In Chapter 5 Nick invites Daisy over for tea so that Gatsby can just happen to be there too. I have to say I’m very disappointed in their meeting, I was expecting something…less awkward? Gatsby usually seems so calm and collected and when Daisy got there he just lost it. Clearly Gatsby had been planning a moment like this for over five years, I think he could of done a better job with what he had to say and what happened. I actually felt bad for Nick in this chapter, I think sitting in the room with the two extremely awkward lovebirds would have been painful. I also feel bad for him because he keeps getting dragged into this awkward romantic situations that really have nothing to do with him..i.e. Tom and Myrtle and now Gatsby and Daisy (third-wheel-Nick). Although if I were Nick I’m not sure which one I would find less awkward but Fitzgerald makes it clear that Daisy and Gatsby’s first meeting wasn’t the smoothest.

” Amid the welcome confusion of cups and cakes a certain physical decency established itself. Gatsby got himself into a shadow and, while Daisy and I talked, looked conscientiously from one to the other of us with tense, unhappy eyes. However, as calmness wasn’t an end in itself, I made an excuse at the first possible moment, and got to my feet.” Pg 87

Once the three of them go over to Gatsby’s home the tension gets no better. Gatsby takes them frantically around the house showing his various wonders from his collection of ‘beautiful shirts’ from England to citris fruits that he has imported. Not to keep bringing this but as I mentioned before I keep seeing similarities between this and Araby because he becomes obsessed with the silver bracelet that his love has ( or is able to afford) and Gatsby is clearly the same way, trying to practically sell himself to Daisy.

I hadn’t really noticed how sketchy Gatsby is acting until this chapter. Everything he has done so far seems like it has been for Daisy. He even says how ” If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay,” meaning that on clear days, he stares out at her dock-looking for the green light from chapter 1. He also lets Daisy know how hes been saving newspaper clippings of her. If I was Daisy I would be pretty creep-ed out by Gatsby at this point- there is a line and I think collecting newspaper clippings for the past five years crosses it. Once again I get the feeling that nothing good can come from meeting which I’m starting to find frustrating because I like Daisy and I wish that she could have the opportunity to be with someone better than Tom but although Gatsby seems like a better choice than Tom I don’t know if he loves Daisy or the idea of her. I’m also not convinced that Gatsby would be satisfied once he got her. He seems so reckless I doubt that anything would be able to really satisfy him. This could have something to do with the fact that the rest of his family is deceased he constantly feels the need to find something that will make him feel whole again or ‘help him to forget’ his past (ch.3). I think he has convinced himself that to do this he needs to be with Daisy, that she will be the solution to all of his problems. I think he needs to realize that some ‘holes can never be filled’ and no matter how hard you try to forget- the way to dealing with it shouldn’t be becoming obsessed with girl who he can never really have uncomplicated relations with or throwing lavish parties. I think its becoming clear that his grief has caused him to form an unhealthy idea of a relationship with Daisy and nothing good can come of it.

I can’t find a good link? sorrrrry!

In Chapter 4 Nick has tea with Jordan Baker at the request of Jay Gatsby. Jordan informs him that once when they were younger she saw his cousin Daisy completely smitten over a lieutenant. She remembers seeing the two sitting outside of her house, ” They were so engrossed in each other that she didn’t see me until I was five feet away.” Jordan states how she looked up to Daisy because she was one of the ‘most popular of all the young girls in Lousville.’  She remembers the meeting even more..

” The officer looked at Daisy while she was speaking, in a way that every youn girl wants to be looked at some time, and becuase it seemed romantic to me I have remembered the incident ever since. His name was Jay Gatsby, and I didn’t lay eyes on him again for over four years-even after I’d met him on Long Island I didn’t realize it was the same man.” pg. 75

WOW, I have to say I was not expecting Gatsby to be in love with Daisy Buchanan. I thought he had feelings for Jordan Baker and that’s why he spoke to her privately at his party and wanted Nick to have lunch with her. It all makes sense now.  I feel bad for Daisy it seems like everything would be perfect for her except her marriage (Tom Buchanan’s continuous relations with other women from day one of their marriage) and Gatsby’s been across the water all along. I also don’t think anything good can come from their meeting again, I’m sure their past was special but I don’t think Daisy is the type of person who would ever leave her husband for another man and the whole thing just seems like it is going to cause trouble. 

