THE GREAT GATSBY – chapter eight study guide
Literary Analysis
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154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
164-166
167
168
169
170
A. “enormous house” (empty—void)
B. more on Cody…Gatsby’s background => vivid description of Daisy’s house
C. innocence in the passage: “She was the first nice girl he had ever known”
A. Nick’s conclusion about Gatsby: “So he made the most of his time”
B. a sense that Gatsby deceived her: he made her think he could support her
(money)
A. foreshadowing of economic differences: “…and Gatsby was overwhelmingly
aware of the youth and mastery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness
of many cloths and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot
struggles of the poor.”
A. importance of the fact: “He did extraordinarily well in the war.”
B. he wanted to go home instead of Oxford—to see Daisy (“…a quality of nervous
despair in Daisy’s letters…”)
C. torn: wait for Gatsby or…: “Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move
again with the season; suddenly she was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with
half a dozen men, and drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and chiffon of an
evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor beside her bed. And all the
time something within her was crying for a decision. She wanted her life shaped now,
immediately—and the decision must be made by some force—of love, of money, of
unquestionable practicality—that was close at hand.”
A. Gatsby to Nick: “Of course she might have loved him [Tom], just for a minute,
when they were first married—and loved me more even then, do you see?”
A. Gatsby returns while Daisy and Tom are on their honeymoon; Gatsby expresses
his emotions: “The track curved and now it was going away from the sun, which as it
sank lower, seemed to spread itself in benediction over the vanishing city where she
had drawn her breath. He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a
wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it
was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that
part of it, the freshest and the best, forever.”
A. sincere thoughts by Nick about Gatsby, with parallel comments on p 6 AND 136:
“They’re a rotten crowd; you’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”
A. various comments had been made by Wilson regarding Myrtle’s lover: he
connects the yellow car with Myrtle’s broken nose “months before” AND the
dog leash…Wilson thinks her lover killed her with the car…
A. lots of symbolism using “the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg” with God (sees
all)—think positioning of characters placed above others— and earlier with Gatsby,
on page 125, “You [Gatsby] resemble the advertisement of that man” and even
earlier, on page 104, with “He was the son of God”…
A. Wilson eventually finds out that Gatsby is the owner of the car—“yellow car” /
“death car”…
A. “The chauffer heard the shots…” again, some uncertainty, mystery surrounding
Gatsby because there were no witnesses…
A. chapter ends with water imagery—a motif throughout the chapter; why?