Chapter 6
A reporter later comes to interview Gatsby due to his notoriety as a man of great wealth and esteem, in large part obtained from hosting such large parties throughout the summer. The exact source of his money and his background have remained mysterious despite the rushed explanation he had given to Nick. Carraway uses this incident as a chance to finally reveal the exact details of Gatsby's past: born in North Dakota, by the name of James Gatz, raised by a homely Midwestern farm family:
"His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people - his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God...and he must be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented...Jay Gatsby...and to this conception he was faithful to the end." Chapter 6, pg. 99
He is a man preoccupied by a certain vision of himself which extends beyond the superficiality of Daisy or Tom Buchanan. Rather, it is a vision embedded in intelligence and understanding. The entire persona of Jay Gatsby is portrayed as a fiction in the man's mind, a vision of himself he had spent years creating. It is this vision and understanding which drive him to be so nice and selfless that people had become defensive, such as when he previously had bought a new dress for a woman who had ruined hers while at one of his parties. The Buchanans base themselves solely on material things and Gatsby would seem to be exactly the opposite of this extreme, to be a man living solely according to emotion and the imagination.
Topic Tracking: East and West 8
While pining for Daisy, Gatsby had rejected inexperienced women and women he saw as ignorant, due to their obsession with material things. For example, Myrtle Wilson or her sister Catherine who focused strongly on money and put on unnatural airs in conversation. Gatsby is a man of such inwardness that these material things are hardly noticed. His mansion and extravagant lifestyle are furnished for the sake of winning back Daisy, to complete a missing piece of this persona called Gatsby.
Topic Tracking: Relationships 10
The man most influential in molding the young James Gatz into what he would become was the famous millionaire yachtsman Dan Cody. One day on Lake Superior, Gatsby had rowed out to warn the man of an impending storm and so began a friendship with the old man until his death. Dan Cody left $25,000 to Jay, but the inheritance was invalidated by a woman known as Ella Kaye who had been a love interest of Cody for many years, although Nick understands her better as a simple gold digger patiently waiting for her day. When Cody died, Ella received nearly everything. The material inheritance was lost, but Gatsby had gained experience from this older man who had molded him into an eloquent gentleman and taught him to break free of his homely Middle Western existence. Jay continued to avoid drinking, after seeing the abuses it had waged upon his mentor Dan Cody.
As the summer progresses, Nick continues to pursue Jordan and works in New York City until he finally visits Gatsby's mansion again. Coincidentally on this Sunday afternoon, Tom Buchanan was brought in for a drink by a man named Sloane and a woman who were outside horseback riding. Jay acts confidently and comments that he knows Daisy. Tom gets a bit nervous when the woman invites Gatsby to a dinner party with them and Jay goes upstairs to get ready. However, Buchanan urged Sloane and the woman to leave while Jay is out of the room, insisting they're running late. Before departing he expresses suspicion of Jay's involvement with Daisy. The three leave after asking Nick to bid good-bye to the host on their behalf.
Topic Tracking: Relationships 11
Daisy, accompanied by a jealous Tom, comes to Gatsby's next party. Nick immediately feels separated and unpleasant due to the presence of these new faces, which had not been present before. "It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment." Chapter 6, pg.105. Gatsby tours the couple around to see all of the celebrated people in attendance, most of whom are directors, producers, and movie stars--people of the world of illusion and performance. Gatsby and Daisy dance as Tom looks on. Tom finally leaves the two alone and decides to eat dinner with people at another table; Daisy gleefully offers a golden pencil for him to gather names and addresses of the new people he may meet.
The usual loud, drunken scene emerges as the night progresses. Daisy focuses her attention on a movie star and her director in a dramatic pose outside under a plum tree as he leans over to kiss her in the moonlight. However aside from this single scene, Nick notices that Daisy "was appalled by West Egg...by its raw vigor that chafed...and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short-cut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand." Chapter 6, pg. 108. Daisy Buchanan had always been raised in an upper class setting and the wildness of this scene offends her.
Topic Tracking: East and West 9
Tom Buchanan reappears and his suspicion of Gatsby turns into aggression. He asks about Gatsby's origins, wondering if he was a bootlegger, although Daisy explains that Jay had been a drug store entrepreneur. Tom remains determined to investigate more into the man's past. Tom is envious of Gatsby's self-made or "new" money, as opposed to his old family inheritance. The Buchanans leave and Nick lingers to hear Gatsby speak to him about Daisy. Jay had sensed that she did not enjoy his party, and neither had Nick. He goes on to express his own feelings of disconnection. Gatsby feels distant from her and does not accept how things have changed between them. Nick advises him that he cannot repeat the past, to which he declares matter-of-factly: "Of course you can!" [QUOTE??] Gatsby declares that he will recreate the past to make Daisy love him again.
Nick comments that Jay, a simple James Gatz when born, "wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was." Chapter 6, pg. 111-12. The quest for Daisy is not only about a woman but also a quest for Gatsby's own self-contentment.
Topic Tracking: Nostalgia 9
Topic Tracking: East and West 10
However, despite Gatsby's efforts to win her back, Daisy remains attached to material things. Her materialistic love drives Gatsby to gather material things around him to win back her love for him. But Daisy remains solely a lover of things. In contemplating all of this an old sentence Nick Carraway had once heard nearly rises out into his memory, but suddenly he forgets and what he had "almost remembered was incommunicable forever." Jay Gatsby determines that now the wealth he possesses is not enough for her and sets about to recreate things as they were five years before, hoping this shall awaken Daisy's heart, still failing to understand the distance time has created between them. He had complained that she doesn't understand him. In the same respect neither does he seem to understand her.
Topic Tracking: Relationships 12
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