The Great Gatsby
Chapter 8
Nick cannot sleep
• I couldn't sleep all night; a fog-horn
was groaning incessantly on the
Sound
• I tossed half-sick between
grotesque reality and savage,
frightening dreams.
Gatsby's house
• At dawn, Nick jumps out of bed and
heads to Gatsby's house.
• I saw that his front door was still
open and he was leaning against a
table in the hall, heavy with
dejection or sleep.
• His house had never seemed so enormous
to me as it did that night when we hunted
through the great rooms for cigarettes.
• I found the humidor on an unfamiliar table,
with two stale, dry cigarettes inside.
• Throwing open the French windows of the
drawing-room, we sat smoking out into the
darkness.
Gatsby’s youth
• Gatsby wanted to talk about Daisy.
• She was the first “nice” girl he had ever known.
• While he was in the army at Camp Taylor, he
went to her house as often as possible.
• It amazed him - he had never been in such a
beautiful house before.
• As a penniless young man, he knew
that he did not belong there.
• Gatsby knows he misled Daisy, for he
had made her think that he came from a
similar background to hers, that he
could take care of her.
• he committed himself to someday being
able to support her, to be worthy of her.
Falling in love
• “I can't describe to you how surprised I was to find out I
loved her, old sport.”
• “I even hoped for a while that she'd throw me over, but she
didn't, because she was in love with me too.”
Off to war
• He was a captain before he went to the
front
• Following the Argonne battles, he got his
majority and the command of the
divisional machine-guns.
Meanwhile, daisy moves on
• Daisy began to move again with the
season; suddenly she was again keeping
half a dozen dates a day with half a dozen
men.
Tom
• That force took shape in the middle of
spring with the arrival of Tom
Buchanan. There was a wholesome
bulkiness about his person and his
position, and Daisy was flattered.
Daisy Dumps gatsby
• The letter reached Gatsby while
he was still at Oxford.
Gatsby returns
• He came back from France when
Tom and Daisy were still on their
wedding trip
Louisville
• Gatsby used the last of his money to go to
Louisville and soak up the memories of her.
• As he left Louisville on the train, "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. . .he knew that he
had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best,
forever."
Back to the present
• The gardener, the last one of
Gatsby's former servants, came
to the foot of the steps.
• “I'm going to drain the pool today,
Mr. Gatsby. Leaves'll start falling
pretty soon, and then there's
always trouble with the pipes.”
• “Don't do it today,”
• “You know, old sport, I've never
used that pool all summer?”
After breakfast
• Nick is worried
• “I didn't want to go to the
city.”
• “I didn't want to leave
Gatsby.”
• “I missed that train, and
then another, before I
could get myself away.”
Nick Leaves
• “They're a rotten crowd,” I shouted
across the lawn.
• “You're worth the whole damn bunch
put together.”
• I've always been glad I said that. It
was the only compliment I ever gave
him, because I disapproved of him
from beginning to end.
Nick at work
• Just before noon the phone woke
me, and I started up with sweat
breaking out on my forehead.
• It was Jordan Baker.
Jordan’s call
•
•
•
•
•
“You weren't so nice to me last night.”
“How could it have mattered then?”
“However - I want to see you.”
“I want to see you, too.”
“Suppose I don't go to Southampton, and come into town
this afternoon?”
• “No - I don't think this afternoon.”
• “Very well.”
• 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.
Valley of Ashes
• When Nick had passed through the
Valley of Ashes on the way to work, he
had crossed to the other side of the train.
• He did not want to see the curious
crowds that would be gathered around
the place of the accident.
Catherine
• They had difficulty in locating the
sister, Catherine.
• She must have broken her rule
against drinking that night, for
when she arrived she was stupid
with liquor and unable to
understand that the ambulance
had already gone
Wilson is going crazy
• Michaelis tries to calm him down.
• About three o'clock the quality of
Wilson's incoherent muttering
changed - he grew quieter and
began to talk about the yellow car.
• At 6 am, one of the watchers of the
night before, came back.
Wilson Disappears
• Wilson was quieter now, and Michaelis
went home to sleep; when he awoke four
hours later and hurried back to the
garage, Wilson was gone.
• Wilson had gone out on foot to search for
the owner of the yellow car.
• By half past two he was in West Egg,
where he asked someone for directions
to Gatsby's house.
Gatsby Uses the pool
• At two o'clock Gatsby put on his bathingsuit and left word with the butler that if
any one phoned word was to be brought
to him at the pool.
• He stopped at the garage for a pneumatic
mattress that had amused his guests
during the summer, and the chauffeur
helped him pump it up.
Wilson Finds Gatsby
• The chauffeur - he was one of
Wolfsheim's proteges - heard the
shots - afterward he could only say
that he hadn't thought anything
much about them.
Death at the mansion
• Nick arrived at Gatsby's house, anxiously
looking for his friend. He hurried to the pool with
the chauffeur, the butler, and the gardener.
• "The laden mattress moved irregularly down the
pool," surrounded by a red circle in the water.
• It was after we started with Gatsby toward the
house that the gardener saw Wilson's body a
little way off in the grass,
• and the holocaust was complete.
Chapter 9
Two Years Later
• Nick writes this chapter two years after Gatsby's death.
• I remember the rest of that day, and that night and the next
day, only as an endless drill of police and photographers
and newspaper men in and out of Gatsby's front door.
Catherine
• She swore that her sister, Myrtle had never seen Gatsby.
• Her sister was completely happy with her husband and had
been into no mischief whatever.
• So Wilson was reduced to a man “deranged by grief.” in
order that the case might remain in its simplest form.
• And it rested there.
Preparing for the funeral
• Nick realizes he is the only person who seemed to really care about
Gatsby and one of the few who was on his side.
