“Jimmy always liked it better down East. He rose up to his position in the East”
We see that Gatsbys father had an enormous respect for Gatsby, but Gatsby seemed to be, in a sense, oblivious to this. Most sons want to be successful to please their parents, especially their father, but Gatsby was completely intrinsically motivated. We learn from his dad that he made schedules and goals for his life and seemed to follow them, and that’s he he ‘rose up to his position’. What exactly Gatsby did, we’re still unaware, but that isn’t even important at this point.
“Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something. Do you notice what he’s got about improving his mind? He was always great for that. He told me I eat like a hog once, and I beat him for it.”
Reading this chapter, how could you not think that Gatsby was a great guy. It seems almost unfair that hardly any who used him for his exiting parties would neglect to come to his funeral. We even get the pathetic and peculiar response from Meyer Wolfsheim that he is tied up in some very important business and cannot get involved with Gatsbys death now. Gatsby is almost back to where he was before his own self improvement. He has money, although that’s worthless when he is dead, but doesn’t have any friends. Those parties were thrown in hopes Daisy would come to one, and not in the attempt to get friends, as we see from Gatsby not even talking to anyone at the parties. I would think though, that if one were to go to his house every week, then they should at a minimum pay him respect and at the very least attend his funeral.
“I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life”
If anything, I would have to disagree with Nick here, I don’t see that it was all of these Westerners that possesed some deficiency, but just Nick and Jordan. I do think that this deficiency was a good thing, Nick lacked the motivation which led all of them to cheat on their spouses. Nick endures their distasteful behavior, but emerges in a better place then those who lived with constant tension.
“And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”
Was it ultimetly Gatsbys fault that he didn’t get Daisy? Was he just too late? He was constanly improving upon himself, but there was more than just Tom standing between the two of them.
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