The Great Gatsby
Chapter Four
Learning Intentions
• Develop the symbolic aspects of Gatsby’s
car and why it is important
• Increase your understanding of Gatsby’s
mysterious character and why we can’t
trust him
• Focus on Meyer Wolfsheim and
understand how he adds another
dimension to Gatsby’s character
Chapter Summary
• Gatsby visits Nick’s house for the first
time, and talks of his wartime experience.
• They travel into the city, where Gatsby
introduces Nick to Meyer Wolfsheim.
• Later, Jordan tells Nick about Daisy’s past,
her brief love affair with Gatsby, and her
subsequent marriage to Tom.
The Animal Kingdom
Nick refers to an ‘old timetable’ containing a list
he made in the summer of 1922 of the visitors to
Gatsby’s back yard, those who ‘paid him subtle
tribute of knowing nothing whatever about
him’. He lists characters whose names bear
allusions to animals of various descriptions.
Each of these animal’s carry negative
associations, and are shown to belong to the
power-hungry, parasitical jungle Nick had
already outlined in chapter 3.
The Animal Kingdom
• Some of the animals are horned and masculine in nature
– the Hornbeams, Blackbucks (note reference to ‘dirty
money’), Hammerheads and Cecil Roebuck. Some are
animals characterised by their wily, industrious natures –
the Leeches, ‘Rot-gut’ Ferret and Edgar Beaver. Another
distinct group are characterised by their association to
fish and pungent smells – the Fishguards, Ripley Snells,
Mrs Ulysses Swett, S.B. Whitebait. Faustina O’Brien also
reminds us of the legend of Faust, the character who
sold himself to the devil. All of these characters, with
their weirdly negative world associations are shown, by
their lack of interest in Gatsby, who ‘sold out’ to the
world of glamour and wealth.
Gatsby’s Car
• Gatsby’s car is described as being ‘swollen here and
there in its monstrous length’ and like a ‘green
leather conservatory’. Gatsby’s car, then, is more like a
home in its proportions, being ‘terraced with a labyrinth
of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns.’ The
‘green’ of the leather symbolises wealth in its connection
to the ‘green’ dollar, but it also subtly associated with the
green light at the end of Daisy's dock. We are reminded
throughout the entire novel that the entire show – the
car, the house, the parties and the possessions – all
exist in order to recapture her.
Gatsby and Nick
• Gatsby’s possessions do not make him happy. He
seems to get no intrinsic pleasure from the collected
artefacts around him and seems self-consciously aware
of the pretence upon which he has built his public
persona. As such he ‘chokes’ on his lie to Nick that he
was educated at Oxford and seems burdened by an
intense energy: ‘he was never quite still; there was
always a tapping foot somewhere or the impatient
opening and closing of a hand’. He seems to be aware
that he could be exposed at any time – unlike the
complacent Tom, who revels luxuriously in the
splendour of his castle, Gatsby seems never to be at
rest with himself.
Gatsby and Nick
• He props up his history with handy objects of authenticity
such as war medal and photographs of his time at
Oxford, almost like a man on the run from the law. His
stores are overblown, unrealistic and tinged with equal
measure of fantasy and self-pity (note the way he keeps
referring cryptically to the ‘sad thing that happened to
me’ and, how, when the war came, he ‘tried very hard
to die in order to forget it!) These unwittingly comical
reflections stretch his credibility to the limit and Nick is
left feeling ‘more annoyed than interested’ in the
favour that Gatsby has asked him.
Meyer Wolfsheim
• Critics have poured scorn on Fitzgerald’s
open caricature of Wolfsheim, who seems
to embody a very stereotypical Jewish
man. In reality, though, it is worth
remembering that Fitzgerald portrays
white Anglo-Saxon Protestants with equal
distaste and that he doesn't single out the
Jewish community for any specific
invective.
Particularly distasteful
character who has a shallow
way of conducting two
conversations at once.
Constantly looks around
him as if to evade
detection from the forces
of the law.
Meyer Wolfsheim
• Gatsby reveals he is the person who fixed the World
Series in 1919, therefore connecting him to characters
like Jordan baker who openly cheat in order to gain
privilege. His preoccupation with Gatsby’s ‘Oggsford’
education is another indicator of the premium given to
Anglican values among the wealthy classes.
• Wolfsheim is shown to represent the cut-throat
impersonal world of big business, where the players
eat each other alive. Nick is understandably
disconcerted by him and his connection to Gatsby
makes us question his ethics.
Meyer Wolfsheim
• Nick’s perceptions of Meyer Wolfsheim is markedly
different from the view held by Gatsby. In the narrative,
Wolfsheim’s reconstruction of the death of Rosy
Rosenthal follows Gatsby’s account of his own history
and precedes Jordan's recollection of her encounter with
Daisy and the handsome young lieutenant. The placing
of Nick’s narrative of Wolfsheim’s tale of violence among
gangsters inevitably causes sinister overtones to
reverberate into the framing glimpses of Gatsby's past.
• Gatsby is dually presented as a heroic soldier and
innocent lover as well as hinting at his corruption.
Narrative Deviation
At this point, Nick re-tells the story of Gatsby and
Daisy’s love affair from Jordan’s point of view.
He relates her words as if they were exactly as
he remembers them of the October in 1917.
Does this effect the reliability of Nick’s narrative
style?
Can Jordan be trusted to tell the truth?
She has already been shown as a liar – do we feel
comfortable hearing the story from her
perspective?
Daisy’s Men
• Jordan tells how Daisy had been the ‘most popular girl’ in their
Louisville hometown when they were growing up. The colour white
is mentioned in connection to her three times, thus establishing her
as the archetypal fairy-virgin whose parents don’t approve of the
relationship she has formed with a young soldier (Gatsby) and force
her to finish with him.
• She is shown to get over this disappointment quickly by becoming
engaged to Tom Buchanan the next February, Jordan, her
bridesmaid, tells of how she discovered Daisy drunk on her bed on
the day of her wedding breakfast, clutching a letter in her hand (from
Gatsby) and crying uncontrollably. Significantly, she attempts to toss
away the £350,000 pearl necklace Tom had given her as an
engagement present and says she has ‘changed her mind’. This
fickle tendency to change her mind will become even more
significant at the end of the novel.
Daisy’s Men
• The letter and the pearl necklace are important symbols
of stability and status at this crisis point in Daisy’s life. As
Gatsby’s letter come apart in hands ‘like snow’, her
decision seems to have been made for her. Gatsby’s
love is perceived as transient and unstable, whereas
Tom’s version of ‘love’ represents rock solid
permanence, by virtue of its immutable wealth.
She didn’t say another word. We gave her spirits of
ammonia and put ice on her forehead and hooked her
back into her dress, and half an hour later, when we
walked out of the room, the pearls were around her neck
and the incident was over.
Daisy’s Men
• Daisy, through choice, has become an emblem of Tom’s old money.
She abandons her romantic urges, casts off her emotional coat and
embarks on a marriage which will offer stability of status. Note the
effort of the others to ‘ice’ her into submission, cooling her truer
passion for the man she loved, and they way they ‘hook’ her into her
dress. For she has, indeed, become a piece of meat in this
transaction. This is borne out in Jordan’s recollection of how Tom
began cheating on her almost immediately after the wedding was
over, as well as his love of alcohol.
• Jordan then informs Nick that Gatsby's ‘favour’ is to ask him to invite
Daisy round to his house for tea, in an attempt to rekindle an affair
that had been extinguished by ice and snow years earlier.