to living the fast-paced, lurid lifestyle of the East has shaped Chapters 6-9 summary; Take A Quiz; Chapter six begins with a newspaper man wanting to know more about Gatsby's parties. Read on to see how Fitzgerald connects Gatsby’s story with the universal human hope for a better future. After a little while Mr. Gatz opened the door and came out, his mouth ajar, his face flushed slightly, his eyes leaking isolated and unpunctual tears. A Comprehensive Guide. Owl Eyes' appearance at the funeral suggests that Gatsby, like the novels Owl Eyes admired, was a mere ornament. The Great Gatsby | Chapter 9 | Summary Share Then Nick tells the true story of Jay Gatsby which isn't even his real name. Class (Old Money, New Money, No Money) Past and Future . CliffsNotes study guides are written by real teachers and professors, so no matter what you're studying, CliffsNotes can ease your homework headaches and help you score high on exams. Predatory? F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby follows Jay Gatsby, a man who orders his life around one desire: to be reunited with Daisy Buchanan, the love he lost five years earlier. Check out our top-rated graduate blogs here: © PrepScholar 2013-2018. However, that was my fault, for he was one of those who used to sneer most bitterly at Gatsby on the courage of Gatsby's liquor and I should have known better than to call him. Two important things are revealed in that short statement. Nick tracks down Gatsby's father, Henry C. Gatz, a solemn old man left helpless and distraught by the death of his son. America, according to Fitzgerald, was founded on the ideals of progress and equality. Myrtle’s sister doesn’t tell the police about Myrtle having an affair. On the last night, he wanders over to Gatsby's for one last visit. . Quotes Chapter 9 But all this part of it seemed remote and unessential. Nick, repulsed by the shallow and brutal East, determines to return to the Midwest. Copyright © 1999 - 2020 GradeSaver LLC. (9.153-154). Everyone else has found it either gaudy, vulgar, or fake. Nick thought his relationship with Jordan was superficial. Nick starts to feel scornful of everyone as even Meyer Wolfsheim and Klipspringer reject the idea of attending Gatsby's funeral. failure says about the dreams and aspirations of Americans generally, Not even Wolfshiem will come. In true Fitzgerald fashion, and in keeping with the way he has effectively withheld information regarding Gatsby's past throughout the novel, just when the reader thinks he or she knows all, Gatsby's father arrives and gives yet another peek into Gatsby's past. Even though Gatsby is dead, extremely exaggerated rumors continue to circulate about him and about the nature of his relation to Wilson and Myrtle. After that I felt a certain shame for Gatsby--one gentleman to whom I telephoned implied that he had got what he deserved. like to the explorers who discovered the New World centuries before. . Gatsby had hope and believed in the bounty of what was ahead, but it brought him face-to-face with his own destruction. When he phones Daisy to tell her of Gatsby's death, he learns she and Tom have left on a trip, leaving no itinerary. Is the kind of hope and optimism that this ideal promotes worthwhile, or does it result in self-delusions and disappointment? Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans. Gatsby, for all his wealth and greatness, could not become a part of their world; his noble attempt to engineer his own destiny was sabotaged by their cruelty and by the stunted quality of their imaginations. Nick is horrified - after all, it wasn’t Gatsby who ran over Myrtle. His pride in his son and in his son's possessions was continually increasing." when he was throwing his parties, circulate about the nature of that someone has written on the steps. Nick decides that he is fundamentally a Midwesterner and needs to go back. just as Daisy was for Gatsby. Plot-wise, too, the last chapter is full of callbacks to the past. In the end, he shakes hands with Tom, finding no reason not to because Tom (and the people he represents) is really no more than a child. which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life. with that intense personal interest to which every one has some vague right at the end." As the moon rises, he imagines the island with no houses and considers what it must have looked like to the explorers who discovered the New World centuries before. Nick flashes back to a childhood memory of coming home from boarding school. Although Nick Carraway has his reservations about Gatsby, it is clear he thinks of him fondly; after all, he titles the book The Great Gatsby. Sick of the East and its empty values, Nick decides to Later that afternoon when Gatsby's phone rings, Nick answers. On the white steps an obscene word, scrawled by some boy with a piece of brick, stood out clearly in the moonlight and I erased