The Great Gatsby, Notes on Chapter 8

The Great Gatsby

Notes on Chapter 8

Ø  “I couldn’t sleep all night” (pg., 120). Nick finds himself to be morally deprived, in contrast with characters like Jordan Baker, who are not the slightest interested with the ongoing conflicts between Gatsby and Tom, nor with Gatsby’s death as revealed in chapter 9.

·         Also, Nick’s inability to sleep foretells that a predicament will occur.

 

Ø  “’Nothing happened,’ he said wanly” (pg. 120). Advocates to how little Gatsby actually knows about Daisy.

 

Ø  “ghostly piano” (pg., 120). “Piano” is a reminiscent of the times when Daisy and Gatsby sat together and listened to the piano. But those days are long lost now in this chapter; therefore, the piano is delineated as “ghostly” (pg., 120).

 

Ø  “’You ought to go away,’” (pg., 120). From the beginning of the novel, Nick gradually starts caring about Gatsby and this remark here could be one of the highest extents of Nick’s concern for him.

·         Throughout the chapter, Gatsby feels weak and glum; he tries to convince himself that his dream that consists of him and Daisy could still come true.

 

v  Meanwhile Daisy thinks that she is in love with an affluent man of high social standards, Gatsby is married with the idea of proving himself apt to the luxurious lifestyle Daisy offers and becoming wealthier. He, as a result, does not urge back to Daisy after the war is over, for if his lies are caught then he would have no chance of being with her again. After Daisy breaks up with Gatsby while he was still at Oxford by sending him a letter, Gatsby no longer feels constrained to her real self as he has already created a dream of her –a projection that would even marry to a penniless man like he is– in his mind. In short, neither of them love the other for who he or she really is; they are in love with the other’s projection instead. Notably, this is why their love turns out to be hallucinatory at the end of the novel when Daisy chooses to be with Tom.

 

v  Daisy chooses herself a more predictable lifestyle in which she and Tom are together.

·         Daisy marries Tom mainly for his money. “and the decision must be made by some force – of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality – that was close at hand” (pg., 123).

 

Ø  After hearing Gatsby’s story and his real past, Nick becomes highly moved and his attitude towards the polite society complete changes.  He even abhors Jordan, as a result.

 

Ø  “Standing behind him, Michealis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and enormous, from the dissolving night” (pg., 130). Doctor Eckleburg’s eyes represent the God’s eyes for Wilson.

 

Ø  By the end of the chapter Nick states that Gatsby has finally grasped that his dream had long died, and that he had lost “the old warm world” (pg., 132). After this realization, says Nick, Gatsby must have “shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is” (pg., 132), advocating to the fact that a rose is gorgeous only for those who give a meaning to it –those like Gatsby.  Gatsby’s death portrays the end of a dreamer, and this accentuates the collapse of the “American Dream”.

 

Questions

1.      How does Wilson come to the conclusion on pages 130 and 131 that God demands revenge?

2.      When the car hit her, was Myrtle running away from her husband or was she trying to bring Tom’s car to a halt, assuming that Tom was in it?

3.      In spite of the fact that he rarely goes to church, why does Wilson make a vivid connotation by likening the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg’s to those of God?

    -Bora