No Fear The Great Gatsby Chapter 8
Nick couldn’t sleep all night. At the very least, for all his wallflowery ways, he has a conscience and feels badly
about someone he knows being killed. Around dawn, he hears a taxi roll up to Gatsby’s, and feeling an urgency to speak
to him, he scrambles out of his house to go find Gatsby.
And, we find out (unsurprisingly, though I feel that Jay is a bit broken up over it) that Daisy never needed help
from Gatsby, nor did she come out to talk to him. She stood at the window for a moment and then turned out the light.
Gatsby finally took the hint, and went home.
Nick decides he should hang out with Gatsby, even though it’s about 5am and he hasn’t slept a wink. Nick tells
Gatsby he should get out of town for a while; it’s almost certain they’ll trace the car back to him. The fact that it’s still
sitting in Gatsby’s garage with a Myrtle-sized dent in the front bumper isn’t doing him any favors. Gatsby refuses,
however, for reasons best described as “but Daisy.” Then he sits Nick down and tells him a thing or two about love.
Now, I’ve been pretty honest about my feelings concerning Daisy. In my opinion, calling her horrible would be an
insult to horrible people. She’s lower than that. But, even reserving that judgment (hehe, see? See what I…what I did
there? Because Nick Carraway says that?), and trying to see her from Gatsby’s point of view, I still cannot make sense of
his all-consuming obsession. She’s pretty. She’s sort of nice. She made a joke once, I think. That was cool of her. I’d
probably have a crush on her, too. But then I would see Tom Buchanan in all his brutiness and violence, and I would
move on. And then I would realize he is a terrible person, and I would move on again. Do you see this, Gatsby? Do you
see what I’m doing? What I’m doing is not fostering an infatuation around which I base my life. That’s what I’ve decided
NOT to do. You should’ve tried this. I wish you had tried this.
Anyway, Gatsby relays to Nick the early days of his courtship with Daisy. It looks something like this:
GATSBY: She was nice, old sport. Can you imagine such a thing? I had never met a human female before who was
actually nice.
NICK: That seems like a whopping generalization, but I’ll roll with it.
GATSBY: She was also rich. I really liked that about her.
NICK: Got it, okay. So she was nice and rich.
GATSBY: Yes, she was both of those things.
NICK: And… what else?
GATSBY: What?
NICK: What else did you like about her?
GATSBY: She had this big house. Like really big.
NICK: That… sounds a bit like a natural byproduct of her family being rich.
GATSBY: No, it was unrelated. I feel like you’re not getting this.
NICK: Okay, cool, but that’s… that’s it? She was nice and rich? That’s why you devoted five years of your life to
cultivating this nouveau riche persona and immersing yourself in a life of crime?
GATSBY: Well, yeah. Plus I also liked that other guys liked her, but she only liked me. It made me feel good about
myself.
NICK: *face palm* Oh my god.
I actually (almost) feel sorry for Gatsby. He was so entranced by Daisy because she was part of a world he never
knew. He wasn’t being malicious; he simply fell in love with an ideal as nebulous and insubstantial as the American
Dream. Hey! Guys, I think I just had an epiphany. I think Daisy represents the American Dream.
When they first met, Gatsby led Daisy to believe he was rich—so when he went off to war, he decided not to
return until that was true. Okay Gatsby…that’s great and all, but you’re still, I don’t know—lying to this woman you
supposedly love. You made her believe that you were from the same status and social ranks she was, and when you took
her (under said pretenses), you didn’t even feel bad about it. Being unbelievably infatuated with someone does not give
you the right to lie about whatever you’d like to make them become infatuated with you as well. I know it works
sometimes on that show Catfish, but that was way after your time, old sport.
And it didn’t work anyway, because guess what? Daisy got tired of waiting. Gatsby notes that “there was a quality
of nervous despair in Daisy’s letters,” and because she wanted him to come back home, but of course, he couldn’t. So, this
also lets us know that while they only dated for a month before he was sent away, they did keep up written
correspondence with one another, but that obviously was not enough for Daisy for very long. Her letter telling Gatsby she
was marrying Tom Buchanan reached him when he was at Oxford. So that letter that Daisy got that made her get drunk
and cry in the tub after trashing a $350,000 strand of pearls? Yeah, that was probably Gatsby’s response to that letter.
Gatsby tries again to claim that Daisy has never loved Tom, and Nick politely holds back a begrudging groan (or
maybe that’s just me) because dude, get real. It’s not all your fault, old sport. Tom Buchanan breaks everything. Daisy’s
finger, Myrtle’s nose, and ultimately…Jay Gatsby’s dream. As Gatsby continues to talk to Nick about his past with this
girl, he also brings up an outrageously sad story in which he goes back to Louisville when he is finally released from the
military to visit all the places they had gone when he and Daisy were together. He ends that painstaking trip by spending
the last of his money on a train ticket, and as the train pulls away, he tries desperately to take in all of the scenery that
once belonged to him and the girl he loved—but the train picks up speed too quickly, and his blurred eyes (BECAUSE
HE IS CRYING FOLKS) can’t take in the city as he leaves it.
Another thing that happens is that Nick has, you know, a job—and yet misses not one, but TWO trains because he
didn’t want to leave Gatsby. When he finally leaves, he tells Gatsby he’ll call him up, and Gatsby asks him if he thinks
Daisy will call too. I know I don’t really like Gatsby all that much, but it makes me sad that he just doesn’t get that his
dream is over. It’s “broken up like glass against Tom’s hard malice.”
Before he leaves, Nick turns back and tells Gatsby he’s worth more than the Buchanans and all “their crowd” put
together. Looking back, Nick was always glad he said that. He was always glad he made the absolute minimum effort
required in this particular scenario. And then we get one final Nick Carraway description of Gatsby’s smile: its “radiant
and understanding, as if we’d been in ecstatic cahoots…the whole time.” We also get quite a contradiction from the start
of the story, as Nick tells us that he was always glad he said that “because he disapproved of him from beginning to end.”
Uh…I’m sorry Nick, but didn’t you say in chapter 1 of this novel that “only Gatsby, the man who gives his name
to this book, was exempt from my reaction…there was something gorgeous about him…an extraordinary gift for hope, a
romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find
again…Gatsby turned out all right in the end”? Uh huh…so…which of those lines means you disapproved of him from
beginning to end? No, you go ahead, take a minute or a thousand to figure your answer out. I’ll wait.
While Nick is at work, he:
1. Thinks about Gatsby the entire time, except for when he
2. Breaks up with Jordan Baker
3. Calls Gatsby four times.
Nick leaves work and while he was on the train back to Gatsby’s, he wanted to fill us in on what was happening
in the Valley of Ashes…
So suddenly, the focus switches. Time rewinds. Remember George Wilson? One thing we sure weren’t counting
on was George “WILD CARD” Wilson. George, for all his boring and forgettable qualities, just lost his wife in a tragic
accident. George wants answers. George wants revenge. This is George Wilson: The Reckoning. He’s back, and this
time… it’s personal. He’s out for blood. After an ambulance takes Myrtle’s body away on the night of the crash, he starts
piecing things together. He decides to Nancy Drew this sucker.

