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The Great Gatsby Close Reading

Chapter 3
One of the reasons that Gatsby has become so famous around New York is
that he throws elaborate parties every weekend at his mansion, lavish
spectacles to which people long to be invited. One day, Gatsby’s chauffeur
brings Nick an invitation to one of these parties. At the appointed time,
Nick makes the short walk to Gatsby’s house and joins the festivities,
feeling somewhat out of place amid the throng of jubilant strangers. Guests
mill around exchanging rumors about their host—no one seems to know
the truth about Gatsby’s wealth or personal history. Nick runs into Jordan
Baker, whose friend, Lucille, speculates that Gatsby was a German spy
during the war. Nick also hears that Gatsby is a graduate of Oxford and
that he once killed a man in cold blood.

Gatsby’s party is almost unbelievably luxurious: guests marvel over his

Rolls-Royce, his swimming pool, his beach, crates of fresh oranges and
lemons, buffet tents in the gardens overflowing with a feast, and a live
orchestra playing under the stars. Liquor flows freely, and the crowd grows
rowdier and louder as more and more guests get drunk. In this atmosphere
of opulence and revelry, Nick and Jordan, curious about their host, set out
to find Gatsby. Instead, they run into a middle-aged man with huge, owl-
eyed spectacles (whom Nick dubs Owl Eyes) who sits poring over the
unread books in Gatsby’s library.

At midnight, Nick and Jordan go outside to watch the entertainment. They

sit at a table with a handsome young man who says that Nick looks familiar
to him; they realize that they served in the same division during the war.
The man introduces himself as none other than Jay Gatsby. Gatsby’s
speech is elaborate and formal, and he has a habit of calling everyone “old
sport.” As the party progresses, Nick becomes increasingly fascinated with
Gatsby. He notices that Gatsby does not drink and that he keeps himself
separate from the party, standing alone on the marble steps, watching his
guests in silence.

At two o’clock in the morning, as husbands and wives argue over whether
to leave, a butler tells Jordan that Gatsby would like to see her. Jordan
emerges from her meeting with Gatsby saying that she has just heard
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something extraordinary. Nick says goodbye to Gatsby, who goes inside to

take a phone call from Philadelphia. Nick starts to walk home. On his way,
he sees Owl Eyes struggling to get his car out of a ditch. Owl Eyes and
another man climb out of the wrecked automobile, and Owl Eyes
drunkenly declares that he washes his hands of the whole business.

Nick then proceeds to describe his everyday life, to prove that he does more
with his time than simply attend parties. He works in New York City,
through which he also takes long walks, and he meets women. After a brief
relationship with a girl from Jersey City, Nick follows the advice
of Daisy and Tom and begins seeing Jordan Baker. Nick says that Jordan
is fundamentally a dishonest person; he even knows that she cheated in her
first golf tournament. Nick feels attracted to her despite her dishonesty,
even though he himself claims to be one of the few honest people he has
ever known.

“He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it,
that you may come across four or five times in life.”

At the beginning of this chapter, Gatsby’s party brings 1920s wealth and
glamour into full focus, showing the upper class at its most lavishly
opulent. The rich, both socialites from East Egg and their coarser
counterparts from West Egg, cavort without restraint. As his depiction of
the differences between East Egg and West Egg evidences, Fitzgerald is
fascinated with the social hierarchy and mood of America in the 1920s,
when a large group of industrialists, speculators, and businessmen with
brand-new fortunes joined the old, aristocratic families at the top of the
economic ladder. The “new rich” lack the refinement, manners, and taste
of the “old rich” but long to break into the polite society of the East Eggers.
In this scenario, Gatsby is again an enigma—though he lives in a garishly
ostentatious West Egg mansion, East Eggers freely attend his parties.
Despite the tensions between the two groups, the blend of East and West
Egg creates a distinctly American mood. While the Americans at the party
possess a rough vitality, the Englishmen there are set off dramatically,
seeming desperate and predatory, hoping to make connections that will
make them rich.
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Fitzgerald has delayed the introduction of the novel’s most important

