The Great Gatsby Ch. 2 Reading Journal

The Great Gatsby: Chapter 2 (pp. 23-38)

Chapter 2 begins with Nick describing a desolate area between the East and West Eggs he calls the valley of the ashes, which is the dump holding all of New York City’s waste.  One day, Tom insists on Nick going to meet his mistress, Myrtle Wilson, whose auto-mechanic husband, George Wilson, apparently does not know about their affair.  They meet up with Myrtle later at Tom’s cramped New York appartment where they decide to throw a party with Myrtle’s sister, Catherine, and their neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. McKee.  Nick gets drunk and wants to leave out of disgust of their conversations but is fascinated and is pulled to stay.  Tom and Myrtle begin to have a fight over whether it is appropriate for Myrtle to speak of Daisy; Myrtle begins repeating Daisy’s name in spite of Tom and he hits her in the face and breaks her nose.

Myrtle Wilson:

“She was in her middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously… there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smoldering.” (p. 25)

Myrtle Wilson is a selfish, materialistic, and fake adulterer.  One thing about her character that could be seen as positive is her “immediately perceptible vitality” but, as Nick describes later, around other people “the intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur,” (p. 30).  She doesn’t love her husband George and says she only married him because she “thought he was a gentleman” and “thought he knew something about breeding…” (p. 34).  Catherine says “Tom’s the first sweetie she ever had,” which is ironic because his racist and violent manorisms don’t portray as much of a “sweetie,” (p. 35).  Her purpose in the novel is to show a contrast with Daisy and her own husband and to show her compatibility with Tom.

Significant Quote:

“Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away.  But his eyes, dimmed a little by  many paintless days under sun and rain, brood over the solemn dumping ground.” (p. 24)

This quote stuck out to me because it addressed two major symbols in the book: the valley of ashes and Doctor Eckleburg’s eyes.  The valley of ashes is the dumping ground of the city; it is the waste that is left over by its inhabitants.  A large figure is overlooking the dump through spectacles.  Doctor Eckleburg represents some greater God-like figure looking down on the results of the New York society.  When it talks about sinking into “eternal blindness” and “dimmed” eyes, it is like saying that God has lost hope and has given up on the human race he is watching over.

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The Great Gatsby Ch. 1 Reading Journal

The Great Gatsby: Chapter 1 (pp. 1-21)

Summary:

In this chapter, we meet the narrator, Nick Carraway, a Yale graduate who moves to the West Egg near New York to work in the bond business in 1922.  Nick explains that he is the author of this book and that Gatsby, a man “who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn,” is the main character, who is apparently exempt from his judgment.  Nick goes to the East Egg to visit Tom Buchanan, an acquaintance from Yale, and his wife, Daisy Buchanan, Nick’s cousin, where he meets tennis professional Jordan Baker with whom the Buchanans want to set him up with.  Nick is enthralled by Daisy’s persona and he later finds out that her racist husband, Tom, has another woman in New York with whom he talks to on the phone.  After having a heart-to-heart with Daisy on the front porch, they ask him if the rumors of his engagement are true, then he leaves.  When he comes back to his home in West Egg, he sees Gatsby in person for the first time, seeming to quicker and stare at a green light out on the water.

Tom:

Tom “was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner.  Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward… It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body” (p. 7)

Tom Buchanan does not have many good qualities except that he was a football star in college and seems to be in good shape.  But even then, Nick “felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game,” (p. 6).  Throughout the chapter he is described as arrogant, dominant, aggressive, a brute of a man, and cruel.  To add to his list of “great” qualities, we later find out he is racist and an adulterer.  He is passionate to a “pathetic” extent about a book called ‘The Rise of the Colored Empires’ by Goddard about the “inferior” races (to whites) who will take over society.  Tom warns “if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged.  It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved,” (p. 13).  Later, when Nick finds out that “Tom’s got a woman in New York,” he is not surprised at all.

Significant quote:

“ ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl.  And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’… ‘You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow… And I know.  I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.’” (p. 17)

-The 1920’s marked the beginning of a huge feminist movement.  This quote shows the absolute hopelessness some women felt about their roles and opportunities in society before the movement.  It also says something about Daisy Buchanan’s character.  She is a fool for letting Tom walk all over her and cheat on her but she thinks it is not her place to make him stop so she allows his abusive behavior.  Money cannot buy happiness.  Here she expresses having everything is terrible especially when she doesn’t even have a voice in her relationship or in society

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