it, drawing my shoe raspingly along the stone. We're using this system since there are many editions of Gatsby, so using page numbers would only work for students with our copy of the book. The only other attendee at Gatsby's funeral is Owl Eyes, the melancholy drunk who was so astonished by Gatsby's library. During the short conversation, Nick learns that Tom, not surprisingly, had a role in Gatsby's death. Nick assumes that he’ll be coming to the funeral, but Klipspringer is only calling to get back a pair of shoes he left behind. Struggling with distance learning? The West, though it was once emblematic of the American desire for progress, is presented in the novel's final pages as the seat of traditional morality, an idyllic heartland, in stark contrast to the greed and depravity of the East. Outraged, But on the other hand, this easy letting go of painful memories in the past leads to the kind of abandonment that follows Gatsby’s death. who suddenly claims that she has become engaged to another man. The police investigation reduces what happened to the simplest possible terms: that Wilson was deranged by grief and killed Gatsby at random. When Wilson came to Tom's house, gun in hand, Tom directed Wilson to Gatsby, not feeling an ounce of remorse. Usually, death makes people treat even the most ambiguous figures with the respect that’s supposedly owed to the dead. The only people at Gatsby's funeral are Nick, some servants, Henry Gatz, and Owl Eyes. The Great Gatsby essays are academic essays for citation. The American Dream. Or so the reader thinks. . Writing two years after Gatsby’s death, Nick describes When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. It’s fitting that Nick feels responsible for erasing the bad word. as he lay in his house and didn’t move or breathe or speak, hour upon hour, it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no one else was interested—interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to which every one has some vague right at the end. Like insects, reporters and gossipmongers swarm around Gatsby's mansion after his death. H… Nick tries to give Gatsby a funeral as grand as his parties, but finds that Gatsby's enormous circle of acquaintances has suddenly evaporated. Therefore, any attempt at progress is the result of hubris and outsized ambition. Get free homework help on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: book summary, chapter summary and analysis, quotes, essays, and character analysis courtesy of CliffsNotes. Though Nick worships Gatsby's courage and capacity for self-reinvention, he cannot approve of either his dishonesty or his criminal dealings. By claiming to have raised Gatsby up from nothing, Wolfsheim essentially claims that money is everything. He gave up his past. The book's final chapter begins with the police and the paparazzi storming Gatsby's house. Despite his dislike of Gatsby, Nick is the only one who takes his side. . from your Reading List will also remove any What he learns is surprising, but strangely in keeping with her character: She chastises him for being the first man who has ever broken up with her, but before ending the conversation she gets in one last strike, hitting his secret vanity and labeling him as deceitful and dishonest. Tom and Daisy, like other members Nick muses that contemporary Americans are "boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past"; any attempt to progress, to move forward, is ultimately futile. This fundamental moral . By using our site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand our. This is one of the ways in which their marriage, dysfunctional as it is, works well. Gatsby's vision of Daisy is a dream.... he remembers the woman he fell in love with. Wolfshiem, much to Nick's dismay, sends a letter explaining he won't be involved with Gatsby's funeral. Tom doesn't even know that Daisy was really driving the car. his methods are criminal, he can never gain acceptance into the American Henry Gatz is proud The second idea introduced here is the utter shallowness of the people who, in better times, take every opportunity to be at Gatsby's house, drinking his liquor, eating his food, and enjoying his hospitality, but abandon him at the end: Daisy and Tom have left without a forwarding address. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Hopalong Cassidy cowboy hero of novelist Clarence E. Mulford's popular western series. in Westport and asks Nick to send along his tennis shoes. depravity dooms the characters of The Great Gatsby—all Westerners, No one except the owl-eyed glasses man that Nick had met at one of Gatsby’s parties comes to the funeral. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education. future for himself, but his dream ends in failure for several reasons: All along, the novel has juxtaposed the values and attitudes of the rich to those of the lower classes.