Gatsby gets rich and buys a huge mansion. He holds parties every weekend to which many people go. Nick, his neighbor, realizes that most of the people there were not even invited, nor do they know Gatsby. Now, he understands why; Gatsby knows many uninvited guests will show up, and the larger the party grows, the greater his hopes of
Quach 2
finding someone who knows Daisy will come. Therefore, Gatsby opens up his house almost every weekend to parties that go late into the night, and sometimes do not end until morning, just to try to find Daisy. He dedicates his weekends and privacy of his home to find his past and relive it, due to the attachment to the past that Gatsby has.
Finally, Gatsby’s parties bring a guest familiar with Daisy- none other than his next-door neighbor, Nick, who is also Daisy’s cousin. Gatsby has the story of Daisy, being his long, lost love, told to Nick. Afterwards, Gatsby wonders if Nick would invite Daisy over for some tea, without Daisy knowing the real reason, so Gatsby and her could see each other once again, after “’Five years next November’ (88).” Daisy arrives on the day that Gatsby and Nick had set, but the reunion does not go quite as it was planned. Gatsby arrives shortly after Daisy, “pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets (86)”. The conversation between Gatsby and Daisy is awkward and horrible, and Gatsby begins to think it was all a big mistake. Nick tells him, “’You’re acting like a little boy,’ […] ‘Not only that, but you’re rude. Daisy’s sitting in there all alone (89)”. Nick leaves, to let Gatsby and Daisy speak in privacy about the five years that they had missed with each other. When he returns to the house about a half hour later, “every vestige of embarrassment was gone (90)”, and Gatsby seems to literally glow. He had spent years dedicating his life to this very moment, and finally he begins to realize it. Next, Gatsby suggests going over to his house, so Daisy can see how he had changed, mainly in his financial stance, since the last time she had seen him. As they walked through his house, Nick recalls:
He hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a flight of stairs (92).
Gatsby’s goal for a part of his life was to become rich and be a better man in Daisy’s eyes. Now that Daisy could finally see what he had accomplished, Gatsby is in a daze, as if nothing that is happening is real. Next, he starts to think that the five years of dreaming and imagining of this day did not seem as great in reality. He had formed such an ideal of how Daisy would perform, that it did not seem to be living up to his dream.
He had passed visibly through two states and was entering upon a third. After his embarrassment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed with wonder at her presence. He had been full of the idea so long, dream it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an over-wound clock (93).
The day that Gatsby has waited for, for so long, has left him feeling confused and in wonder. He is not sure what to think, even though he is still enthralled by Daisy’s presence. “There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short
Quach 3
of his dreams- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion (97).” Still, life is unsatisfactory and his longing is not fulfilled.
Although Gatsby still does not feel complete, or fulfilled, he invites Daisy and her husband Tom to one of his parties. Tom seems unpleased as he arrives, wanting to know more about this “Gatsby” and how he came about, as his “arrogant eyes roamed the crowd (106)”. Daisy and Gatsby dance, and spend some quiet time at Nick’s house while Tom saunters among the party. Finally, Daisy and Tom decide to leave, after Tom comments to Nick about his opinion of the party. Gatsby asks Nick to wait a while until the party comes near to an end, so he can speak with him.
When he came down the steps at last the tanned skin was drawn unusually tight on
his face, and his eyes were bright and tired. ‘She didn’t like it,’ he said immediately. ‘Of course she did.’ ‘She didn’t like it,’ he insisted. ‘She didn’t have a good time.’ He was silent, and I guessed at his unutterable depression.
‘I feel far away from her,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to make her understand.’ […]
He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say:
‘I never loved you.’
Nick concludes the last statement, where Gatsby shows that his life is still not fulfilled. He still longs for more from Daisy, to have her all to himself as he did in his dreams. Feeling despaired, Gatsby talks of his confusion, how Daisy does not understand him anymore as she used to. Nick mentions to Gatsby to not expect too much of her, as “’You can’t repeat the past’ (111)”, which is exactly what Gatsby is trying to do, Nick discovers:
He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was (112).
Gatsby is still attached, and even obsessed, to the past. Nick realizes it more throughout the story that Gatsby is trying to acquire more than he can have. He wants more from Daisy than she can deliver, and he has dreamt his dreams too big. The obsession of his has caused him to forget to live in the present, and stop yearning for the past. The more he tries to bring back the past, the more his life seems to be incomplete.
Gatsby obsesses and expects too much from Daisy. He wants the past back, and forgets to live in the present. The longing he has never subsides, and still his life does not feel complete, even with Daisy in it again. Gatsby feels that materialism and wealth will cause Daisy to fall in love with him all over again, or maybe even prove that she never stopped loving him, and never started loving Tom. It is not that easy though, and Gatsby’s obsession will continue, to search for the history he once knew, and try to get the life he once lived back. He will go on living his life with a feeling of incompleteness until the dreams and expectations he has are met in reality.
by
yupfroyo (student)
