Chapter 8-p. 147-162

Chapter 8-p. 147-162

Summary: Nick wakes up at dawn and goes to check on Gatsby at his house. Gatsby tells Nick that he was waiting at Daisy's house all night but she never came out to speak to him. Nick, trying to be practical suggests that Gatsby leaves town, since he was just in a car that killed a woman, but Gatsby responds by telling Nick the story of him and Daisy when they were young, in great detail. The story is interrupted when Gatsby's gardener tells Gatsby he is going to drain the pool. Gatsby objects because he hasn't gotten to swim in it. Nick leaves Gatsby's to go to work but cannot focus. He refuses a date with Jordan Baker and then begins talking about George Wilson, who is mourning his wife's death. He makes the connection that whoever was driving the car was Myrtle's lover and goes to ask Tom who's car it was. Tom tells him it was Gatsby's and George goes over to Gatsby's mansion, where he finds him floating in the pool on an air mattress, and shoots Gatsby and then himself.

a. Jay Gatsby

b." He had intended probably to take what he could and go-but now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail." p. 149

c. Jay Gatsby has become a completely different character than the one he was portrayed to be in the beginning of the novel. The once interesting and mysterious hero has become hopeless and slightly depressing. His feelings for Daisy, which initially seemed romantic, have become obsessive. After losing Daisy Jay Gatsby has become a ghost of a person. Without his goal of having Daisy, Gatsby has no purpose all the things that initially seemed to make him who he was are meaningless to him and becomes a person completely void of purpose. Gatsby is an empty man who has surrendered to the harsh world.

d. Gatsby's role in the novel is extremely important. While Nick is the narrator, Jay Gatsby is the one who drives the story. Gatsby is used to portray Fitzgerald's message of dreams. Through Gatsby's story the reader is led to question whether it is beneficial or harmful to follow dreams. Gatsby acts as a hyperbole of everyone who has ever read the book. He forces the reader to question the obsessive materialistic part of themselves that every human possesses.

" 'They're a rotten crowd," I shouted across the lawn. 'You're worth the whole damn lot put together."

I think this quote is extremely important to the story because it demonstrates how Nick Carraway has changed throughout the novel. Throughout the novel Fitzgerald makes a point of how slow Nick is to judge and how honest he is in everything he says. After experiencing how horrible everyone has acted, hearing Nick, who we have come to trust as a narrator, confirm out hatred for the characters shows how evil they truly are.