Great Gatsby Info

Response paper on Gatsby

The narrator of the story, Nick Carraway, has just returned from war and goes east to work, but being restless in the west. In flashbacks he reveals the story of Jay Gatsby, his next-door neighbor.

Immediately after Nick moves to West Egg, he visits Daisy Buchanan, his second cousin once removed and her husband Tom, a fellow Yale graduate, for dinner. Here Nick meets Jordan Baker, Daisy's friend from Louisville, who reveals that Tom is having an affair with Myrtle Wilson. In Chapter 3 Gatsby's parties in general, and one in particular, are described in poetic fashion. Also this chapter describes all his boats and such valuable items in great quantities. Another party takes place at Gatsby's mansion, this time on a Sunday morning. The narrator crowds with his description of the guests, every possible type included, and creating vignettes of the time period. The chapter begins with a lengthy description of the guests, and it concludes, with the summary: "All these people came to Gatsby's house in the summer." Nick records their names on a timetable dated July 5, 1922. Nick returns home at 2:00 in the morning to find Gatsby's house lit up "like the World's Fair." Gatsby is anxious concerning the meeting Nick is to make plan with Daisy, a long-awaited reunion. He invites Nick to go to Coney Island in his car or "take a plunge in the swimming pool," but his neighbor, who must work the next day, very nicely says no, by saying it's too late in the night and that he has to go to bed

By placing characters side by side, from the West and East in America in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald was making some moral observations about the people who live there. Those in the Midwest, the newly arrived Nick Carraway, were fair, quite innocent, straightforward, while those who lived in the East for some time, Tom and Daisy Buchanan, were unfair,