Great Gatsbys Report Essay Example For Students

Great Gatsbys Report Essay CHAPTER 1:Nick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota who recently moved to New York to learn about the bond business, opens his story by describing himself. He is tolerant, slow to judge, and a good listener. As a result, people tend to share their secrets with him, including someone named Gatsby. Gatsby, Nick says, had a beautiful dream, but the people surrounding him ruined that dream. Nick is so disgusted with these people and their New York lifestyle that he has left New York and returned to Minnesota. In the summer of 1922, however, Nick had just arrived in New York and rented a house on a part of Long Island called West Egg. Unlike the conservative, aristocratic East Egg, West Egg is home to the new rich, those who, having made their fortunes recently, have neither the social connections nor the refinement to move among the East Egg set. West Egg is characterized by lavish displays of wealth and garish poor taste. Nicks West Egg house is next to Gatsbys mansion, a sprawling Gothic monstrosity. Nick is unlike his West Egg neighborshe graduated from Yale and has social connections on East Egg. One night, he drives out to East Egg to have dinner with his cousin Daisy and her husband Tom Buchanan, a former member of Nicks social club at Yale. Tom, a powerful figure dressed in riding clothes, meets Nick on the porch. Inside, Daisy lounges on a couch with her friend Jordan Baker, a competitive golfer who yawns as though bored by her surroundings. Tom tries to interest the others in a racist book called The Rise of the Colored Empires, by a man named Goddard. Daisy teases Tom about the book, but is interrupted when Tom leaves the room to take a phone call. Daisy follows him, and Jordan tells Nick that the call is from Toms lover in New York. After an awkward dinner, the party breaks up; Jordan wants to go to bed because she has a golf tournament the next day. As Nick leaves, Tom and Daisy hint that they would like him to take a romantic interest in Jordan. When Nick arrives home, he sees Gatsby for the first time, standing on the lawn with his arms reaching out toward the dark water. Nick looks out at the water, but all he can see is a distant green light that might mark the end of a dock. CHAPTER 2:Halfway between West Egg and New York City sprawls a desolate plain, a gray valley where New Yorks ashes are dumped; the men who live here work at shoveling up the ashes. Over the valley of ashes, two huge blue eyes stare down from an enormous sign. These spectacle-rimmed eyesthe eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburgare the last vestige of an advertising gimmick by a long-vanished eye doctor, and they watch unblinking over everything that happens in the valley of ashes. Tom drives Nick to George B. Wilsons garage, which sits on the edge of the valley of ashes. Toms lover Myrtle is Wilsons wife, and lives there with him. Wilson is a lifeless, yet handsome man; Myrtle has a kind of desperate vitality. Tom takes Nick and Myrtle to New York, to the Morningside Heights apartment he keeps for his affair with Myrtle. Here they have a party with Myrtles sister Catherine and a couple named McKee. Catherine has bright red hair, wears a great deal of makeup, and tells Nick that she has heard Gatsby is the nephew or cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm, the ruler of Germany during the first World War. The McKees, who live downstairs, are a horrid couple: Mr. McKee is pale and feminine, Mrs. McKee is shrill. The group proceeds to drink to excessNick claims that this party is only the second time in his life that he has been drunk. The ostentatious behavior and conversation of everyone at the party repulses Nick, and he tries to leave. At the same time, he finds himself fascinated by the lurid spectacle of the group. Myrtle grows louder and more obnoxious as she drinks, and shortly after her new puppy arrives, she begins to talk about Daisy. Tom responds by lashing out with his open hand and breaking her nose, which brings the party to a screeching halt. Nick leaves, drunkenly, with Mr. McKee, and ends up taking the four a.m. train back to Long Island. CHAPTER 3:Gatsby has become famous for the elaborate parties he throws every weekend at his mansion, and now Nick receives an invitation. At the party, guests mill about exchanging