The Great Gatsby

Chapters Five & Six

ENG4U: Wilson
 Learning Objectives
 Understand the importance of rain in this chapter and how it is a
metaphor for emotional release
 Think about the relationship between Daisy and Gatsby and how this
is portrayed by Fitzgerald
 Identify Gatsby’s anti-climactic feelings towards Daisy
 Find out Gatsby’s backstory
 Consider the awkwardness of the Tom-Daisy-Gatsby relationship
 Chapter Summary
 Nick organises a meeting at his house between
Gatsby and Daisy
 Alone with Nick, Gatsby discloses that the money
which bought his mansion was made in just three
years
 Gatsby gives them a guided tour of his house,
displaying his possessions, especially his expensive,
imported clothes
 Nick muses on the nature of Gatsby's desire for this
woman, and remarks on the intensity of their
relationship, eventually he leaves them alone
 Chapter Summary
Chapter 5
• Nick organises a meeting at his house
between Gatsby and Daisy
• Alone with Nick, Gatsby discloses that
the money which bought his mansion
was made in just three years
• Gatsby gives them a guided tour of his
house, displaying his possessions,
especially his expensive, imported
clothes
• Nick muses on the nature of Gatsby's
desire for this woman, and remarks on
the intensity of their relationship,
eventually he leaves them alone
Chapter 6
• Reporter wants to learn more about the
“celebrity” Jay Gatsby
• Readers discover information about
his past
• “Real account” comes from Nick who
is our “most honest man you will ever
meet”
• Gatsby meets guests – including Tom
at his house. They leave without him
• Tom and Daisy attend Gatsby’s party
together. Gatsby is upset as Daisy not
happy. Wants to “make things as they
once were”
• Nick describes the meeting between
Gatsby and Daisy from the past –
Gatsby obsesses to recreate/relive the
memory
 Gatsby’s Blazing House
 Gatsby’s house is like a beacon of light to Daisy, in the same
way that her green dock light is a source of spiritual
satisfaction to him.
 He seems like a man who is afraid of the dark – or of the
ghostliness that comes from an empty house.
 For Gatsby, the ‘show’ of his home must go on to face off the
darkness troubling him.
 His life is essentially empty – notice how he talks about
‘glancing into some of the rooms’ in his house, as if
checking to see that everything is ‘perfect’.
 His home is a showpiece, an emblem of spiritual death.
 Gatsby and Daisy are reunited…
 It rains throughout chapter 5 (and throughout chapter 8). The
connections between these two chapters become clearer towards the
end of the novel.
 Rain is a striking metaphor for spiritual release and this chapter is full
of examples of this.
Rain and Gatsby's Relationship with Daisy
 At 4pm, when Daisy arrives, the rain has ‘cooled to a damp
mist’. The connections of ‘cool’ and ‘damp’ to Daisy’s
character are clear from the previous chapter, where we learned
that her feelings for Gatsby faded as his letter became a damp
pulp.
 At the height of Gatsby’s discomfort – when Nick finds the
tensions too unbearable to remain indoors – it is again
‘pouring’.
 When Nick returns, Daisy and Gatsby have happily
reacquainted. Significantly, ‘the sun shone again’, there are
‘twinkle bells of sunshine in the room’ and Gatsby is again
‘an ecstatic patron of recurring light’.
Rain and Gatsby's Relationship with Daisy
 As Gatsby falls into an anti-climax, Daisy begins to cry. The
introduction of the symbol of Gatsby’s shirts is very important here.
Daisy breaks down at the sight of Gatsby throwing – almost
obsessively – his shirts onto his bed.
Rain and Gatsby's Relationship with Daisy

“He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before
us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds
as they fell and covered the table in a many-coloured disarray. While we
admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher – shirts
with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and
faint orange, with monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained
sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.”
Rain and Gatsby's Relationship with Daisy
 Daisy’s moment of release – when the ‘soft rich heap’
dumbfounds her – occurs at a moment of wonder and
disappointment. Gatsby is, by now, ‘running down like
an over wound clock’, a result of having spent so many
years obsessing over Daisy ‘at an inconceivable pitch of
intensity’.
 His sense of sadness and anti-climax combines with
Daisy’s sense of wonder and awe. Shirts connect to time
she received pearls from Tom. Mixture of happiness and
tears (sunshine and rain) provides a rainbow – depicted by
the multicoloured array of shirts on the bed.
 Gatsby's Relationship with Daisy
 The episode in which Gatsby and Daisy are reunited in his
mansion is significant. It is an encounter that carries an
enormous amount of weight in the novel and, discloses to
us that Daisy falls terribly short of the ideal version lodged
in Gatsby's heart and imagination.
 It might seem obvious that Gatsby and Daisy have a lot of
catching up to do, and would feel the need to talk at
length, yet dialogue is kept to a minimum. Their feelings
for one and other are communicated through their actions
and through what remains unsaid.
 Gatsby’s Anti-Climax
 We get the feeling in this chapter that, despite Gatsby’s
sense of wonder and awe at Daisy's presence, he
nonetheless experiences an unusual sense of emptiness and
disappointment.
 Nick makes particular reference to the light at the end of
Daisy's dock, the ‘colossal significance’, of which, ‘has
now vanished forever’.
 For Gatsby, that light had been a tantalising, spiritual
beacon to light his way to Daisy, now that he is within his
grasp, it has reverted back to the ordinary.
 Gatsby’s Anti-Climax
Gatsby seems to revel in the electric intensity of reaching for an object more than
grasping it:
“I saw that the faint expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby's face,
as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present
happiness. Five years! There just have been moments even on that afternoon when
Daisy stumbled short of his dreams – not through her fault, but because of the
colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. …No
amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly
heart.”
The trajectory of Gatsby's dream is such that the object of that dream – Daisy – falls
short. This is part of Gatsby's tragedy – pursuing a dream that he, himself, has made
unattainable.
 The Clock
Gatsby himself is referred to as an ‘over wound clock’ in this chapter, which
ties him perceptibly to the idea of the passing of time. When he enters Nick’s
house, he behaves very like a wooden stiff actor, full of unrealistic gesture and
poses
‘in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease… his head leaned back so far that it
rested against the face of a defunct mantelpiece clock, and from this position his
distraught eyes stared down..’
The deliberate use of negative adjectives to describe these clocks – ‘defunct’
and ‘over wound’ – reinforce the idea that Gatsby has a skewed and unrealistic
idea of time itself. For him, time must have stopped and rewound to the point
where he lost Daisy to Tom Buchanan.
 Old Money, New Money
 The conflict between Gatsby and Tom, new money and old money,
continues to build, especially in Chapter 6. Here, Gatsby fails to
understand the “old money” behavior of insincere politeness; he
mistakes it for actual politeness. “Old Money” hides its cruelty, and
calls it good manners.
 Nick has clearly come to sympathize with Gatsby against Tom. Tom’s
disdain for the party is to be expected. But that Daisy has a bad time
suggests that Gatsby might not so easily be able to recreate their love.
There may be too many obstacles
 Perceptions, Reality, and Superficiality
 Dan Cody, Gatsby’s mentor, transformed himself into a millionaire, but
underneath the veneer of material success he remained ‘the pioneer
debauchee” (a person given to excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures)
 Perceptions of the Daisy by Gatsby versus the reality of the situation
 The “fake politeness” of Tom versus Gatsby’s interpretation that it was
genuine

Why is Fitzgerald pressing the theme of Perception vs Reality so often?

What lessons is he trying to teach? What is the reader supposed to gain from
this novel?