CHAPTER 2:
Overview:
- Nick meets Tom’s mistress Myrtle and her husband George. They own a garage on the edge of the valley of ashes
between West Egg and New York.
- Myrtle, Nick and Tom go to New York; Myrtle hosts an impromptu party in Tom’s New York apartment. She invites
her sister and the McKees, who live in the apartment below.
- They all get drunk, Tom and Myrtle argue, and he breaks her nose.
Nick tries to distance himself from the others and narrate as an observational bystander rather than a participant in
their immoral lifestyle. He doesn’t explicitly give his opinion, which suggests he wants to sound objective.
But his language shows that he judges them harshly. He thinks Tom is ‘supercilious’ and Mrs McKee is ‘shrill’.
He tries to maintain the moral high ground, claiming that he only meets Myrtle because Tom ‘literally forced’ him.
But Nick also admits to being both ‘enchanted and repelled’ by the situation – he feels ‘entangled’ and can’t leave.
Nick’s description of Tom:
Nick comments that Tom had ‘tanked up’ at luncheon and was forcing Nick to accompany him. The ‘supercilious
assumption’ was that Nick had nothing else to do. The slag term ‘tanked up’ implies that Tom had consumed a large
quantity of alcohol and also compares him with a car – both Tom and a car have a large capacity and are very
powerful. Using slag suggests contempt from the sober Nick, and his subsequent Latinate polysyllabic phrase both
mocks Tom’s heavy-handedness and conveys Nick’s resentment.
The West and the Valley of Ashes:
The action of The Great Gatsby takes place on America’s East coast. Nick Carraway is narrating the story after he has
moved back home to the Midwest, physically the heart of America. Yet, in the final chapter, Nick says ‘this has been
a story of the West, after all’. He means that it has been a story of the conflict between dreams and the harsh
realities of the world, a tale of hope struggling against disillusionment.
On the East coast, in 1922, wealthy New Yorkers drive around in expensive cars, but the unsuccessful garage
mechanic George Wilson lives with his wife Myrtle in a dust-covered ‘valley of ashes’. She longs to leave her past
behind and to start a new life with Tom. But in reality, Tom has no intention of leaving Daisy; he simply uses Myrtle
as his mistress.
It should be noted that Jay Gatsby’s dream that Daisy will leave Tom resembles Myrtle’s dream that Tom will leave
Daisy. Furthermore, Gatsby and Myrtle are violently killed. Are both dreams unequally realistic? Are they really in
love or are they simply obsessed with what the Buchanans represent.
Two new settings are introduced:
The Valley of Ashes is a place of poverty that is used as a dumping ground for all the waste produced in the city – it’s
the ugly by-product of consumerism that is forgotten by the wealthy Egg communities.
It’s bleak and barren nature provides a contrast to the loudness and brightness of New York and the beautiful
exterior of the two Eggs – but also symbolises the moral decay and ugliness hidden underneath their surfaces.#
On one level it represents the grey, dismal environment of the Wilsons and their class, ignored and abandoned by
the wealthy who pollute it.
Ironically, however, this ‘dumping ground’ is the inevitable end of the material possessions of the wealthy. The
upper classes try to ignore the reality of the valley, e.g. Nick imagines that there are ‘romantic apartments concealed
overhead’, but actually the entire garage is ‘unprosperous and bare’.
Overview:
- Nick meets Tom’s mistress Myrtle and her husband George. They own a garage on the edge of the valley of ashes
between West Egg and New York.
- Myrtle, Nick and Tom go to New York; Myrtle hosts an impromptu party in Tom’s New York apartment. She invites
her sister and the McKees, who live in the apartment below.
- They all get drunk, Tom and Myrtle argue, and he breaks her nose.
Nick tries to distance himself from the others and narrate as an observational bystander rather than a participant in
their immoral lifestyle. He doesn’t explicitly give his opinion, which suggests he wants to sound objective.
But his language shows that he judges them harshly. He thinks Tom is ‘supercilious’ and Mrs McKee is ‘shrill’.
He tries to maintain the moral high ground, claiming that he only meets Myrtle because Tom ‘literally forced’ him.
But Nick also admits to being both ‘enchanted and repelled’ by the situation – he feels ‘entangled’ and can’t leave.
Nick’s description of Tom:
Nick comments that Tom had ‘tanked up’ at luncheon and was forcing Nick to accompany him. The ‘supercilious
assumption’ was that Nick had nothing else to do. The slag term ‘tanked up’ implies that Tom had consumed a large
quantity of alcohol and also compares him with a car – both Tom and a car have a large capacity and are very
powerful. Using slag suggests contempt from the sober Nick, and his subsequent Latinate polysyllabic phrase both
mocks Tom’s heavy-handedness and conveys Nick’s resentment.
The West and the Valley of Ashes:
The action of The Great Gatsby takes place on America’s East coast. Nick Carraway is narrating the story after he has
moved back home to the Midwest, physically the heart of America. Yet, in the final chapter, Nick says ‘this has been
a story of the West, after all’. He means that it has been a story of the conflict between dreams and the harsh
realities of the world, a tale of hope struggling against disillusionment.
On the East coast, in 1922, wealthy New Yorkers drive around in expensive cars, but the unsuccessful garage
mechanic George Wilson lives with his wife Myrtle in a dust-covered ‘valley of ashes’. She longs to leave her past
behind and to start a new life with Tom. But in reality, Tom has no intention of leaving Daisy; he simply uses Myrtle
as his mistress.
It should be noted that Jay Gatsby’s dream that Daisy will leave Tom resembles Myrtle’s dream that Tom will leave
Daisy. Furthermore, Gatsby and Myrtle are violently killed. Are both dreams unequally realistic? Are they really in
love or are they simply obsessed with what the Buchanans represent.
Two new settings are introduced:
The Valley of Ashes is a place of poverty that is used as a dumping ground for all the waste produced in the city – it’s
the ugly by-product of consumerism that is forgotten by the wealthy Egg communities.
It’s bleak and barren nature provides a contrast to the loudness and brightness of New York and the beautiful
exterior of the two Eggs – but also symbolises the moral decay and ugliness hidden underneath their surfaces.#
On one level it represents the grey, dismal environment of the Wilsons and their class, ignored and abandoned by
the wealthy who pollute it.
Ironically, however, this ‘dumping ground’ is the inevitable end of the material possessions of the wealthy. The
upper classes try to ignore the reality of the valley, e.g. Nick imagines that there are ‘romantic apartments concealed
overhead’, but actually the entire garage is ‘unprosperous and bare’.