rumors about their hostno one seems to know the truth about Gatsbys wealth or personal history. Nick runs into Jordan Baker, whose friend, Lucille, speculates that Gatsby was a German spy during the war. Gatsbys party is almost unbelievably luxurious: guests marvel over his Rolls Royce, his swimming pool, his beach, crates of fresh oranges and lemons, buffet tents in the gardens overflowing with a feast, and a live orchestra playing under the stars. Liquor flows freely. In this atmosphere of opulence and revelry, Nick and Jordan set out to find Gatsby. Instead, they run into Owl Eyes, a middle-aged man with huge spectacles who sits poring over the unread books in Gatsbys library. At midnight, Nick and Jordan go outside to watch the entertainment. Suddenly, a young man with a magnificent smile appears and introduces himself as Gatsby. Gatsby looks like a roughneck, but his speech is elaborate and formalhe has a habit of calling everyone old sport. As the party progresses, Nick becomes increasingly fascinated with Gatsby. He notices that Gatsby does not drink and keeps himself separate from the party, standing alone on the marble steps watching his guests. At two oclock in the morning, as husbands and wives argue over whether to leave, Gatsby goes inside to take a phone call from Philadelphia, and Nick starts to walk home. On his way, he sees Owl Eyes struggling to get his car out of a ditch. Nick then proceeds to describe his everyday life, to prove that he does more with his time than simply attend parties. He works in New York City, through which he also takes long walks, and he meets women. After a brief relationship with a girl from Jersey City, Nick follows Daisy and Toms advice and begins seeing Jordan Baker. Jordan is dishonest; Nick even knows that she cheated in her first golf tournament. Nick feels attracted to her despite her dishonestyeven though he himself claims to be one of the few honest people he has ever known. CHAPTER 4:Nick lists all the people who attended Gatsbys parties that summer, a roll call of ridiculous names including the Cheadles, and the O.R.P. Schraders, and the Stonewall Jackson Abrams of Georgia. He then describes a trip to New York with Gatsby for lunch. As they drive, Gatsby tells Nick about his past, but his story seems highly improbablehe claims to be the son of wealthy, now deceased parents from the Midwest, but when Nick asks which Midwestern city he is from, he says San Francisco. He then claims to have been educated at Oxford, collected jewels in the capitals of Europe, hunted big game, and been awarded medals in the war by multiple European countries. Nick is skeptical, but Gatsby produces a medal from Montenegro and a picture of himself playing cricket at Oxford. Vineland, a novel by Thomas Pynchon, tells the story of a tumultuous p EssayIn the oppressive New York City heat, the group decides to take a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Tom begins his confrontation with Gatsby by mocking his habit of calling people old sport. He accuses Gatsby of lying when he claimed to have attended Oxford. Gatsby responds that he did attend Oxfordfor five months, in an army program following the war. Tom asks Gatsby about his intentions with Daisy, and Gatsby replies that Daisy loves him, not Tom. Tom claims that he and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could not possibly understand; he then accuses Gatsby of running a bootlegging operation. Daisy, who began the afternoon in love with Gatsby, feels herself moving closer and closer to Tom as she watches the confrontation. Tom realizes he has won, and sends Daisy back to Long Island with Gatsby to prove Gatsbys inability to hurt him. As the confrontation ends, Nick realizes that today is his thirtieth birthday. Driving back to Long Island, Nick, Tom, and Jordan discover a frightening scene on the border of the valley of ashes. Someone has been killed by an automobile, and Michaelis, the Greek who runs the restaurant next to Wilsons garage, tells them it was Myrtle, run down by a car coming from New York. The car struck her, paused, then sped away. Nick realizes Myrtle must have been hit by Gatsby and Daisy, driving back from the city in Gatsbys yellow Rolls Royce. Tom thinks that Wilson will remember the yellow car from that afternoon. He also suspects that Gatsby must have been the driver. Back at Toms house, Nick waits outside, and