Clue #1: He remembers that Myrtle once came back from the city with a broken nose under fishy circumstances.

Clue #2: Myrtle at one point bought a dog leash.

Conclusion: Myrtle was murdered by her lover.
I have no clue how he’s able to come to this conclusion with the information available to him, actually, but
whatever. After having a fairly awful conversation with Michaelis about finding all this out, he admits that he took Myrtle
to the window and told her that she may have fooled him, but she can’t fool God. He repeats again that “God sees
everything.” Michaelis is shocked and a little disturbed, as he tries to lightly remind George that what he is looking at is
an advertisement. Remember, if you read this as some critics do, it’s an interesting statement, as some critics also argue
that this should be taken as a sign that God has been replaced by capitalism. Instead of a truly religious representation, the
best this world can do is manifest God in a billboard – an advertisement.
George had said “It was the man in the car. She ran out to speak to him and he wouldn’t stop.” He doesn’t know
the identity of the man in question, but the police later suspect he went from one garage to another, asking about a yellow
car. Nick, however, tells us that no garage man had any memory of seeing him. I guess Nick went around and asked all
the garage men to verify this. I wouldn’t be surprised. At any rate, by 2 o’clock Wilson is in West Egg, asking for
directions to Gatsby’s house. “So by that time,” Nick says, “he knew Gatsby’s name.”
Nick rushes over to Gatsby’s (because somehow he feels again that something is wrong) but it’s too late—he finds
Gatsby’s lifeless body floating in the pool. Not far away, they also find George Wilson’s. And so, just like that, the great
Gatsby—the man, the myth, the legend—is gone. Farewell to the man who dared to dream. RIP.
Alright so, last year I ran out of time to add in additional citations from So We Read On, and this year, I have
enough time to write them in, but not enough time to smoothly integrate them. Sincerest apologies, and please forgive
your busy and stressed English teacher. If you liked The Great Gatsby, I really would suggest you read this book. It is
epic.
“Like sand in an hourglass, time is running out from the very first pages of this novel: an ultimate “deadline” casts its
shadow over Gatsby” (Corrigan 179).
“Anything “real” that took place between Gatsby and Daisy during those crucial weeks could never measure up to what
Gatsby had envisioned in his imagination all those years. Above all, this is a novel about the titanic power of dreams; it’s
not a novel about the naughty giddiness of an illicit affair, or even about real love. Moreover, passing over Daisy and
Gatsby’s relationship in silence further intensifies the relationship that is dramatized in the novel: Nick’s enduring love for
the dead and gone Gatsby…That Nick loves Gatsby is a certainty beyond dispute. Love and loyalty are what motivate him
to tell Gatsby’s story two years later” (Corrigan 153). Now certainly, that love may be platonic, but it very well might be
romantic love.
“Capitalism here is thus equated with selfishness and thuggish behavior, especially striking given that Gatsby is often
misread as an endorsement of the philosophy that greed is good” (Corrigan 134).
“That’s the whole burden of this novel—the loss of those illusions that give such color to the world so that you don’t care
whether things are true or false as long as they partake of the magical glory” (Corrigan 169). This is a novel about
illusion, after all, that Gatsby aspires for a mirage that is not his for the taking—Fitz made it very clear what he thought
about social class structures.
“The past, like Frankenstein’s monster, has a life of its own and it’s going to seek out and destroy [Gatsby].” (That’s for
you, Jesse!) “In its ultimate pessimism about breaking free of the past, Gatsby shares the same glum worldview as other
noirs of the 1920’s…Gatsby’s fall from grace may be grim, but the language of the novel is buoyant; Fitzgerald’s plot
may suggest that the American Dream is a mirage, but his words make that dream irresistible” (Corrigan 43).
Oh, and, that symbolism of water? “That’s the reason the novel so incessantly splashes about in water and drowning
images: to consider the question of just how far a nobody in America can swim before he sinks” (Corrigan 44).
So… I’ve also equipped you with some pretty great knowledge about this novel. Your own interpretations of the text are
JUST as important! Mesh those two things together, and you’ve got a brilliant conversation ready to be spoken, because
you too, are becoming Gatsby experts!! You’re welcome. 