Chapter 4

Summary

• Gatsby visits Nick’s house for the first time, and talks of his wartime experiences.

• They travel into the city, where Gatsby introduces Nick to Meyer Wolfsheim

• Later, Jordan tells Nick about Daisy’s past, her brief love affair with Gatsby and her subsequent marriage to Tom.

Jay Gatsby

• Gatsby tells of his Midwestern upbringing, his Oxford education, his war service and the act of bravery which led to his promotion to the rank of major. Nick thinks he is not telling the truth, although a photo from Oxford and a medal awarded in Montenegro seems to confirm parts of his story.

He inherited a great deal of money, and then “lived like a young raja in all the capitals of Europe...” collecting jewels, hunting big game, painting a little...and trying to forget something

very sad that had happened…..

Daisy Buchanan

• Jordan was a bridesmaid at the Buchanans’ wedding which was a significant social event. She tells how she found Daisy, before the bridal dinner on the day before her wedding, drunk and holding a letter, obviously sent by Gatsby. Soon after their marriage, Daisy became pregnant, and Tom began having affairs.

• Jordan recalls her meeting with Daisy, five years earlier. Daisy’s surname before her marriage was Fay.

• This may be the source of the character’s name, but it is surely significant that ‘fay’ is an old English word for fairy, which is appropriate to an inhabitant of the enchanted world, as Daisy appears to be, in Gatsby’s eyes. Of course, Daisy’s own romance world actually artificial, and barely hides an horrible reality. We are lead to suspect that beneath its surface delicacy Daisy’s character is tough and unfeeling.

Meyer Wolfsheim

• Over lunch, in New York City, Gatsby introduces Nick to Meyer Wolfsheim, who recalls the murder of his friend Rosy Rosenthal at the Metropole Hotel. Soon afterwards Gatsby discloses that Wolfsheim is a gambler, who fixed the 1919 World series baseball tournament.

• Represents the criminal world• He seems open about it in contrast to Gatsby’s secrecy,

page 76:“His expressive nose”“Let the bastards come in here…”“Fine specimens of human molars” for ringsGatsby is a “mystery”

“Rosy”Rosenthall

• Rosy Rosenthal (an actual gangster) was killed in a hail of machinegun bullets as he stepped outside the dining room of the old Metropol Hotel in 1913

Nick Carraway

• In 1917 Daisy was eighteen, and Jordan only sixteen . So, at the time of the novel they are both still young, Jordan is just twenty-one, but she is characterised as cynical and sceptical. Despite this, Nick’s affectionate involvement with her develops during this chapter. We begin to recognise that there is more emotional depth to Nick than he suggests. He continually presents himself as detached and rather cold but he physically holds and kisses Jordan Baker. F. Scott Fitzgerald contrasts the reality of an attachment to someone who is materially there for Nick with Gatsby’s elevated passion for an idealised and distant object of desire.

Narrative Voice

• Nick’s perception of Meyer Wolfsheim is different from the view held by Gatsby. In the narrative, Wolfsheim’s story of the death of Rosy Rosenthal follows Gatsby’s story of his own history and precedes Jordan’s recollection of her encounter with Daisy and the handsome young lieutenant. The placing in Nick’s narrative of Wolfsheim’s tale of violence amongst gangsters causes sinister overtones to give clues about Gatsby’s past. F. Scott Fitzgerald manages to present Gatsby as the heroic soldier and as the innocent lover, while hinting at his corruption.

• We recognise these hints as a result of Nick’s doubts about Gatsby’s own version of his story. He tells us that listening to this version “was like skimming hastily though a dozen magazines”. The simile is highly appropriate to this phase of American history as, illustrated magazines promoted society gossip and helped create Hollywood legends, while also serving the requirements of modern advertising. Nick is suggesting that although an image of Gatsby’s past has become visible, the realty behind it is far from distinct (theme of pretense against reality).

Daisy’s Story

• Jordan Baker narrates a story about Daisy

• Nick reports this without doubt or question

• Jordan has a distinctive narrative voice.

• E.g. she talks about her own clothes and imagines the “blue banners” said “tut-tut-tut-tut”.

