The Great Gatsby

Chapter 1
 The main purpose of this first chapter is to
introduce the characters and setting of the book.
 Nick Carraway is the narrator
 He is a young man in his late twenties who grew
up in the Midwest in a prominent, respected
middle class family.
 He says he is a decent human being who was
taught at an early age to reserve judgment, a trait
which has made him a confidante to many
people in his life.
 He graduated from New Haven (Yale) in 1915,
and then served in the military in World War I.
 The Buchanans lived in an
enormous Georgian style mansion
 The Story Begins….
 Nick has been invited to dinner at the
Buchanans.
 When he arrives at their home, he is amazed at
its size and the expansive grounds that run from
the house for a quarter of a mile down to the
beach.
 Tom Buchanan
 Thirty years old.
 Nick immediately notices that Tom has changed
since his college days.
 He is blond, handsome, and muscular.
 He appears to be sturdy and arrogant.
 Nick comments that Tom has a "cruel body,
capable of enormous leverage."
 Daisy Buchanan
 Tom's wife and Nick's cousin, appears to be
light as a feather.
 She sits inside the living room on a sofa and is
dressed in a lightweight, white garment that is
rippling in the breeze, giving the young woman
the image of floating.
 Her voice, light and thrilling to Nick, intensifies
the cool, airy picture of her appearance.
 She is shallow and careless.
 Jordan Baker
 Daisy’s friend.
 She is a professional
golfer
 She is shallow and vain,
much like Daisy
 Dinner…
 Tom receives a phone call
and leaves the table.
 Daisy leaves.
 Jordan Baker tells Nick
that Tom has a mistress
in the city.
 After Dinner….
 Daisy reveals "turbulent emotions" to Nick.
 She tells him that when she had her daughter two
years ago, Tom was nowhere around.
 She is glad that the child is a daughter, for she feels
she can raise her to be "a fool--that's the best thing a
girl can be in the world, a beautiful little fool."
 She then admits her misery to Nick and says, "I've had
a very bad time, and I'm pretty cynical about
everything."
 After Dinner Cont’d
 Nick and Daisy go inside to join Tom and
Jordan.
 Tom warns Nick about Daisy's complaints and
says, "Don't believe everything you hear."
 Daisy teases Nick and Jordan about fixing them
up together.
 The mention the rumor of Nick’s engagement,
but he denies it, saying that she was just a friend.
 The Evening Ends
 Jordan has a
tournament in the
morning and needs to
rest.
 Nick decides to leave as
well.
 As he drives home, he
is confused and
disgusted and doesn’t
know what to think.
  Nick stands outside to take in
the view of the bay.
Nick Sees Gatsby  He notices that his neighbor is
also outside, staring at the stars
with hands in his pocket.
 Just as Nick prepares to greet
him, the neighbor stretches out
his arms to the dark water and
appears to tremble.
 Nick looks out to the bay to
see what attracts the neighbor's
attention, but he sees only a
single green light, probably at
the end of a dock in East Egg.
 When Nick looks back toward
his neighbor, the man has
vanished.
The Great
Gatsby
Chapter 2
 The Valley of Ashes
• A desolate area of land between West Egg
and New York City
• In this industrial wasteland, through which
the commuter train must pass, everything
is covered with dust, smoke, and ashes.
 Dr. T.J.
Eckelberg
• The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are
blue and gigantic - their irises are one
yard high.
• They look out of no face, but, instead,
from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles
which pass over a nonexistent nose.
 George Wilson
• Nick followed Tom over a low whitewashed railroad
fence, and back a hundred yards along the road under
Doctor Eckleburg's persistent stare.
• The only building in sight was a small block of yellow
brick sitting on the edge of the waste land
• One of the three shops it contained was…
• Repairs.
GEORGE B. WILSON.
Cars bought and sold.
• A blond, spiritless man,
anemic, and faintly
handsome.
 Myrtle Wilson
• A thickish woman, in the middle
thirties, and faintly stout, but carried
her surplus flesh sensuously as some
women can.
• sensuous, with an
air of vitality
 Catherine
• Myrtle’s sister
• A slender, worldly girl of about thirty, with
a solid, sticky bob of red hair, and a
complexion powdered milky white.
• When she moved about there was an
incessant clicking as innumerable pottery
bracelets jingled up and down upon her
arms.
 The McKees
• Neighbors from downstairs
• Mr. McKee was a pale, feminine man
• He was a photographer
• She was shrill, languid, handsome
and horrible.
• She loudly complained to everyone
present about her husband George
 Whiskey & Gossip
• “They say Gatsby’s a nephew or a cousin
of Kaiser Wilhelm's. That's where all his
money comes from.”
• “Neither of them can stand the
person they're married to.”

