The Great Gatsby Ch. 8 Reading Journal

The Great Gatsby: Chapter 8 (pp. 147-162)

Summary:

The next morning, Nick goes over to Gatsby’s house and learns that Gatsby stayed outside the Buchanans house until four in the morning and Tom never tried to hurt Daisy.  Nick wants Gatsby to forget about Daisy and leave town but Gatsby refuses until he know what her decision is even though we already know she chose Tom.  He talks about how he fell in love with her and felt as if he were married to her, she promised to wait for him until he came back from the war but she married Tom while he was away.  When Nick leaves, he tells Gatsby he is worth more than the Buchanans and everyone else put together.  Nick basically ends his relationship with Jordan over the phone, then describes what happened with George Wilson the night before.  Wilson talked about confronting Myrtle and pointing to Dr. Eckleburg and saying that God sees everything, he later draws to the conclusion that the person who killed her was her lover and that it was murder.  Wilson connects the car to Gatsby and goes to his house when Gatsby is lounging in the pool, shoots Gatsby, then shoots himself.  Nick finds Gatsby and imagines his last moments.

Jay Gatsby:

“ ‘They’re a rotten crowd,’ I shouted across the lawn. ‘You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.’” (p. 154)

Jay Gatsby is a man created by James Gatz who was intended to live a rich, extravagant, and perfect life, according to a 17 year old.  He is completely in love and obsessed with Daisy Buchanan and devotes every ounce of time and effort into making his dream of being with her a reality.  It’s admirable that he can pinpoint what he wants in life and do everything he can to achieve it but it is also this that leads to his downfall and the destruction of his dream.  He completely transforms himself into a 17 year old’s idea and chases after an unreachable perfection of a glorified person, Daisy, it was “the following of a grail” (p. 149).  When his dream of having Daisy died, so did everything he used to try to get her; his house is musty and empty, the world around him has transformed along with himself.

Significant Quote:

“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” (p. 161)

This quote shows Gatsby’s state of mind at the end of his life.  Nick talks about how Gatbsy ended up alright in the end.  In the end, he is released from his dreams and aspirations of being with Daisy and faces reality.  By this time, when he is laying in the pool, the illusion of the “Great” Gatsby had already died and all his illusions with it.