THEMES
Chapter summary = https://www.coursehero.com/lit/The-Great-Gatsby/summaries/
1) Nick goes to the Buchanan's house (description of girls in white)
2) Nick goes with Tom to the valley of the ashes to Myrtle's flat, he slaps her
3) Nick goes to one of Gatsby's parties + meets him & Jordan again
4) Gatbsy tells Nick his life story but it is inconsistent. And Jordan retells story of Daisy when young e.g.
pearls
5) Daisy comes to Nick's house ('clock') and rekindles with Gatsby, they then go to his mansion ('didn't live
up to vision')
6) Starts about James Gatz/Dan Cody. Then Sloanes and Gatsby interaction. Then Tom and Daisy come
to Gatsby's party. At the end: Daisy didn't like it, 'can't repeat the past', 'suck on the pap of life'
7) Hot day at Daisy's house (Pammy), on the way Tom sees Wilson who says he wants to take Myrtle
away & at Plaza Hotel fight between Tom and Gatsby over Daisy. Results in Myrtle being killed. At the
end, Gatsby is waiting outside Daisy's window.
8) Nick & Gatsby ('worth the whole damn bunch) + Jordan calls + Wilson kills Gatsby
9) Nick tries to get people to come to the funeral / talks about how all the Westerners left / flashback to final
convo between him and Jordan about the break up / sees Tom who believes Gatsby killed Myrtle ('cried
like a baby' & 'careless people')
Romantic & platonic love
Nick and - Daisy (chapter 1): We heard you were engaged to a Reflects his moral nature in comparison to the
girl back girl out West… we heard it from three people, so it others, as he does not want to continue
home must be true misleading the girl back home (whilst almost
- Nick (chapter 1): I wasn't even vaguely engaged… I cheating on her) and wants to break off relations
had no intention of being rumored into marriage so he could pursue Jordan.
- Nick (chapter 3): I knew that first I had to get myself
definitely out of that tangle back home. I'd been However he does this over letter much like how
writing letters once a week and signing them: 'Love, he "threw [Jordan] me over on the telephone",
Nick' which perhaps is not very fair.
He also downplays this affair.
Nick and Nick's paradoxical attitude to Gatsby: Earlier he frowns at Gatsby's excess/lack of
Gatsby - Gatsby who represented everything for which I have manners, but later he admires, even romanticises,
an unaffected scorn Gatsby as heroic.
- I disapproved of him from beginning to end
- C7 after M's death: "I disliked him so much by this
time"
- If personality is an unbroken series of successful
gestures, then there was; something gorgeous about
him
- It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of
eternal reassurance in it
- You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together
- We were close friends
“They’re a rotten crowd’, I shouted across the lawn. ‘You’re Almost everyone in this novel is immoral (Gatsby
worth the whole damn bunch put together.” … I've always & Wolfshiem as criminals, Jordan a cheater, Tom
been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave as abusive & cheats on Daisy, Daisy cheats on
him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end Tom, Myrtle cheats on Wilson, people at Gatsby's
(chapter 8 - last time he sees Gatsby alive) parties lie). But Nick still sees Gatsby as
honourable in the sense he takes the blame for
Daisy killing Myrtle, not like how Tom and Daisy
cause a mess and abandon it. He always acts
from a good place in pursuit of love for Daisy.
Nick and Jordan: It takes two to make an accident (chapter 3) Talking about car accidents yet implies her stance
,Jordan on relationships, reflecting in the future the
demise of their relationship is due to both of them
Chapter 9: "engaged to another man. I doubted that" To make him jealous or suggest he doesn't matter
to her, however her saying she doesn't care about
"I don't give a damn about you now, but it was a new him now implies she does (and is in denial) and is
experience for me, and I felt a little dizzy for a while" lying.
Nick says that Jordan tends to prefer being with
people she can dominate or pull one over on, and
Nick does seem to rely on her for emotional
strength at some points (for example in the car
when he's thinking about turning 30). Nick and
Jordan break up right at the moment when she
can't control his actions—can't make him go into
the house, can't make him apologise for ignoring
her.