Kaiser Wilhelm: the last German

Emperor and King of Prussia,
ruling both the German Empire
and Prussia from June 1888 to
November 1918.
 More Whiskey & Gossip
• Catherine leaned close to me and
whispered in my ear: "Neither of them
can stand the person they're married
to."
• "When they do get married," continued
Catherine, "they're going West to live
for a while until it blows over."
• "She really ought to get away from
him," resumed Catherine to me.
"They've been living over that garage
for eleven years. And tom's the first
sweetie she ever had."
 The Party’s Over
• Nick describes himself at the party as being "within
and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled
by the inexhaustible variety of life."
• The spell of the party, however, is broken around
midnight when Tom and Myrtle argue loudly over her
talking about Daisy.
• Tom insists that she not even mention his wife's
name.
• When Myrtle taunts him by shouting, "Daisy!
Daisy!...I'll say it whenever I want to," Tom answers
by striking her face and breaking her nose.
• Nick's sense of moral order is repulsed by the
violence, and he leaves in an alcoholic stupor, finally
catching the 4:00 a.m. train back to West Egg.
The Great
Gatsby

Chapter 3
 Gatsby’s Parties
 THERE was music from my neighbor's house
through the summer nights.
 In his blue gardens men and girls came and
went like moths among the whisperings and
the champagne and the stars.
 On week-ends his Rolls-
Royce became an
omnibus, bearing parties to
and from the city between
nine in the morning and
long past midnight,
 while his station wagon
scampered like a brisk
yellow bug to meet all
trains.
 The Invitation
 “I had been actually invited.”

 Gatsby sent his chauffeur next

door with a formal invitation to
Nick to attend a “little party” on
Saturday night.
 During the party…
 Nick looks several times
unsuccessfully for Gatsby in
order to formally introduce
himself
 He finally finds Jordan Baker.
 “Welcome or not, I found it
necessary to attach myself to
some one before I should begin
to address cordial remarks to the
passers-by.”
 Who is
Gatsby?
“Somebody told me they thought he
killed a man once.”
“it's more that he was a German
spy during the war.”
“it couldn't be that, because he was in
the American army during the war.”
“You look at him sometimes when he thinks
nobody's looking at him. I'll bet he killed
a man.”
 “Owl Eyes”
Nick visits the library and meets a middle-age
man, who has been drinking for a week and
who wears “enormous owl-eyed spectacles”
The man is absolutely amazed that the titles in
Gatsby's library are actually real books with
real pages. “Absolutely real - have pages and
everything.”
 Nick Meets Gatsby
 "Your face is familiar," he said, politely.
 "Weren't you in the Third Division during the
war?“
 “Why, yes. I was in the
Ninth Machine-gun
Battalion.”
 "I was in the Seventh
Infantry…..I knew I'd seen
you somewhere before."
 “This is an unusual party for me. I haven't
even seen the host. I live over there...” I
waved my hand at the invisible hedge in the
distance, “and this man Gatsby sent over
his chauffeur with an invitation.” For a
moment he looked at me as if he failed to
understand.
 “I'm Gatsby,” he said suddenly.
 “What!” I exclaimed. “Oh, I beg your
pardon.”
 “I thought you knew, old sport. I'm
afraid I'm not a very good host.”
 Almost at the moment when Mr.
Gatsby identified himself, a butler
hurried toward him with the
information that Chicago was
calling him on the wire. He
excused himself with a small bow
that included each of us in
turn.
 “If you want anything just ask for
it, old sport," he urged me.
"Excuse me. I will rejoin you
later.”
 Nick Asks Jordan
“Who is he?” I demanded.
“Do you know?”
“He's just a man named Gatsby.”
“Where is he from, I mean? And what does he do?”
“Now YOU'RE started on the subject,” she answered
with a wan smile. “Well, he told me once he was
an Oxford man.”
A dim background started to take shape behind him,
but at her next remark it faded away.
“However, I don't believe it.”
 Gatsby's butler was suddenly standing beside
us.
 “Miss Baker?” he inquired. “I beg your
pardon, but Mr. Gatsby would like to speak to
you alone.”
 “With me?” she exclaimed in surprise.
 “Yes, madame.”
 Nick is Alone Again
 Nick realizes it is nearly 2 a.m.
 He wanders around the party, listening to
the conversations.
 “I looked around. Most of the remaining
women were now having fights with men said
to be their husbands.”
 After Jordan returns, Nick decides to thank
Gatsby and go home.
 Conclusion
 Nick closes the chapter with
explanations about himself, to fill
in his life between the parties.
 Most of his time is spent working
and studying about investments.
 He says he is learning to like the
“racy feel” of New York, but
dreams of finding a romantic
attachment.
 He also reveals that he has dated Jordan
Baker and developed a “tenderness” for her.
 He was shocked, however, to learn that she
was “incurably dishonest” and terribly
careless.
 At least Jordan admits that she "hates
careless people. That's why I like you."
 Despite their mutual interest in one another,
the noble Nick puts the brakes on their
relationship because he has still not settled
his feelings for the girl at home.
 Nick ends the chapter by proudly stating he
is the only honest person he knows.
THE GREAT GATSBY

Chapter 4
 THE PARTIES CONTINUE
AND SO DOES THE GOSSIP…
 "He'sa bootlegger," said the
young ladies, moving
somewhere between his
cocktails and his flowers.
 "One time he killed a man
who had found out that he
was nephew to Von
Hindenburg and second Paul von Hindenburg
cousin to the devil.
2nd President of Germany

PARTY GUESTS
“Once I wrote down on the empty
spaces of a time-table the names of
those who came to Gatsby's house
that summer. It is an old time-table
now, disintegrating at its folds, and
headed „This schedule in effect July
5th, 1922.‟ ”
NICK GETS TO KNOW GATSBY
 Nick begins to tell about the first time Gatsby comes to
his home.
 He has arrived in his elegant automobile to take Nick into
the city for lunch.

