CHAPTER 9:
Overview:
- Nick describes the events after Gatsby’s death. He organises a funeral but only Gatsby’s father, Owl Eyes, a few
servants and the postman attend.
- Nick meets Jordan and they talk about why their relationship ended.
- Tom reveals that he told Wilson that Gatsby was driving the car that killed Myrtle.
- On Nick’s last night before he moves back to the Midwest, he reflects that Gatsby believed he was running towards
his dream and didn’t release it was already behind him.
Nick is now remembering events which happened two years before. He has supposedly taken more than a year to
craft his narrative, an there is evidence of his imagination in the way he describes Gatsby’s corpse seeming to talk to
him.
Nick picks up the pieces after Gatsby’s death:
Despite the recent dramatic events nobody has changed:
- Tom and Daisy leave town and carry on with their lives as if nothing has happened
- Nick still seems to think that he’s morally superior to most of East coast society
- Jordan has tried to resume her cold exterior and Nick suspects she is lying when she tells him she is engaged.
The scene of the crime:
Note the vocabulary Nick uses when describing the aftermath of Gatsby’s murder. The words ‘adventitious’ and
‘pasquinade’ leap out as unfamiliar words. Such vocabulary seems to have been chosen to keep us at a distance from
the crime scene.
You might expect a degree of sensationalism, but Nick uses a kind of protective formality with his language, as
though he wants to shield his neighbour from the effects of gossip.
Gatsby’s father:
Gatsby’s father is clearly proud of his son. It may have been he who had made James Gatz ambitious, as he is
convinced that, had his son lived, he would have ‘helped build up the country’. His dream, like that of the Founding
Fathers, was to make American great.
Gatsby’s father asks Nick to delay the funeral so he can travel from the Midwest to attend. However, even he is
taken in by the grand display of Gatsby’s material success and is proud of his son’s achievements – he doesn’t realise
his son never achieved his dream.
The funeral:
Using pathetic fallacy, Fitzgerald projects Nick’s mood onto the ‘sullen’ sky, and the moon is ‘lustreless’, with no
suggestion of romance.
The characters’ reactions to Gatsby’s death give a final insight into their personality and relation with him.
- Nick tries hard to ‘get somebody’ for Gatsby’s funeral and sees himself as the only person ‘on Gatsby’s side’. Nick
empathises with Gatsby and distances himself from East coast society.
- Daisy doesn’t even send ‘a message or a flower’. Her silence and absence suggest she wants to forget her
involvement with Gatsby and move on with her life. This emphasises that she’s shallow, weak and careless.
- Wolfshiem refuses to ‘get mixed up in’ Gatsby’s death and funeral in case a criminal connection is drawn between
them. Wolfsheim claims it is better to show someone friendship while they are alive.
Overview:
- Nick describes the events after Gatsby’s death. He organises a funeral but only Gatsby’s father, Owl Eyes, a few
servants and the postman attend.
- Nick meets Jordan and they talk about why their relationship ended.
- Tom reveals that he told Wilson that Gatsby was driving the car that killed Myrtle.
- On Nick’s last night before he moves back to the Midwest, he reflects that Gatsby believed he was running towards
his dream and didn’t release it was already behind him.
Nick is now remembering events which happened two years before. He has supposedly taken more than a year to
craft his narrative, an there is evidence of his imagination in the way he describes Gatsby’s corpse seeming to talk to
him.
Nick picks up the pieces after Gatsby’s death:
Despite the recent dramatic events nobody has changed:
- Tom and Daisy leave town and carry on with their lives as if nothing has happened
- Nick still seems to think that he’s morally superior to most of East coast society
- Jordan has tried to resume her cold exterior and Nick suspects she is lying when she tells him she is engaged.
The scene of the crime:
Note the vocabulary Nick uses when describing the aftermath of Gatsby’s murder. The words ‘adventitious’ and
‘pasquinade’ leap out as unfamiliar words. Such vocabulary seems to have been chosen to keep us at a distance from
the crime scene.
You might expect a degree of sensationalism, but Nick uses a kind of protective formality with his language, as
though he wants to shield his neighbour from the effects of gossip.
Gatsby’s father:
Gatsby’s father is clearly proud of his son. It may have been he who had made James Gatz ambitious, as he is
convinced that, had his son lived, he would have ‘helped build up the country’. His dream, like that of the Founding
Fathers, was to make American great.
Gatsby’s father asks Nick to delay the funeral so he can travel from the Midwest to attend. However, even he is
taken in by the grand display of Gatsby’s material success and is proud of his son’s achievements – he doesn’t realise
his son never achieved his dream.
The funeral:
Using pathetic fallacy, Fitzgerald projects Nick’s mood onto the ‘sullen’ sky, and the moon is ‘lustreless’, with no
suggestion of romance.
The characters’ reactions to Gatsby’s death give a final insight into their personality and relation with him.
- Nick tries hard to ‘get somebody’ for Gatsby’s funeral and sees himself as the only person ‘on Gatsby’s side’. Nick
empathises with Gatsby and distances himself from East coast society.
- Daisy doesn’t even send ‘a message or a flower’. Her silence and absence suggest she wants to forget her
involvement with Gatsby and move on with her life. This emphasises that she’s shallow, weak and careless.
- Wolfshiem refuses to ‘get mixed up in’ Gatsby’s death and funeral in case a criminal connection is drawn between
them. Wolfsheim claims it is better to show someone friendship while they are alive.
