Topic Tracking: Nostalgia
Topic Tracking: Nostalgia
Chapter 1
Nostalgia 1: Tom Buchanan experiences nostalgia in recalling his days of glory while a famous football star at Yale University. Nick observes this wistful desire for glory in Buchanan's attitude.
Chapter 2
Nostalgia 2: Myrtle lingers on her memory of the first time she met Tom while on the train, recalling what he was wearing exactly. Chester McKee also presents his artwork to Nick after visiting and capturing on film so many locations on Long Island and in New York. His art too captures a moment of the past and his attachment to these photographs reflects his nostalgia and yearning for things that already happened and places he already visited.
Chapter 3
Nostalgia 3: Owl Eyes focuses his nostalgia upon words written about in books, delighting in the library and a book written by "Stoddard," praised for his "realism." By recalling things already written and set down before, just as Chester lingered so much on his photographs, so too is this other art form - literature - treated in very much the same way.
Nostalgia 4: Nick's nostalgia lies in his thoughts of a woman back home in the West. It is his clinging to this figure from the past, which stops him from pursuing Jordan. Although Carraway has planned to move East for good, this unnamed woman continues to preoccupy his thoughts.
Chapter 4
Nostalgia 5: Jay Gatsby has such a firm hold on his past experience that he even carries with him a medal from the war years before and an Oxford photograph. The medal has given him a certain pride and he relishes "Little Montenegro," repeating the phrase aloud more than once to Nick with joy and a certain pride while telling the story of his past.
Nostalgia 6: Meyer Wolfsheim, an older man at about fifty years of age, comments on how he likes the restaurant across the street better due to all of the memories he has. He talks about a man who had been shot there, remembering it so clearly as if the incident had only just happened
Nostalgia 7: Before marrying Tom, Daisy had a sudden fury of emotion while remembering Gatsby although her friends help her to suppress this and she proceeds with the wedding. Jay has not been able to suppress his thoughts of Daisy however and has followed her faithfully for five years to end up living across the bay from her on Long Island.
Chapter 5
Nostalgia 8: Gatsby's nostalgia and memories of Daisy, whom he hadn't seen for five years, consume him to such an extent that he has saved newspaper clippings and news items concerning her. There is also his photograph of the yachtsman Dan Cody, his best friend at one time, although he had since died. As had photographs and literature earlier created nostalgia, so does music complete the intensity of past memories as Gatsby forgets Nick's presence in the room while he remembers dancing with Daisy while music plays on the piano.
Chapter 6
Nostalgia 9: Carraway warns Nick that he cannot bring back the past since Gatsby has become so obsessed with Daisy because things have changed from when he had known her as she is now married and has a child. In defiance Jay declares that "Of course you can" bring back the past, saying that he is going to make everything "just as it was." He refuses to release his memories of the past and clings to them stubbornly and is completely beyond Nick's reach to help him.
Chapter 7
Nostalgia 10: As Mendelssohn's Wedding March plays downstairs in the hotel, Daisy is reminded of her own wedding to Tom Buchanan and what a hot day it was, just like that very day. They talk about a man who had been there named Biloxi. Her nostalgia, as earlier it had done at Gatsby's mansion when she had danced with Jay, is yet again caused by music. The sounds recall memories of things past.
Nostalgia 11: Tom Buchanan fights Gatsby's nostalgia for Daisy with his own, stirring up happy memories the two shared together, when once he carried her down from the "Punch Bowl to keep her shoes dry" or at "Kapiolani." Tom recalls private moments, which only he and she have shared and do not involve Gatsby at all. After being reminded of her memories with Tom and then in recalling her happy memories with Jay Gatsby, she at last, confused, declares that she has loved both of these men at different times.
Nostalgia 12: Jordan Baker is one of the few people who does not display any signs of nostalgia or of lingering in the past. Nick admires her for this intelligence and finds comfort in her despite the fact that he is depressed about getting older.
Chapter 8
Nostalgia 13: Gatsby still refuses to move on past his memories of Daisy although it is evident that she has fallen out of his reach due to Tom's words the previous night about the truth of Jay's past. Nick is unable to shake him free of her, and listens patiently to his stories about Daisy and returning to the South after the war and visiting all the old spots he had been to with Daisy although she had already been married off to another man. Gatsby refuses to accept how much things have changed and is consumed by that one moment in the past when he had known Daisy, unable to progress beyond it.
Nostalgia 14: Just as Gatsby is unable to progress beyond Daisy, George Wilson does not know how to live without his wife Myrtle and becomes obsessed only with avenging her death.This accomplished, and having no other purpose in life, he kills himself. Myrtle had been his reason for existing it seems and without her he can no longer function. Gatsby too had held onto his thoughts of Daisy, still yearning for her and hoping until the very end of his life.
Chapter 9
Nostalgia 15: Wolfsheim distances himself from people once they are dead and no longer relevant to his life, saying that he values friendship with people when they are living and sees no need to cry after them when they are gone but rather moves on readily. In his youth he would linger along for the funeral. Moving onwards so soon is something he has learned to do with age.
Nostalgia 16: Similar to his son with his newsclippings of Daisy, his photographs, and the medal from Montenegro, Henry Gatz carries with him articles of his son. A tattered book from Jay's boyhood is displayed proudly although the words are decades old. The man lingers continually on the promise that his son had showed and what he could have possibly become had he lived longer.
Nostalgia 17: Nick too is suddenly consumed by a nostalgia for the summer and all that happened, somehow feeling a loss at how dark the mansion had become. No cars drove up the driveway for the weekend parties, no music blared out from the windows, and the grass was overgrown while it had always been kept trimmed before. The sudden deadness of the place makes him miss the life that existed before.
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