Another thing I found interesting in Chapter 4 was after Jordan and Nick had finished their conversation and left the Plaza they were walking out side and heard little girls singing:

” I’m the Sheik of Araby.

Your love belongs to me.

At night when you’re asleep

 Into your tent I’ll creep” pg. 78

I wonder if this mention of Araby has something to do with the short story written by James Joyce. To read the story click here.   In the story a young boy becomes infatuated with the idea of love. He thinks he has fallen in love with his next door neighbor’s sister when really he creates an idealized version of the girl who he is to be in love with. I think Gatsby is similar to Araby in this way because they both treat their “loves” as objects of desire. Gatsby works hard to possess material items for Daisy to admire in hopes that it will somehow help show his admiration of her. I think just like Araby, Gatsby is going to be disappointed with reality and the strong “love” or idea of love that he has thought of Daisy will be proven wrong. Also, because of the way that Jordan described Daisy I doubt that she and Jay Gatsby would have even dated that logn anyways, so I think over all of the years they have been separated Gatsby has been picturing a love that is very different from the one that he may have had or will ever have will Daisy. 

In chapter 3 Nick is invited to one of Gatsby’s notorious parties. Everyone at the party seems stunned at the elaborateness of the affair. There are hundreds of lights everywhere and a full orchestra and people drinking and having fun. Most of the people there have not even been invited by Gatsby and have just come to his house for the party. Once at the party Nick looks for ‘this Gatsby’ everywhere but he can’t seem to be found. The people around the party are not of much help because many of them do no actually know who Gatsby is. It seems like no one really knows who Gatsby is, everyone hears all of these rumors about him – ‘he killed a man,’ hes a spy..etc. Nick finally meets Gatsby by talking to him without realizing who he is, but Gatsby is not offended at all..

” He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced-or seemed to face-the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you, that at your best, you hoped to convey.” pg 48

I really want to find out who Gatsby really is. I find it really interesting that Nick was able to take all of this from one smile from Gatsby but I’m not completely convinced that he is right. Although it is nice to be introduced to one of the main characters before chapter 100 I still find Gatsby extremely mysterious. In Moby-Dick, we were not introduced to Ahab for awhile but all of the rumors about him gave me a pretty good idea of who he was. With Gatsby I feel the opposite, the rumors about him seem completely false- so far he seems like a fun-lover. I guess I’ll have to keep reading to find out more..

 

In chapter 2 Tom Buchanan takes Nick into the city to meet his mistress. This really surprised and confused me because Nick is Daisy’s cousin so why would he go along to meet the woman who is having an affair with his cousin’s husband? It seems completely absurd that Tom would even ask Nick to go along with him. Whats more absurd is that Tom Buchanan is allowed to openly have a mistress.

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After reading chapter one I can already tell that I like this book better than Moby-Dick. I think having the characters be able to move around ( as opposed to be being stuck on a whaling ship) makes the story much more interesting. In the first chapter the narrator Nick Carraway remembers how his father decided to finance him for a year to learn the bonds business. He moves out to Long Island to a part called West Egg. Soon after moving there he goes to visit his cousin Daisy and her husband Tom. I’m kind of confused as to why Fitzgerald would start the book off with what seems to be an unimportant interaction- especially when Nick doesn’t seem to even know his cousin well and he doesn’t seem to like Tom Buchanan. I think he may have put it in the book to show how Nick feels out of place in his new environment even when with people that are supposed to be ‘family.’ On page 12 Nick observes his cousin and her friend,

” They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening, too, would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its close, in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.”

I think as the book goes on Nick will continue to see all of the differences between the social classes in the East and the West but also in the smaller areas of East Egg and West Egg. Also after reading about East and West Egg I looked it up online and decided that our class should go here for a field trip : http://greatgatsbyboattour.org/