blood with the dust. Michaelis and this man reached her 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. The stark contrast here between the oddly ghostly nature of the car that hits Myrtle and the visceral, gruesome, explicit imagery of what happens to her body after it is hit is very striking. On the other hand, every time that we see Myrtle in the novel, her body is physically assaulted or appropriated.
Tom initially picks her up by pressing his body inappropriately into hers on the train station platform. Before her party, Tom has sex with her while Nick a man who is a stranger to Myrtle waits in the next room, and then Tom ends the night by punching her in the face. Finally, she is restrained by her husband inside her house and then run over.
Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table with a plate of cold fried chicken between them and two bottles of ale. He was talking intently across the table at her and in his earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her own.
Once in a while she looked up at him and nodded in agreement. They 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.
And so, the promise that Daisy and Tom are a dysfunctional couple that somehow makes it work Nick saw this at the end of Chapter 1 is fulfilled. For careful readers of the novel, this conclusion should have been clear from the get-go. Daisy complains about Tom, and Tom serially cheats on Daisy, but at the end of the day, they are unwilling to forgo the privileges their life entitles them to.
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