THE GREAT GATSBY - WEEK 7 - CHAPTER 6

THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fasten your seatbelt! This is one crazy chapter!

We've got to start this chapter asking ourselves why is a reporter showing up on Gatsby's doorstep asking for a comment? It's to prep us for a big story that is coming down the pike. There's a big air of mystery, of unknown surrounding Gatsby, and some of the questions are about to be answered.

The first is that we now know who Jay Gatsby really is - James Gatz. We understand how he learned to live "wealthy," how he traveled the world, how he left his parents and that life and reinvented himself at 17 years of age. He had his name picked out before he went out and helped Dan Cody on his yacht. Did you pause a moment when you read that?

You have to love the language that Fitzgerald uses to describe Gatsby's imagination of himself. The fact that "he never accepted his parents" as his parents. "He was a son of God...about His Father's business." How his thoughts and fancies spun and grew at night. He was too good for the college scene. He wanted the world now, and he was convinced he could get it!

Recognize that this downloading of info that Nick gives us is out of time sequence in the book. Gatsby actually confesses all this to him much later, but Nick feels the need to share this with us ahead of time to help us understand deeper what happens.

I have to make a quick switch here and comment on Tom's ironic statement when several weeks later he goes over to Gatsby's house. "I may be old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around way too much these days to suit me." Old fashioned in his ways, huh? Does that include how Myrtle runs around with him? Is that to his liking? You have to love that quote!

Back to Gatsby - now at his party where Tom and Daisy attend for the first time - we learn what his ultimate goal is - to recover the past with Daisy and for her to tell Tom that she never loved him. He refused to understand that that is impossible at this point. To simply state the most obvious, there is a child now. There is no fully going back, but Gatsby refuses to believe it. He is convinced when he took his dreams and tied them to Daisy five years ago sealed with a kiss, she was his ticket. Falling in love was not a part of his original plans, but now he has placed everything on his relationship with Daisy. He believes that dream can go on.

This chapter really hits home about the focus on the social structure in this book. First, Gatsby is so embarrassed about his upbringing that he leaves it all behind. In college, he refused to work as a janitor. It is beneath him. When Tom and Daisy come to his party, he desires to be accepted by them socially. Of course, Tom, in his snobbery, refuses to allow Gatsby to be on the same level as they are.