• Nick calls Daisy to give her the news within the hour, but the servants
tell him that she and Tom have gone out of town without leaving an
address or a date of return.
• He then tries to call Meyer Wolfsheim at his office, but it is after five
o'clock, and no one answers.
No one cares
• When Nick is in the room with Gatsby's body, he imagines him
saying, “Look here, old sport, you've got to get somebody for me.
. .I can't go through this alone.”
• The next day no one telephoned, even though everyone would
have read about Gatsby's murder in the newspaper.
• no one comes to Gatsby's house.
• Nick feels very alone.
Shady Business
• When the phone finally rang, Nick thought it would be
Daisy at last.
• It was someone named Slagle, who did not know Gatsby
was dead.
• “Young Parke's in trouble,” he said rapidly. “They picked
him up when he handed the bonds over the counter.”
• When Nick tells him Gatsby is dead, he hangs up quickly.
Henry C. Gatz
• On the third day after Gatsby's death, a
telegram arrives from Gatsby's father.
• It said to postpone the funeral until he
came from Minnesota.
• Mr. Gatz was a solemn old man, very
helpless and dismayed.
• he was proud of his son “Jimmy” and the wealth he had amassed.
• He tells Nick that “he had a big future. . .”
• “If he'd of lived he'd of been a great man. . . helped build up the
country.”
Klipspringer
• That night an obviously frightened person called up, and demanded to know
who I was before he would give his name.
• It was Klipspringer, the boarder
• Nick tells him about the funeral arrangements, scheduled for the next day at
three o'clock.
• Klipspringer indicates that he is tied up and probably will not be able to make
it.
• He was more concerned about a pair of shoes he had left at Gatsby’s mansion.
• Nick hung up on him.
Wolfsheim
• The morning of the funeral, Nick went to
New York to see Meyer Wolfsheim.
• His secretary said he was in Chicago.
• He knows she is lying.
• Nick mentions Gatsby, and the secretary
goes into the office to get Wolfsheim
Memories of Gatsby
• “My memory goes back to when I first met him,”
he said. “A young major just out of the army
and covered over with medals he got in the
war.”
• “He was so hard up he had to keep on wearing
his uniform because he couldn't buy some
regular clothes.”
• Wolfsheim tells Nick about how he discovered
Gatsby and “made him -- raised him up out of
nothing, right out of the gutter.”
• Wolfsheim then says he regrets he cannot
come to Gatsby's funeral, confessing “I can't
get mixed up in it.”
leavinG Wolfsheim’s
• “When I left his office the sky had
turned dark and I got back to West
Egg in a drizzle.”
• Nick changes his clothes and goes
over to check on Mr. Gatz.
Mr. Gatz
• The old man explains he last saw Gatsby two years ago when he
came home for a visit and to buy his father a house.
• Gatz then shows Nick a picture of Gatsby's mansion that he has
carried in his wallet to show his friends.
Gatsby’s schedule
• He also shows a ragged copy of “Hopalong Cassidy,” a
book Gatsby owned when he was a boy.
• Inside, on the back cover, Gatsby had written out a
detailed schedule for his day on September 12, 1906.
• At the bottom of the schedule were his “resolves,”
including “no wasting time” and “be better to
parents.”
The Funeral
• A little before three the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing,
and I began to look involuntarily out the windows for other cars.
• So did Gatsby's father.
• The minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took him
aside and asked him to wait for half an hour.
• But it wasn't any use. Nobody came.
• About five o'clock our procession of three
cars reached the cemetery and stopped in
a thick drizzle beside the gate - first the
hearse, then Mr. Gatz and the minister and
I in the limousine, and a little later four or
five servants and the postman from West
Egg in Gatsby's station wagon.
• As we started through the gate into the cemetery I heard a
car stop and then the sound of someone splashing after us
over the soggy ground.
• I looked around. It was the man with owl-eyed glasses
whom I had found marvelling over Gatsby's books in the
library one night three months before.
Nick Goes Home
• After Gatsby's death the East was haunted for me like
that, distorted beyond my eyes' power of correction.
• So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air
and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I
decided to come back home.
Goodbye Jordan
• There was one thing to be done before I left, an awkward,
unpleasant thing that perhaps had better have been let alone.
But I wanted to leave things in order and not just trust that
obliging and indifferent sea to sweep my refuse away.
• I saw Jordan Baker and talked over
and around what had happened to
us together, and what had
happened afterward to me, and
she lay perfectly still, listening, in a
big chair.
• When I had finished she told me
without comment that she was
engaged to another man.
Goodbye Tom
• One afternoon late in October I saw Tom Buchanan.
• "What's the matter, Nick? Do you object to shaking hands
with me?"
"Yes. You know what I think of you."
"You're crazy, Nick," he said quickly.
• "Tom," I inquired, "what did you say to Wilson that
afternoon?"
Tom & Wilson
• “I told him the truth,” he said. “He came to the door while
we were getting ready to leave, and when I sent down word
that we weren't in he tried to force his way up-stairs.”
• “He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadn't told him who
owned the car. His hand was on a revolver in his pocket
every minute he was in the house...”
Tom & Daisy
• 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.
...
Goodbye Gatsby
• Gatsby's house remained empty, but it haunted Nick.
• On weekends, he still heard the music and laughter of
Gatsby's extravagant parties; as a result, he went into the
city to escape the sounds in his head.
• On his last night on West Egg, Nick walks over to Gatsby's
mansion and down to the beach.
• “He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream
must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to
grasp it.”
• What Gatsby never really knew or accepted was that the
dream was in the past.
• For the Great Gatsby, however, as long as he could see
the green light, he had a purpose in life.
The End
• So we beat on, boats against
the current, borne back
ceaselessly into the past.