1. Chapter 8

2. NICK‟S INSOMNIA
“half-sick between grotesque reality and savage,
frightening dreams” (147)
• Nick’s nightmares are just as brutal as reality
• points to the savagery of the society Nick is living in
- he is getting disgusted with the events that he has
witnessed.
• lack of sleep = restlessness

3. GATSBY‟S HOUSE
• The piano is “ghostly”, there is “dust
everywhere” and the “rooms were
musty, as though they haven‟t been
aired for many days”
• the house seems to collapse and go into
disrepair along with Gatsby’s dream.
• No longer needed to lure Daisy, and is
forgotten.

4. GATSBY IS TOO SENSITIVE FOR
THIS CRUEL WORLD
“„Jay Gatsby‟ had broken up like glass against Tom‟s hard
malice...” (148)
• Gatsby is too fragile and sensitive, a romantic
at heart
• Tom and Daisy are cruel, selfish and
destructive
• Tom is brutal and intimidating and physical.
• Gatsby cannot compete

6. GATSBY AND DAISY
(148-149)
• Gatsby describes Daisy as the first “nice” girl he had
ever met - suggesting that Gatsby had previous
relationships with women of bad reputation and lower
social status.
• Daisy’s house was full of “ripe mystery”, “radiant
activities”, “romances that were not musty” and
the “fresh breathing and redolent of this year‟s
shining motor cars and of dances whose flowers
were scarcely withered” - everything surrounding
Daisy was alive and fresh, full of promise and
potential.

7. • The fact that Daisy had had many lovers
and suitors excited Gatsby and made her
worth the pursuit.
“He felt their presence all about the
house, pervading the air with the shades
and echoes of still vibrant emotions” - to
win an admired and fickle woman like Daisy
would truly be a feat.

9. • The thing that attracted Daisy to Gatsby was his
uniform, and Gatsby was afraid the charm wouldn’t
last, “so he made the most of his time” and “took
what he could get, ravenously and
unscrupulously”.
• At first, he didn’t seem to have feelings for Daisy; he
merely wanted to see if he could succeed in seducing
someone so out of his reach. He never expected to
fall in love with her.

10. • There was a sense of guilt early on in the
relationship, since Gatsby had taken Daisy
under false pretenses and given her a false
sense of security, letting her believe that they
were of the same social class.
“He had intended, probably, to take what he
could get and go - but now he found that he
had committed himself to the following of a
grail.”

12. REJECTION
• She vanished into her house, leaving him with nothing
- she had her own life and Gatsby felt rejected.
• Perhaps, not used to rejection, Gatsby pursues Daisy
not because he loves her but because she bruised his
ego and because he needs to prove to himself that he
can get anything if he works hard enough.
• like a moth, he is attracted to her status and wealth
and pursues her precisely because he shouldn’t.
• for Gatsby Daisy represented not only the American
dream but also eternal past, eternal youth.

13. • After Gatsby left, Daisy became nervous and full of
despair - pressured by the world to fill a certain role.
• “Daisy began to move again”, restlessness caused her
to see other men, dress in finery, stay out all night.
• She couldn’t wait for Gatsby forever. “She wanted her
life shaped now, immediately - and the decision must
be made by some force - of love, of money, of
unquestionable practicality.” Tom was the force that
happened to decide for her, at the right place and at the
right time - she would have taken anybody.

15. GATSBY COMES BACK FOR DAISY,
BUT SHE‟S GONE
“He snatched out his hand desperately as if to
snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the
spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all
going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he
knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest
and best, forever.” (153)
• Looks for her – thinks he could get her back if he
tries hard enough
• Part of him realizes that he can’t get the innocent
Daisy back

17. NICK‟S OPINION OF GATSBY AND
THE OTHERS
“They’re a rotten crowd...you’re worth the whole damn bunch put
together” (154)
• Even though he’s a criminal, Gatsby is a purer being than the
Buchanans and Jordan – who are corrupt and destructive.
• At least Gatsby is a generous man with feelings; the others
seem selfish, petty, snobby and dangerous.
• Gatsby can love, while the others are reckless, lack emotional
attachments and are concerned only with artifice and surfaces.
• these are the last words Nick speaks to Gatsby and they
elicit one of Gatsby‟s radiant and rare smiles.

19. MYRTLE AND GEORGE
• Myrtle, who always wanted to be famous,
only becomes talked about after her death
– “tragic achievement”
• George is distraught at the death of
Myrtle; his wife was everything to him.
• Vengeance
• Assumes that Gatsby is Myrtle’s lover and
the man responsible for her death.

20. TJ ECKLEBERG AND GEORGE
• George compares the eyes of the billboard
with the eyes of God - always watching the
sinners on earth.
• He told Myrtle that she couldn’t fool God in
her affair, even though she had managed to
fool him for a while.
• In this society, God is money and business and
material goods.

22. GATSBY AT THE END OF THE
SUMMER
• Taking a swim in his pool for the first
time, before the pool gets drained for
the winter.
• Waiting for Daisy’s phone call, that
will never come.

23. “I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn‟t believe it would
come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he
must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a
high price for living too long with a single dream. He must
have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening
leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a
rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely
created grass. A new world, material without being real,
where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted
fortuitously about...like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding
toward him through the amorphous trees.” (161)

24. LAST MOMENTS
• Gatsby’s last moments are full of resignation and
disappointment.
• He comes to realize the futility of his dream and does not
recognize the world, since it doesn’t match the ideal he has
created in his head.
• What once was beautiful and peaceful was now grotesque,
frightening and full of ghosts.
• He sees the world for what it is, a savage nature covered by an
artificial cloak of pleasure and beauty.
• His world, in the last moments, is filled with brutality, rawness,
and unfulfilled, dying dreams - both his and George Wilson’s, as
both characters are at this point disappointed with life and fate.

26. DEATH
• After murdering Gatsby, Wilson commits suicide -
completing the holocaust.
• Nick describes the “movement of the water and the “gust
of wind” that brushes the surface of the pool. The leaves
revolving alongside the blood of Gatsby contrast the dead
body deprived of breath and movement.
• The passage juxtaposes the life of the world with the
death of Gatsby pointing out the insignificance of man -
the world moves on, even when a man’s life is snuffed.

27. MOVEMENT = SAFETY
• The movement of nature evokes the constant movement
of the Buchanan house and the restlessness of the
characters.
• Gatsby slowed down, rested, gave up or stopped to
ponder; he took a dip in his pool and the cruel world,
constantly in motion, caught up to him and destroyed
him.
• There is safety in motion, both emotional and physical.
In this novel, there is no time to dwell on the past.