figure—Gatsby himself—until the beginning of Chapter 3. The reader has
seen Gatsby from a distance, heard other characters talk about him, and
listened to Nick’s thoughts about him, but has not actually met him (nor
has Nick). Chapter 3 is devoted to the introduction of Gatsby and the lavish,
showy world he inhabits. Fitzgerald gives Gatsby a suitably grand entrance
as the aloof host of a spectacularly decadent party. Despite this
introduction, this chapter continues to heighten the sense of mystery and
enigma that surrounds Gatsby, as the low profile he maintains seems
curiously out of place with his lavish expenditures. Just as he stood alone
on his lawn in Chapter 1, he now stands outside the throng of pleasure-
seekers. In his first direct contact with Gatsby, Nick notices his
extraordinary smile—“one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal
reassurance in it.” Nick’s impression of Gatsby emphasizes his optimism
and vitality—something about him seems remarkably hopeful, and this
belief in the brilliance of the future impresses Nick, even before he knows
what future Gatsby envisions.

Many aspects of Gatsby’s world are intriguing because they are slightly
amiss—for instance, he seems to throw parties at which he knows none of
his guests. His accent seems affected, and his habit of calling people “old
sport” is hard to place. One of his guests, Owl Eyes, is surprised to find
that his books are real and not just empty covers designed to create the
appearance of a great library. The tone of Nick’s narration suggests that
many of the inhabitants of East Egg and West Egg use an outward show of
opulence to cover up their inner corruption and moral decay, but Gatsby
seems to use his opulence to mask something entirely different and perhaps
more profound. From this chapter forward, the mystery of Jay
Gatsbybecomes the motivating question of the book, and the unraveling of
Gatsby’s character becomes one of its central mechanisms. One early clue
to Gatsby’s character in this chapter is his mysterious conversation with
Jordan Baker. Though Nick does not know what Gatsby says to her, the
fact that Jordan now knows something “remarkable” about Gatsby means
that a part of the solution to the enigma of Gatsby is now loose among
Nick’s circle of acquaintances.

Chapter 3 also focuses on the gap between perception and reality. At the
party, as he looks through Gatsby’s books, Owl Eyes states that Gatsby has
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captured the effect of theater, a kind of mingling of honesty and dishonesty

that characterizes Gatsby’s approach to this dimension of his life. The party
itself is a kind of elaborate theatrical presentation, and Owl Eyes suggests
that Gatsby’s whole life is merely a show, believing that even his books
might not be real. The novel’s title itself—The Great Gatsby—is
suggestive of the sort of vaudeville billing for a performer or magician like
“The Great Houdini,” subtly emphasizing the theatrical and perhaps
illusory quality of Gatsby’s life.

Nick’s description of his life in New York likewise calls attention to the
difference between substance and appearance, as it emphasizes both the
colorful allure of the city and its dangerous lack of balance: he says that
the city has an “adventurous feel,” but he also calls it “racy,” a word with
negative moral connotations. Nick feels similarly conflicted about Jordan.
He realizes that she is dishonest, selfish, and cynical, but he is attracted to
her vitality nevertheless. Their budding relationship emphasizes the extent
to which Nick becomes acclimated to life in the East, abandoning his
Midwestern values and concerns in order to take advantage of the
excitement of his new surroundings.

Chapter 4
Nick lists all of the people who attended Gatsby’s parties that summer, a
roll call of the nation’s most wealthy and powerful people. He then
describes a trip that he took to New York with Gatsby to eat lunch. As they
drive to the city, Gatsby tells Nick about his past, but his story seems highly
improbable. He claims, for instance, to be the son of wealthy, deceased
parents from the Midwest. When Nick asks which Midwestern city he is
from, Gatsby replies, “San Francisco.” Gatsby then lists a long and
preposterously detailed set of accomplishments: he claims to have been
educated at Oxford, to have collected jewels in the capitals of Europe, to
have hunted big game, and to have been awarded medals in World War I
by multiple European countries. Seeing Nick’s skepticism, Gatsby
produces a medal from Montenegro and a picture of himself playing cricket
at Oxford.
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Gatsby’s car speeds through the valley of ashes and enters the city. When
a policeman pulls Gatsby over for speeding, Gatsby shows him a white
card and the policeman apologizes for bothering him. In the city, Gatsby
takes Nick to lunch and introduces him to Meyer Wolfshiem, who, he
claims, was responsible for fixing the 1919 World Series. Wolfshiem is a
shady character with underground business connections. He gives Nick the
impression that the source of Gatsby’s wealth might be unsavory, and that
Gatsby may even have ties to the sort of organized crime with which
Wolfshiem is associated.

