The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby Chapter Five
TASK 53
The symbol of the green light is explained now and Fitzgerald creates
more suspense with his suggestion that the authentic Daisy cannot
possibly live up to Gatsby’s ideal: ‘His count of enchanted objects had
diminished by one.’ Real life intrudes with a terse telephone
conversation but the weather satisfactorily intervenes to save the
romantic mood as Daisy exults in the ‘pink and golden billow of foamy
clouds above the sea.’ Nick’s chaperoning cements their new-found
alliance ‘perhaps my presence made them feel more satisfactorily
alone.’ (Tentative suggestions such as this make this first person
narrative so successful. Because Nick’s view is restricted not
omniscient, the reader is invited to form his or her own speculations
and therefore to engage more fully in the story with Nick as
confederate.)
How is the relationship between Gatsby and Daisy presented as the
chapter closes. Consider the effect of Fitzgerald’s use of the weather at
this point.
Still “trembling” as he lights Daisy’s cigarette, Gatsby confidently
orders up music. Again Fitzgerald exploits the surroundings and the
weather to illuminate what is going on in the house. ‘Outside the wind
was loud and there was a faint flow of thunder . . . All the lights were
going on . . . It was the hour of a profound human change and
excitement was generating on the air.’ So Gatsby is “bewildered” once
more ‘as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of
his present happiness.’ Has the ‘colossal vitality of his illusion’
outpaced the reality, ‘gone beyond her’? Nick fears for him: ‘No
amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man can store up in
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