17. The Great Gatsby – by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Out of the corner of
his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalk really formed a ladder and
mounted to a secret place above the trees – he could climb to it, if he climbed
alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable
milk of wonder. (p. 101)
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 –
So
we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. (last
page)
The story is told from the point of view of Nick Carraway
during a short period of time when he lives next door to Jay Gatsby in West
Egg, Long Island. Nick is closely acquainted with Daisy and Tom Buchanan, from
his college days at Yale. Daisy grew up closely with Jordan Baker in Louisville
as the most popular girl in the town and the fancy of officers from a nearby
fort. One of whom was the mysterious Mr. Gatsby.
The present is placed five years after Daisy’s flirtations
with officers and short romance with Gatsby as he is shipped into World War I.
Her husband, Tom, is a gruff former polo player with a domineering, imperious
nature. They moved East to enjoy New York city from their sleepy domain in the
classy East Egg neighborhood.
Gatsby is shrouded in rumor and diabolical origins by the
partygoers at his mansion. They say he has a look like he has “killed a man”,
that he was a German spy during the war and that his rise to fame and fortune
was underhanded. His parties are a magnet for movie stars, directors, writers
and a flock of uninvited attachments. They are raucous, drunken affairs which
end in crazed dances, spousal fights and accidents such as the man who drives
his car into the ditch, losing a tire in the process, and reassures onlookers
that it just needs some gasoline. Little does the reader know but Gatsby has
planned all this in such a way as to maximize his chance of seeing Daisy and
taking up their affair where it left off.
Gatsby started life out as James Gatz (Jimmy to his father),
the son of “shiftless and unsuccessful farmers”. His fate was irrevocably
changed when he befriended Dan Cody, a wealthy mineral dealer, and became his
secretary and captained his yacht for an entire two years around the
continental US. His ambitious nature was forged much earlier though as we are
told:
But his heart was in a
constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him
in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his
brain while the clock ticked on the wash-stand and the moon soaked with wet
light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the pattern of
his fancies until the drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an
oblivious embrace.
We are later shown his daily schedule from when he was a
boy. He had set aside time for work, exercise, improving his mind and trade
skills in time slots with some “General resolves” underneath not to be delayed
and to save money. Gatsby is above all an ambitious go-getter.
Another important character is Meyer Wolfshiem, who we first
meet having lunch with Jay and Nick in a basement restaurant. He is described
as a shrewd gambler who had fixed the 1919 World Series and not been caught. He
is much more than this, however. He is the one who set Gatsby up in business
and taught him the tricks of making piles of money. Some of their ventures come
to light through Tom’s investigation of Gatsby. One is a buy-up of corner
pharmacies to sell bootlegged alcohol (possibly during prohibition which
started in 1919). Meyer later refuses to come to Gatsby’s funeral, saying that
we should try to be the best friends we can during life rather than death. It
is most likely a way to avoid being linked to his one-time friend and business
partner by police.
Gatsby manages to reignite an affair with Daisy although we
are not told how far beyond “visiting” they move. Tom has his own philandering problem,
which is the reason Daisy and he had to move from Chicago. He regularly sees a
girl named Myrtle Wilson, who is married to a mechanic named George. The two
have a double life in an apartment in the city. Tom evidently thinks it his
right to carry on this way.
Unsuspecting George finally figures out Myrtle has something
going before Tom pulls in for gas in Gatsby’s yellow car on the way to movies
in the city. He decides to lock her up and move west in two days but Myrtle
later escapes and approaches the same car, now being driven back by Daisy, only
to be smashed to her death. Jay takes control and they speed away home. George,
driven to hysteria, realizes the car’s description matches the one Tom had been
driving earlier. We are not told that Tom speaks with the crazed man or what he
says but it is obvious he incriminates Gatsby as the hit-and-run driver. George
kills Gatsby while he lies in the pool and is later discovered, having killed
himself, nearby by Nick and some servants.
Nick’s final encounter with Tom over the conversation he
must have had with George ends with the following:
I couldn’t forgive him 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…
In the end Nick is the only ally Gatsby has. In organizing
the man’s funeral, he realizes just how little party-goers knew or cared for
their host. Klipspringer is more concerned with having a pair of shoes returned
to him than attending the funeral, even though he boarded at Gatsby’s for
months.
Before retelling Gatsby’s story, Nick tells us he makes a
habit of reserving judgment, and how this tolerance has allowed him to see
deeper into the minds of compatriots. Though Gatsby “represented everything for
which [Nick has] an unaffected scorn”, there “was something gorgeous about him”
and he is exempt from Nick’s limits of tolerance. He goes on:
No – Gatsby turned out
all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in
the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive
sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
Role of T.J. Eckleberg’s eyes: on the route from West Egg
into downtown New York, on a wall near the ash pit where an oculist may have
had an office in the past, are the great spectacled eyes in bluish hues. The
eyes are ever watching and unblinking in their stare at passing traffic. They
are used by George Wilson to illustrate to Myrtle how God knows what she is
doing even if he does not. In this way they are omnipresent. They ‘see’ the
fatal accident which claims Myrtle later that evening. Many of the characters
in the book, Tom and Gatsby come to mind, are insular and perhaps unaware of
their own actions and their consequences. Tom finds no fault in his parallel
life with Myrtle, even allowing Nick in on the thinly veiled secret, but the
thought of Daisy’s indiscretion disgusts him. Gatsby can’t see his own time
with Daisy is over, he wants to recreate the past in the present and is
unwilling to accept that Tom received a minute of her love.
"The eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleberg are blue and gigantic fading,
bespectacled eyes with retinas one yard high. They look out of no face but,
instead from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose.”
