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The Great Gatsby Notes – Nick Carraway
Comprehensive close reading notes
Important to note that this is written after his experience so he is speaking about how he is
now after his journey of change would be complete
...
’
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This passage has four significant parts and one overarching theme
...
’

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The opening paragraph foreshadows the last, uses a circular narrative style

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Fitzgerald could be using a chiastic structure/palistrophe

‘Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, ‘he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this
world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had
...


1

Nick is giving the reading his point of view as a telepathic relationship with his father, but
could he just be interpreting things the way he wants to? The advice is like that of a
philanthropist, like John D
...
’

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Rockefeller was reserved, had an under-inflated ego, had a purpose beyond wealth
and was frugal
...

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Nick appears to infer that reserving judgment is pointless as his thoughts will proved
right eventually

I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth
...

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He now contradicts his earlier statement is manner that suggest the reading audience
should understand him
2

When I came back from the East last autumn, I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a
sort of moral attention forever
...

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Nick despises the American dream, upstarts, libertines, honesty without
euphemisms, showiness
...
Just like tom with Myrtle

If personality is an unbroken series of gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him
...

Wholesale hardware business
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Wholesale means they supplied businesses

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During a boom period

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No mention that he got a scholarship to Yale

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He has a rich cousin and many connections

I Graduated from New Haven in 1915
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New Haven is Yale and it is in Long Island
...

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Nick loves conflict which why he does not exert more effort to stop Tom’s and
Daisy’s affairs

Instead of being the warm center of the world, the Middle West now seemed now seemed like the
ragged edge of the universe
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He yearns for the more modern world away from traditions and values associated
with his class
...
He has tasted the big city and wants more

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A bit like Gatsby Nick is chasing after an old memory from years before

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Tom, Nick and Gatsby are all about 30 years old

Everyone I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man
...

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He has a maid, an expensive house and an expensive used car

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He assumes his maid is muttering wisdom, who she could in fact be complaining
about life as we later learn she lives in poverty
4

I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler
...
P Morgan, who died in 1913, would have been in recent memory

I was very literary in college
...

On the contrary, he appears to show deference it

Arrogant eyes
...
’
-

He is transferring his feelings to Tom’s thoughts

We were never intimate
...
This annoyed me
...


As though he were moving a checker to another square
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what is Nick’s square?

It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things
There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old,
was not enough to him anymore
...
It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort
to exact a contributory emotion from me
...


6

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Tom knew him at Yale and the same way his father tells him not judge Tom tells him
not be gullible

‘it’s libel
...
’
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Poor in comparison to Tom, but he may be the heir to his family business

We heard it from three people, so it must be true
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The rule of three

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Common knowledge

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What would indicate this if it were not true

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Nick understands the social queues

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Has he been misleading the girl in the Mid-West?

I wasn’t vaguely engaged
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Would his fiancé agree with him?

It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house
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Apart from Tom’s speech about race and his mistress calling, there does not appear
to be further reason for her to run away except that she is unhappy

But I didn’t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone
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Still making assumptions or was he being cowardly?

7

Chapter 2
This is a valley of ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and
grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke
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Described in a pastoral way

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Makes it sound like some kind primordial village

The supercilious assumption was that on Saturday afternoon I had nothing better to do
...
He sort of attaches himself to people
and groups
...

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A romantic idea, finding it hard to believe that this reality is acceptable, as his father
alluded, he does not really understand that others are less fortunate, he only comes
across poor people in a service capacity

I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon; so, everything that
happened was dim
...

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This refers to euphemistic type language used by the less powerful to avoid the
reality of their situation, he should not surprise, he should understand the
requirement to find an excuse to maintain an illusion

I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life
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Cognitive dissonance

I wanted to get out and walk eastwards towards the park through the soft twilight, but each time I
tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if with
ropes, into a chair
...


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New York is east and traveled further away

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Go west young man, not east

9

Chapter 3
Dreams of Castile
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How does Nick know about Castile?

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Castile was very colorful

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One would question how he knows of Castile, is it from literature or has he travelled
Europe

She is Gilda Gray’s understudy from the Follies
-

Gilda Gray stared in A Virtuous Vamp in 1921, about:
A charming and attractive woman inadvertently causes a great disruption when she
takes a job at a busy office by stealing the attention of all of her male co-workers except the one she fancies
...
They were at least
agonizingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few words
in the right key
...

