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The morning after

Nick has a sleepeless night. He visits Gatsby who tells him about his past, and the nature of his love for Daisy. George Wilson, desperate in his grief, kills Gatsby and then shoots himself.

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The morning after

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  1. Nick has a sleepeless night. He visits Gatsby who tells him about his past, and the nature of his love for Daisy. • George Wilson, desperate in his grief, kills Gatsby and then shoots himself.

  2. Nick tells of his sleepless night, caught “between grotesque reality and savage, frightening dreams”. Towards dawn he visits Gatsby, advising him to leave home. Gatsby is determined to stay, to monitor Daisy’s movements. Gatsby tells Nick of his youthful experiences with Cody – “told it to me because “Jay Gatsby” had broken up like glass against Tom’s hard malice, and the long secret extravaganza was played out”. Nick shows Gatsby’s fragile world to be shattered by the insistent and brutally physical reality of Tom Buchanan. • Nick tells how Gatsby was overcome by desire on his youthful visits to Daisy Fay’s home, which seemed to encapsulate the magical freshness of romance. His subsequent commitment to Daisy is described as “the following of a grail”. • Gatsby received the letter announcing Daisy’s decision to marry Tom while he was at Oxford. In the days before transatlantic air travel became commonplace, the distance between Oxford and Louisville, Kentucky, where the wedding took place, remained a large one and left Gatsby powerless to intervene. • Gatsby has asked his gardener to postpone the planned draining of his pool and has expressed his intention of swimming in it. Nick is reluctant to leave him. At noon, at work, Nick receives a call from Jordan Baker.

  3. Gatsby awaits a call from Daisy, but resignedly goes to the pool where he floats on a mattress. His death is presented obliquely – his chauffeur hears shots. His gardenere finds Wison dead on the grass. With his suicide, we are told, “the holocaust was complete”. The word ‘holocaust’ here indicates wholesale destruction.

  4. The morning after • Nick has been kept up by “savage, frightening dreams” • The idealised dreams of earlier are now nightmares • The house, once the home of laughter and joy • is now intimidatingly “enormous”, “dark” and “musty”. • Dark? Musty?

  5. ‘Jay Gatsby’ • “’Jay Gatsby’ had broken up like glass against Tom’s hard malice.” • Analyse- punctuation, imagery… • He fell in love with Daisy because of the possibilities she promised (page 154): • “romances…redolent of this year’s shining motor cars” • His uniform acted almost as a disguise

  6. Daisy: “A grail” • Page 155: which symbols and motifs recur here? • Page 156: Daisy “gleaming like silver” • Daisy’s life becomes aimless while Gatsby is in Europe (page 157): “drifted…drowsing” • The war’s “misunderstanding” means they become separated. • Tom supplies the “force” which her life required.

  7. Narrative Voice • Nick shifts his narration to an account of George Wilson’s despair and his obsessive , distracted behaviour. Wilson tells Michaelis that Myrtle was murdered by her lover. He then mistakes the eyes of Doctor Eckleburg for those of an all-seeing God. He searches for the owner of the yellow car, is directed to Gatsby, and tracks him down.

  8. Structure • In this chapter, Nick declares again that he disapproved of Gatsby “from beginning to end”. Yet, in spite of this declared disapproval, the close identification with Gatsby is implicit in his decision to write a book about him and becomes more explicit. Nick’s sympathy verges on the protectiveness of a parent towards an innocent child. This protectiveness may recall Nick’s kindness to McKee, at the end of chapter 2. There are numerous instances of this kind of structural echo in the novel.

  9. Endings • There are repeated mentions of things which are “ghostly” such as the birds on page 158 • The gardener comments that “Leaves’ll start falling pretty soon” • Nick pleases Gatsby by saying: “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together”. • The final visual image of him is “a bright spot of colour against the white steps”. • Nick’s relationship with Jordan also ends.

  10. Gatsby’s Death • Gatsby goes to the pool to try to capture the last opportunity of summer. • Things now look “frightening” and “unfamiliar” to him (page 168) • Why is a rose “a grotesque thing”? • There is an inevitability about Gatsby’s death: “they knew then”. • “the holocaust was complete”.

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