During the drive,

Gatsby asks Nick,
“What's your opinion
of me anyhow?”
 GATSBY IS….
 He first says he is the son of a wealthy family from the
“middle-west.”
 He then adds he was educated at Oxford,
 GATSBY CONTINUES….
 He inherited a great deal of money, and
then “lived like a young raja in all the
capitals of Europe...
 collecting jewels,
 hunting big game,
 painting a little...
 and trying to forget something
very sad that had happened…..
 He then tells about joining the war in hopes of getting
killed,
 but instead he receives decorations for his bravery
from every Allied government.

 Nick's first reaction is to laugh

 PROOF
 Then his neighbor pulls out a war
medal from Montenegro, and to
Nick's astonishment, it almost
looks real.

* Montenegro is a country located

in southeastern Europe. It has a
coast on the Adriatic Sea to the
south, and borders Croatia on the
west, Bosnia and Herzegovina on
the northwest, Serbia on the
northeast and Albania on the
southeast
 MORE PROOF
 “Here's another thing I always carry. A souvenir of Oxford
days.”
 It was a photograph of half a dozen young men ….
 There was Gatsby, looking a little, not much, younger - with a
cricket bat in his hand.
 GATSBY NEEDS A FAVOR
 “I'm going to make a big request of you to-day, so I thought you
ought to know something about me. I didn't want you to think I
was just some nobody.”
 Nick then learns that Gatsby will not make his request
personally. Instead, he has asked Jordan Baker to discuss the
matter with Nick at tea.
 LUNCH
 In
a well - fanned Forty-second Street cellar I
met Gatsby for lunch

 Nick finds him seated with Meyer Wolfsheim, a

man in his fifties who wears human molars as
cuff links.
 During their meal, Wolfsheim broods about Rosy
Rosenthal's murder at the Metropole years
before
 “ROSY” ROSENTHAL
Rosy Rosenthal (an actual gangster) was
killed in a hail of machinegun bullets as he
stepped outside the dining room of the old
Metropol Hotel in 1913

This same hotel is now known

as the Casablanca Hotel
Afterlunch, Gatsby tells Nick that
Wolfsheim is the man who fixed the
World Series in 1919.

Nick, with his proper Midwestern

upbringing, is
shocked.
TEA WITH JORDAN
 Jordan begins telling Nick a story about Daisy when
they were both young girls back in Louisville in
1917.
 Daisy, at age 18, was the richest and most popular
girl in town.
 One spring day Jordan spied her sitting in her white
roadster with a handsome lieutenant, whom Daisy
introduced as Jay Gatsby.
DAISY LOSES GATSBY
 Soon, however, rumors circulated about Daisy
trying to run away to say good-bye to a soldier who
was going overseas,
 but her family stopped her….

 Daisy seemed to brood for a few months, but by

autumn she appeared as happy as ever…..
DAISY RISES AGAIN
 She had a debut after the Armistice
 In February she was presumably engaged
to a man from New Orleans.
 In June she married Tom Buchanan of
Chicago, with more pomp and
circumstance than Louisville ever knew
before.

TOM & DAISY WED
He came down with a hundred
people in four private cars
 Hired a whole floor of the
Seelbach Hotel
 The day before the wedding he
gave her a string of pearls valued
at three hundred and fifty
thousand dollars.
MARRIED LIFE
 Daisy married Tom Buchanan and
soon began their lengthy travels.
 Almost immediately, Tom started to
see other women
 Daisy„s misery began.
 GATSBY’S REQUEST
 Jordan surprises Nick by telling him that “Gatsby bought that
house so that Daisy would be just across the bay.”
 “Then it had not been merely the stars to which he had
aspired on that June night. He came alive to me, delivered
suddenly from the womb of his purposeless
splendor.”
“He wants to know if you'll invite Daisy to
your house some afternoon and then let
him come over.”
The modesty of the demand shook me. He
had waited five years and bought
a mansion….. so that he
could “come over.” some
afternoon to a stranger's
garden.
“Why didn't he ask you to arrange
a meeting?”
“He wants her to see his house,”
she explained. “And your house is
right next door.”
“I don't want to do anything out of
the way!” he kept saying. “I want
to see her right next door.”
“And Daisy ought to have something
in her life,” murmured Jordan to me.
“Does she want to see Gatsby?”
“She's not to know about it. Gatsby
doesn't want her to know. You're just
supposed to
invite her to tea.”
 CONCLUSION
 We passed a barrier of dark trees, and then the facade of
Fifty-ninth Street, a block of delicate pale light, beamed
down into the park….
 I drew up the girl beside me, tightening my arms. Her wan,
scornful mouth smiled, and so I drew her up again closer,
this time to my face.