• Note white associated with Daisy

Setting – New York

• Seems bright and full of possibilities• “Over the great bridge”• “All built with a wish out of non-olfactory

money”• In its first wild promise of all the mystery

and the beauty of the world• “Anything can happen now that we’ve slid

over this bridge…anything at all”• Even Gatsby could happen, without any

particular wonder”

Roaring Noon

• There is a contrast showing that Nick has entered another world:

• The world of criminals• “Blinking away the brightness of the

street outside”• “I discovered his tiny eyes in the half-

darkness”

Point of View

• Much of this chapter is concerned with theretelling of past events, and how the point of view of the teller changes the the account, and even its essential details. For example, Gatsby’s comment that Jordan Baker is “a great sportswoman” who would “never do anything that wasn’t all right” contradicts Nick ideas in the previous chapter, and shows how interpretations may differ significantly according to point of view. Gatsby’s judgement is coloured by the fact that he is using Jordan to arrange a meeting with Daisy and so wants Nick to trust her.

Symbolism

• He mocks the guests by their names:• Note that there are plant names here:

‘Hornbeam’, ‘Endive’, ‘Orchid’, ‘Duckweed’; animal names: ‘Civet’, ‘Blackbuck’, ‘Beaver’, ‘Ferret’, ‘Klipspringer’; and names of sea creatures: ‘Whitebait’, ‘Hammerhead’, ‘Beluga’. Should we read these names as a satirical ploy, suggesting certain characteristics associated with these plants and animals that are shared by the characters sketched? F. Scott Fitzgerald also gave plant names to Daisy, Myrtle and Carraway.

Social Class/Status

• Nick lists visitors to Gatsby’s house, indicating his social set.

• The list of guests who visit Gatsby’s house is a comic set piece including puns and jokes.

Theme- Desire

• Nick comes to an understanding of his neighbour’s desire and his obvious love. Jordan conveys Gatsby’s request to be invited to Nick’s house when Daisy is present. The chapter ends with Nick embracing and kissing Jordan.

Theme – American Ideals

The Founding Fathers of Modern America, who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, were sure that it would be a peaceful nation; American history however, is full of conflict. Ironically the success of Major Gatsby, promoted while active in a European war, is further evidence of the failure of fundamental American ideals with which F. Scott Fitzgerald is concerned in the novel.

Theme – Class, American idealsForeshadowing

• On the journey into the city, Nick notices Americans from south-eastern Europe attending a funeral, and black Americans in an expensive car, driven by a white chauffeur. Both images foreshadow Gatsby’s fate, while highlighting the act that America is made up of people from a variety of racial and cultural backgrounds. The materially successful black Americans may seem to suggest that there are equal opportunities for social advancement. It is more likely, given the social barriers highlighted within the novel, that this suggests illegal activity, as in the case of the Jewish gangster, Meyer Wolfsheim, and as in the case of the poor Midwesterners farmer’s son, Jay Gatz.

Theme – Social Class• Fitzgerald stresses the important social

standing of Gatsby’s guests. The theme of class

Many came from East Egg, including: the Leeches, the Voltaire's, the Blackbuck's, the Dancies, Mr. Whitebait, the Fishguard's, Maurice Flink, the Hammerhead's.

Guests from West Egg included: the Poles, the Catlip's, James B. ("Rot-gut") Ferret.

Imagery

• When Nick understands the nature of Gatsby’s love for Daisy he remarks “He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendour”. He means that Gatsby became another person to him other than the flashy character he had taken him for, showy with no purpose other than showiness. A passionate man emerged unexpectedly from that “womb of purposeless splendour”.

• There are several images of birth or rebirth in the novel, raising the theme of creating the self new. They are as ironic as the idea of fertility in the word “egg” when applied to the sterile rock. James Gatz has abandoned his actual mother, and when we see Daisy with her daughter, the novel’s only instance of maternal relationship, she displays a lack of motherly attachment.

Historical background

• The murder of Herman ‘Rosy’ Rosenthal was an actual event, and the ability to fuse real historical occurrences with stuff of romance adds to the novel. He includes some of the social realities of America in the 1920s and at the same time is revealing beliefs, prejudices and desires that shaped events and created different meanings of facts..