finds Gatsby hiding in the bushes. Gatsby says he waited to make sure Tom would not hurt Daisy. He tells Nick that Daisy was driving when the car struck Myrtle, but that he, Gatsby, will take the blame. Still worried about Daisy, Gatsby sends Nick to check on her. Nick finds Tom and Daisy eating cold fried chicken and talking. They have reconciled their differences, and Nick leaves Gatsby standing alone in the moonlight. CHAPTER 8:Late that night, Nick goes to visit Gatsby at his mansion. Gatsby tells him about courting Daisy in Louisville in 1917. He loved her for her youth and her vitality, and idolized her social position, wealth, and popularity. Daisy promised to wait for him when he left for the war, but after he left, she married Tom. Early that morning, Gatsbys gardener tells Gatsby that he plans to drain the pool. Yesterday was the hottest day of the summer, but this morning autumn is in the air, and the gardener worries that the falling leaves will clog the pool drains. Gatsby tells the gardener to wait a day; he has never used the pool, he says, and wants to go for a swim. Nick tells Gatsby good-bye, but as he walks away, he turns back and shouts that he thinks Gatsby is worth more than the Buchanans and all their friends. Nick rides the train to New York, but feels too distracted to work, and he even refuses to meet Jordan Baker for a date. Riding back to West Egg on the train, he looks out at the valley of ashes. He tells us what George Wilson was doing at that same moment, which he learned later from Michaelis and the newspapers. Wilson stayed up all night talking to Michaelis, and in the morning he was overwhelmed by the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg illuminated by the dawn. He believes they are the eyes of God, and leaps to the conclusion that whoever was driving the car that killed Myrtle must have been her lover. He decides that God demands revenge, and leaves to track down the owner of the car. He looks for Tom, because he knows Tom knows the cars ownerhe saw Tom driving the car earlier that day, but he knows Tom did not kill his wife, because Tom arrived later with Nick and Jordan. Nick hurries back to West Egg, and finds Gatsby floating dead in his pool. After Tom told Wilson that Gatsby was the owner of the car, Wilson went to the mansion, shot Gatsby, then shot himself. Nick imagines Gatsbys final thoughts, and pictures him disillusioned by the meaninglessness and emptiness of life without Daisy, without his dream. CHAPTER 9:Nick tries to hold a large funeral for Gatsby, but all of Gatsbys former friends and acquaintances have either disappearedTom and Daisy, for instance, move away with no forwarding addressor refuse to come, like Meyer Wolfsheim and Klipspringer. The latter claims he has a social engagement in Westport, and asks Nick to send along his tennis shoes; outraged, Nick hangs up on him. The only people to attend the funeral are Nick, Owl Eyes, a few servants, and Gatsbys father, Henry C. Gatz, who has come all the way from Minnesota. Henry Gatz is proud of his son, and saves a picture of his house; he also fills Nick in on Gatsbys early life, showing him a book on which a young Gatsby had written a schedule for self-improvement. Nick is sick of the East and its empty values, and decides to move back to the Midwest. He breaks off his relationship with Jordan, who suddenly claims that she is engaged to another man. Just before he leaves, he encounters Tom on Fifth Avenue. Nick first refuses to shake Toms hand, but eventually he accepts. On his last night in West Egg, Nick walks over to Gatsbys empty mansion and erases an obscene word someone has written on the side of the house. As the moon rises, Nick imagines the island with no houses, and thinks of what it must have looked like to the explorers who discovered the New World centuries before. He imagines that America was once a goal for dreamers, just as Daisy was for Gatsby. But Gatsbywhose wealth and success so closely mimic the American dreamfails to realize that the dream has already ended, that his goals have become hollow and empty. Nick imagines that people everywhere are motivated by similar dreams, and by a desire to move forward into a future where their dreams are possible. Nick pictures their struggles to create that future as boats moving against the current of a rivera river which inevitably carries them back into the past.