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It is important to note that the pill had not been invented and feminism had not
taken a hold of American society
...
Even his family history has been falsified to make it
more acceptable (Dukes of Buccleuch)

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Nick’s family pretend to be old money in a way to hide humble beginnings

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Like in Jane Austen’s Emma, there are respectable trades and unacceptable ones

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Mirrors Tom calling Gatsby ‘let Mr
...


I could see nothing sinister about him
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His neat presentation is what Nick sees

He grew more correct as the fraternal hilarity increased
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At this point Nick does not know Gatsby is a bootlegger

Reading over what I have written so far, I see I have given the impression that the events of three
nights several weeks apart were all that absorbed me
...

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Nick yearns do for the freedom to make decision and choices without the social
pressure that accompanies them

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He is also a bit a fantasist

I felt a sinking feeling
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Scared of being alone

At first, I was flattered to go to places with her, because she was a gold champion, and everyone knew
her name
...
I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity
...

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He is happy when his ego is being tended to

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Jordan the heiress considers Nick her equal

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Jordan has become a challenge for him to overcome

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He wants to break her will

She was incurably dishonest
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It as though her dishonesty is erotic

It made no difference to me
...
That’s why I like you
...


But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires, and I knew that first
I had to get myself definitely out of that tangle back home
...
Nevertheless, there was a vague
understanding that had to be tactfully broken off before I was free
...
It’s like he uses words to manipulate a situation for selfish means and
the person underneath is irrelevant, like Tom and Daisy

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Although he says he is not engaged he acknowledges that he is in a ‘tangle back
home’
...
Dishonesty can come
from omission as well admission
...


13

Chapter 4
One I wrote down on the empty spaces of a time-table the names of those who came to Gatsby’s
house that summer
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Why would some do this?

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The breakdown shows that he is aware of local gossip and current affairs

Gatsby’s gorgeous car
Everybody had seen it
...

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At first, he doubts him but then believes him because of his expression
...


My incredulity was submerged in fascination now
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Again, fighting against expected behavior versus desired

Then it was all true
...

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Grand Canal is in Venice

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Nobles lived there through the centuries

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Did he visit or find it in literature?

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Evokes romance

More annoyed than interested
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-

Likes to be in control

Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the
moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with
a wish out of non-olfactory money
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Fitzgerald is saying that the money that built the city was honest money, the city
however had plenty of corruption and Nick has a rose-tinted view of the big city

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He has a romanticized idea of New York

In its first wild promise of all the mystery and beauty in the world
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He comes from a beautiful rural world

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Minnesota was established in 1849 and his granduncle came there in 1851

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Dredd Scott case was 1857

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Admitted to union 1858

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Ratified 13th amendment 1865

A limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes, two bucks and
a girl
...

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Racist stereotypes

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Assumptions

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Racist reference

Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over the bridge,’ I thought; ‘anything at all…’
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He does not believe the previous scene should happen

In a well-fanned Forty-second Street cellar, I met Gatsby for lunch
...
After a moment I discovered his tiny eyes in the darkness
...

Moved us forward into the restaurant
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-

Speakeasy

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They serve highballs, which is carbonated soda and a spirit

Began to eat with ferocious delicacy
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Is it possible he expected one thing and saw the other then conflated them to make
an oxymoron?

I don't like mysteries
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Nick likes predictability

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Sticking within the rules of society gives him that predictability

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Mirrors what Jordan says about him not being ‘careless’

‘Have you known Gatsby for a long time?’ I inquired
...

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pursued-> Jordan and Daisy
...


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Busy- Jordan and Tom as they are preoccupied
...


16

Chapter 5
I was afraid for a moment that my house was on fire
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Over dramatic for effect

Trying to
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Nick not successful selling bonds in a boom

I realize now that under different circumstances that conversation might have been one of the crises
of my life
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He would have had a crisis of conscience had the offer been made generally and not
as a reward for service
...

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Meaning Americans are willing to be slaves for money but do not want to look as
though they belong with the poor

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Peasants can move away from their land; serfs are forced to stay by their Lord

I thought you inherited your money
I think he hardly knew what he was saying
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Does him not inheriting money change things?

I tried to go then, but they wouldn’t hear of it; perhaps my presence made them feel more satisfactory
alone
...
It had gone beyond her,
beyond everything
...
He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must
be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty
...

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Is this what Nick would have wanted?

For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the
unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing
...

I was in New York, trotting around with Jordan and trying to ingratiate myself with her senile aunt
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Why is he trying to ingratiate himself?

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Is this the behavior that people back home use to consider himself engaged?