After the lunch in New York, Nick sees Jordan Baker, who finally tells him
the details of her mysterious conversation with Gatsby at the party. She
relates that Gatsby told her that he is in love with Daisy Buchanan.
According to Jordan, during the war, before Daisy married Tom, she was
a beautiful young girl in Louisville, Kentucky, and all the military officers
in town were in love with her. Daisy fell in love with Lieutenant Jay
Gatsby, who was stationed at the base near her home. Though she chose to
marry Tom after Gatsby left for the war, Daisy drank herself into numbness
the night before her wedding, after she received a letter from Gatsby. Daisy
has apparently remained faithful to her husband throughout their marriage,
but Tom has not. Jordan adds that Gatsby bought his mansion in West Egg
solely to be near Daisy. Nick remembers the night he saw Gatsby stretching
his arms out to the water and realizes that the green light he saw was the
light at the end of Daisy’s dock. According to Jordan, Gatsby has asked her
to convince Nick to arrange a reunion between Gatsby and Daisy. Because
he is terrified that Daisy will refuse to see him, Gatsby wants Nick to invite
Daisy to tea. Without Daisy’s knowledge, Gatsby intends to come to the
tea at Nick’s house as well, surprising her and forcing her to see him.

Though Nick’s first impression of Gatsby is of his boundless hope for the
future, Chapter 4 concerns itself largely with the mysterious question of
Gatsby’s past. Gatsby’s description of his background to Nick is a daunting
puzzle—though he rattles off a seemingly far-fetched account of his grand
upbringing and heroic exploits, he produces what appears to be proof of
his story. Nick finds Gatsby’s story “threadbare” at first, but he eventually
accepts at least part of it when he sees the photograph and the medal. He
realizes Gatsby’s peculiarity, however. In calling him a “character,” he
highlights Gatsby’s strange role as an actor.
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The luncheon with Wolfshiem gives Nick his first unpleasant impression
that Gatsby’s fortune may not have been obtained honestly. Nick perceives
that if Gatsby has connections with such shady characters as Wolfshiem,
he might be involved in organized crime or bootlegging. It is important to
remember the setting of The Great Gatsby, in terms of both the symbolic
role of the novel’s physical locations and the book’s larger attempt to
capture the essence of America in the mid-1920s. The pervasiveness of
bootlegging and organized crime, combined with the burgeoning stock
market and vast increase in the wealth of the general public during this era,
contributed largely to the heedless, excessive pleasure-seeking and sense
of abandon that permeate The Great Gatsby. For Gatsby, who throws the
most sumptuous parties of all and who seems richer than anyone else, to
have ties to the world of bootleg alcohol would only make him a more
perfect symbol of the strange combination of moral decadence and vibrant
optimism that Fitzgerald portrays as the spirit of 1920s America.

On the other hand, Jordan’s story paints Gatsby as a lovesick, innocent

young soldier, desperately trying to win the woman of his dreams. Now
that Gatsby is a full-fledged character in the novel, the bizarre inner conflict
that enables Nick to feel such contradictory admiration and repulsion for
him becomes fully apparent—whereas Gatsby the lovesick soldier is an
attractive figure, representative of hope and authenticity, Gatsby the
crooked businessman, representative of greed and moral corruption, is not.

As well as shedding light on Gatsby’s past, Chapter 4 illuminates a matter

of great personal meaning for Gatsby: the object of his hope, the green light
toward which he reaches. Gatsby’s love for Daisy is the source of his
romantic hopefulness and the meaning of his yearning for the green light
in Chapter 1. That light, so mysterious in the first chapter, becomes the
symbol of Gatsby’s dream, his love for Daisy, and his attempt to make that
love real. The green light is one of the most important symbols in The Great
Gatsby. Like the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, the green light can be
interpreted in many ways, and Fitzgerald leaves the precise meaning of the
symbol to the reader’s interpretation. Many critics have suggested that, in
addition to representing Gatsby’s love for Daisy, the green light represents
the American dream itself. Gatsby’s irresistible longing to achieve his
dream, the connection of his dream to the pursuit of money and material
success, the boundless optimism with which he goes about achieving his
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dream, and the sense of his having created a new identity in a new place all
reflect the coarse combination of pioneer individualism and uninhibited
materialism that Fitzgerald perceived as dominating 1920s American life.