Chapter 5 opens with a description of Gatsby’s house being lit up and making the surrounding area look like it’s on fire, possibly a reference to the cover. Gatsby is getting ready for his tea with Daisy and passive aggressively tells Nick that he needs to fo the same. Then, Gatsby offers Nick a way to make some extra money, but with fear that it might not be a normal job, Nick turns it down.
In this chapter, the reunion of Gatsby and Daisy took place and it is nothing like how I imagined it would go. This is the first time we have seen Gatsby look anything less than perfect, breaking his illusion that he has put on for the world. He is described as “pale, and there were dark signs of sleeplessness beneath his eyes” (84). He was also noticeably scatter-brained.
When Daisy arrived, Gatsby left Nick’s house and then knocked, furthering the illusion of this whole tea. The way Gatsby acted really threw me off when I first read it, but now it makes sense. He is described as “pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets”, “in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease”, and looking with “tense, unhappy eyes” (86, 87). This discomfort is because, like we talked about in class, he has built this moment up so much in his head that, now when it’s actually happening, he is trying to make sure it plays out the way he imagined it to. At the end of the chapter, Nick even says “there must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams--not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion” (95). Throughout the whole encounter, Gatsby is looking for Daisy’s approval and, as Nick says, revaluing everything according to her response.
There is a shift in Gatsby’s character after Nick leaves and examines Gatsby’s house and then comes back in, “he literally glowed” (89). I thought this was a quick switch and wonder what happened while Nick was gone.
The idea of illusion was apparent when Nick described the rooms as if there were “guests concealed behind every couch and table, under orders to be breathlessly silent until we had passed through” (91). It’s almost like there were people staged in each room to make sure Gatsby looks perfect in Daisy’s eyes, but it’s not Gatsby doing the work. Along the house tour, they encounter a man, Mr. Klipspringer, who is doing “liver exercises” (91). At first, I thought this was a figment of Nick’s imagination, but after Gatsby calls him in to play the piano, I realized he was real and “liver exercises” are probably a reference to drinking.
The green light reappeared during this chapter, but nothing was revealed about it other than that Gatsby noticed it every night.
Throughout this whole chapter, I was confused as to whether or not Daisy likes Gatsby or not. In the beginning, I got the sense that she didn’t but in the end, I started to think she did.
In chapter 6, it is revealed that Jay Gatsby’s name is not really Jay Gatsby, or at least it didn’t used to be. He changed his name from James Gatz when he was 17. This is just one more example of the illusion that he has created and Nick recognizes this, “The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself” (98). This helps explain why we see Gatsby being selfish and passive several times: because he is still playing the character he made up when he was a teenager. It is also revealed that he lied about where he was from and where he went to college, so it can be inferred that he has lied about other things as well. He is actually from North Dakota and went to a small Lutheran college in Minnesota, but only for two weeks.
In this chapter, there was also a strange encounter between Gatsby, Nick, Tom, a man named Sloane, and a woman without a name. I’m not sure why this happened but it seems very strange for Gatsby to have his love interest’s husband over. He even outed himself to Tom when he says, “‘I know your wife,’ continued Gatsby, almost aggressively” (102) and later Tom ponders, “‘I wonder where in the devil he met Daisy. By God, I may be old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days to suit me’” (103). This also bothered me because Tom has no right to hold Daisy on a short leash when he is running around with another woman.
During the party, Daisy gives Nick permission to kiss her at any time throughout the evening. This confused me because they don’t have a romantic relationship and she is his cousin…
Along with Tom expressing his concern with Daisy running around, there is growing tension between Tom and Daisy in this chapter.
The most important part of chapter 6, in my opinion, was the conversation between Nick and Gatsby at the end when Nick says that you can’t repeat the past and Gatsby says “‘Why of course you can!’” and then “‘I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before...she’ll see’” (110). This further proves that he is immature and unrealistic. He is stuck in the past, holding on to feelings he felt 5 years ago.
Chapters 5 and 6 were full of a lot of new information revealing more about Gatsby’s actual life and what is just his illusion. I’m interested to see how Gatsby’s plan of bringing back the past is going to play out, but my guess is not very well.
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