Chapter 1 Daisy: 'I think I'll arrange a marriage… I'll sort She doesn't object and plays almost coy and hard
of-oh—fling you together" to get, implying she likes this idea
Jordan: "I haven't heard a word"
Chapter 3: Jordan increasingly likes Nick, inviting him to join
- I found it necessary to attach myself to some one her and at the end of the night asking for him to
- 'I thought you might be here' she responded absently come and see her in the future. He does this and
- Jordan invited me to join her own party meets her family which seems a serious step in
- 'Please come and see me ... Phone book ... Under their relationship - with the verb "integrate"
the name of Mrs Sigourney Howard ... My aunt ...' suggesting he is trying hard to make things work.
Chapter 5:
- For several weeks… mostly I was in New York,
trotting around with Jordan and trying to ingratiate
myself with her senile aunt
- At first I was flattered to go places with her, because Nick's conflicting feelings of love
she was a golf champion, and everyone knew her
name (chapter 3) Like: "A phrase began to beat in my ears with a
- Then it was something more. I wasn't actually in sort of heady excitement: There are only the
love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity (chapter 3) pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired", his
- She had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a status with Jordan is contradictory: pursued or is
moment I thought I loved her (chapter 3) he pursuing? Is he the busy one or the tired one?
- 'You weren't so nice to me last night…'However—I
want to see you' 'I want to see you, too.'
We talked like that for a while, and then abruptly we
weren't talking any longer. I don't know which of us
hung up with a sharp click, but I know I didn't care. I
couldn't have talked to her across a tea-table that
day if I never talked to her again in this world
(chapter 7)
- For just a minute I wondered if I wasn't making a
mistake (chapter 9)
- Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously
sorry, I turned away (chapter 9)
- 'Won't you come in, Nick?' 'No, thanks.' … Jordan as emotionally sensitive and affectionate
But Jordan lingered for a moment more… (chapter
7)
, - She often called me up at this hour… Usually her
voice came over the wire as something fresh and
cool… but this morning it seemed harsh and dry
(chapter 8)
- 'I hate careless people. That's why I like you' Liar as friends with Daisy & Tom
(chapter 3 Jordan)
Nick starts to see Jordan as "careless" grouped
- I'd had enough of all of them for one day, and with Tom and Daisy etc which he didn't before.
suddenly that included Jordan too (chapter 7 Nick)
Dishonesty:
Jordan =
- “And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small Femme fatale? = Jordan enjoys cultivating a
parties there isn’t any privacy.” public persona that does not reflect who she
- "Jordan smiled" when she realised "Biloxi" was a liar actually is. A large party allows her to blend in and
and made them look foolish only interact with the people she chooses. At a
- Nick believes: "Jordan Baker instinctively avoided smaller gathering she would be too open to closer
clever, shrewd men, and now I saw that this was examination, which might reveal her dishonest
because she felt safer on a plane where any nature.
divergence from a code would be thought
impossible. She was incurably dishonest… Both have a somewhat superiority complex,
subterfuge[s]" since she was young (means lie for dishonest/judgemental personality, and sarcastic
personal gain) sense of humour, which makes them compatible.
- "At her first big golf tournament there was a row that
nearly reached the newspapers—a suggestion that Jordan and Nick believe Nick is honest at the start
she had moved her ball from a bad lie in the yet at the end Jordan questions his self identity.
semi-final round. The thing approached the
proportions of a scandal—then died away. A caddy
retracted his statement and the only other witness
admitted that he might have been mistaken"
Nick =
- Unreliable narrator
- Downplays his affairs with women
- Doesn't tell us everything he knows about the
characters upfront (e.g he waits until Chapter 6 to tell
us the truth about Gatsby's origins)
- "I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the
second time was that afternoon" - a lie as he gets
drunk more than twice in the book
- Jordan: "You said a bad driver was only safe until
she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad
driver, didn’t I? I mean it was careless of me to make
such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an
honest, straightforward person."
- “Everyone 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”
- Judgemental person
Chapter 7: There was Jordan… who, unlike Daisy, was too Unlike Daisy who dwells in her illusions, Jordan
wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age. lives in reality and is a practical woman.
Jordan I was flattered that she wanted to speak to me, because of all Beautiful, wealthy teenager who everybody
and the older girls I admired her most. wanted to be like and was someone Jordan
