APEnglish–South El Monte HS

Period 4

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Well, as we move into chapter four we get a most definite shift in style, tone, and topic. Nick’s narrative voice changes and becomes more of a participant, less of a reporter. As Nick becomes more enmeshed into the narrative, it will become harder to distinguish his editorializing (but it’s there). And I would argue that chapter 4 begins the middle portion of the story, or Act II. Act I (chs. 1, 2, & 3) were all introductions to the lives of East and West Egg, a taste of Manhattan and the Valley of the Ashes. Act I is unified by garden scenes (including that tapestry of the Garden of Versailles that I commented on at length).

Chapter four is where we begin to see under the shiny surfaces, beneath the mysterious grandeur. It opens with gossip and a list of names. We probably don’t recognize any of the names any more, but they’re all names with illustrious New England pasts. Then on the drive to Manhattan we learn that Gatsby is a bizarre and inconsistent story-teller. Nick never seems to believe him. I especially like the image of the turbanned Gatsby leaking sawdust in the Bois de Boulogne hunting big game (If you don’t know about the Bois de Boulogne, check the notes on chapter 4). Gatsby does seem to be leaking sawdust everywhere. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t talk much.

In Manhattan we have the shadowy figure of Meyer Wolfsheim, with human molars for cuff links. He too is an odd character who insists on telling stories of his friends being gunned down. He also insists that Jordan is an honest golfer and Gatsby a man who would never steal anyone’s wife. Why does he feel compelled to say these things?

Then everything is turned inside out with Jordan’s relation of events. I like how she is initially portrayed as sitting very straight on a straight chair. Is that because she and everyone else is so damn crooked? The only thing straight is the furniture, as if that would give them backbone. We also learn of Daisy’s joyless marriage–which was her own impatient fault (but could she really have been happy with Gatsby? or Anyone, for that matter?).

But instead of disgusting Nick, everything only adds to the Romantic feeling (that’s a big R, not romantic), the appealing against the odds. So much so he puts the moves on Jordan. This chapter really exposes Nick as a narcissist and all too ready to suspend his very reasonable disbelief. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t like to spend too much time with a whole flock of liars. Where do you turn when you really need something? Sounds pretty lonely to me. But maybe Fitzgerald assumes that we would be as caught up in the romance as Nick, who knows? Nick is even willing to aid in the adulterous liaison with Gatsby & his first cousin. Maybe he’s not so Middle West as we originally thought.

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After Jordan is called away to speak with Gatsby in private Nick wanders alone for a few minutes. 

A clue for you here is the figure of speech called euphemism.  Euphemism is when we substitute a pleasant or polite word for a harsher, but truer, reality.  For example a “moron” might be described as “mentally deficient,” or some one who is spastic and out of control could be described as “over zealous.”

Here it is:

I was alone and it was almost two. For some time confused and intriguing sounds had issued from a long, many-windowed room which overhung the terrace. Eluding Jordan’s undergraduate, who was now engaged in an obstetrical conversation with two chorus girls, and who implored me to join him, I went inside.

The large room was full of people. One of the girls in yellow was playing the piano, and beside her stood a tall, red-haired young lady from a famous chorus, engaged in song. She had drunk a quantity of champagne, and during the course of her song she had decided, ineptly, that everything was very, very sad—she was not only singing, she was weeping too. Whenever there was a pause in the song she filled it with gasping, broken sobs, and then took up the lyric again in a quavering soprano. The tears coursed down her cheeks—not freely, however, for when they came into contact with her heavily beaded eyelashes they assumed an inky color, and pursued the rest of their way in slow black rivulets. A humorous suggestion was made that she sing the notes on her face, whereupon she threw up her hands, sank into a chair, and went off into a deep vinous sleep.

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Chapter 3 is the culmination of the first 1/3 of the novel (I see the novel split into three three chapter sections).  And it is definitely fancy and flamboyant.  But I’m going to turn the analysis over to you. 

In Chapter 3 we finally meet the mysterious Gatsby whose name gives us our title.  We also are witnesses to quite a raging party through Nick’s eyes.  What I would like you to do is to peer very closely at this party, delve under it’s shiny, gleaming surfaces and discover what’s really going on.  Again, like in previous chapters, he key is in Nick’s words.  Words may sound ugly and mean wonderful things, or, conversely, they may sound lovely and describe the despicable.  We, as alert, able, and active readers must be awake to the truth–the truth in the words.

Please comment what you think is happening in each of the passages from chapter 3 that follows:

Passage 1

There was dancing now on the canvas of the garden, old men pushing young girls backwards in eternal graceless circles, superior couples holding each other tortuously, fashionably and keeping in the corners–and a great number of single girls dancing individualistically or relieving the orchestra for a moment of the burden of the banjo or the traps.  By midnight the hilarity had increased.  A celebrated tenor had sung in Italian and a notorious contralto had sung in jazz and between the numbers people were doing “stunts” all over the garden while happy vacuous bursts of laughter rose toward the summer sky.  A pair of stage “twins”–who turned out to be the girls in yellow–did a baby act in costume and champagne was served in glasses bigger than finger bowls.  The moon had risen higher, and floating in the Sound was a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drop of the banjoes on the lawn.

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I’d like to conclude with a comment on the unity of chapter 2.  The whole thing breaks up (including the narrative thread) when a drunken Tom decides that if Myrtle won’t obey, he’ll smash her nose in.  It works pretty well.  She definitely doesn’t petulantly chant “Daisy!” anymore.  But it does kind of ruin the festivities, despite that second bottle of whiskey.  Everyone vacates the premises while various people try to stop the bleeding and Myrtle “trying to spread a copy of ‘Town Tattle’ over the tapestry scenes of Versailles” (37).  It is this tapestry of the gardens of Versailles, I will argue, that ties this whole chapter together. 

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