As though they cared
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Nick disliking Tom and friends

She says she does want him
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The hostess

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Daisy

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Not understanding etiquette?
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Daisy and Gatsby danced
...
Then they sauntered over to my house and sat on the steps for half an
hour, while at her request I remained watchfully in the garden
...
”
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He is facilitating

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He is a pivot

She looked around after a moment and told me the girl was “common but pretty,” and I knew that
except for the half-hour she’d been alone with Gatsby she wasn’t having a good time
...


But what had amused me then turned septic on the air now
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Nick has not changed, he is from old money, he is reverting to type after enjoying the
open hedonism

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Tom enjoyed open hedonism at the apartment with Myrtle

Girl addressed was trying, unsuccessfully, to slump against my shoulder
...
She saw
something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand
...

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He is projecting how he thinks Daisy should feel

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Daisy has married and moved on, she does not have same obsession as Gatsby, Nick
should know this

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Calling Daisy jealous

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He does not suggest that jealousy is unreasonable

‘She didn’t like it,’ he insisted
...
’
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Nick has already described Daisy as unhappy

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He knows he is lying but later speaks of his honesty

“I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ventured
...
”
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He senses that the magic is fading

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He recognizes that what Gatsby has done for Daisy is both too much and not enough
...

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Nick wants to tell Gatsby that it’s over and to face reality
...
Ironically, he is admitting Gatsby is a bootlegger
...

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This the euphemism Nick mentioned previously
...
I’d never understood before
...

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He is reading Tom and making a conclusion

What? Confused, he stared at us as we laughed
...
It is
like they see it a game

We were all irritable now with the failing ale and aware of it
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Has an alcohol dependency

I stared at him and then at Tom, who had made a parallel discovery less than an hour before—and it
occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the
difference between the sick and the well
...

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Indicating the dangers of not following the rules in the 1920s and marrying before
having children and also the risks of pregnancy from affairs

There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind, and as we drove away Tom was feeling the
hot whips of panic
...

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This does not make him simpleminded

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Another example of Nick judging

The prolonged and tumultuous argument that ended by herding us into that room eludes me, though
I have a sharp physical memory that, in the course of it, my underwear kept climbing like a damp
snake around my legs and intermittent beads of sweat raced cool across my back
...

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Black and portentous must this humor prove, Romeo and Juliet: I, I

Angry as I was, as we all were, I was tempted to laugh whenever he opened his mouth
...

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Nick thinks Tom is a hypocrite

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Sexually free himself, but self-righteous about his wife’s affair

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Tom is defending his position and possession and not going against a social norm of
rich men having mistresses
...
‘Come on, Tom
...
’
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Nick using euphemisms

“No… I just remembered that today’s my birthday
...
Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade
...
But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too
wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age
...

So, we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight
...
He lists the things
that will change

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Foreshadow Myrtle's death

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Considering his own mortality

A pale well-dressed negro stepped near
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Race is important to Nick just as class is, but as the negro is not challenging him, he
does not feel the need to say something derogative

I’ll wait outside
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Does not want to cross the line physically or metaphorically

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He has been privy to both affairs

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He has seen the consequences for their lovers

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He does not see things as harmless flings anymore, he sees the person to a greater
degree

I’d be damned if I’d go in; I’d had enough of all of them for one day, and suddenly that included
Jordan too
...

“Who was the woman?” he inquired
...
Her husband owns the garage
...
“He’s not thinking about her
...
There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody
would have said that they were conspiring together
...
It is not about love; it’s about supporting a lie and
maintaining a way of living
...
So, I walked away and left him standing
there in the moonlight—watching over nothing
...
He couldn’t possibly leave Daisy until he knew what she was going to do
...

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Could still break him free but this requires self-sacrifice, the risk of being disliked or
disbelieved

He wouldn’t consider it
...
He
was clutching at some last hope and I couldn’t bear to shake him free
...
“You’re worth the whole damn bunch put
together
...
It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved
of him from beginning to end
...
You’ve got to try hard
...
”
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Voice of dead Gatsby

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Would Gatsby have really said all of this

The hair in his nostril quivered slightly
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Obsessed with the man’s nose

I tried to think about Gatsby then for a moment, but he was already too far away, and I could only
remember, without resentment, that Daisy hadn’t sent a message or a flower
...

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He using where they come from as a direct reason for their behavior

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The behaviors however have been about breaking conventions and seeking out a life
that best pleases the individual

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Although Freud might agree with his summation Alfred Adler would not
...


you said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver,
didn’t I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess
...
I thought it was your secret pride
...
“I’m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor
...
It
was all very careless and confused
...

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This mirrors the opening sentence

28



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