The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby Chapter Eight
TASK 74
The narration snaps back into the present tense as Gatsby tells Nick,
almost trying to convince himself, ‘I don’t think she ever loved him . . .
Of course she might have loved him just for a minute, when they were
first married – and loved me more even then, do you see?’
Gatsby’s explanation that ‘it was just personal’ is extremely
ambiguous. The “just” seems to diminish the importance of the thing
(Daisy’s love for Tom?) and Gatsby appears rather pathetic, clinging
to the tatters of his broken dream and making excuses for Daisy.
Nick’s explanation, that Gatsby suspected some immensity in the
affair that could not be measured, seems to be almost absurdly
protective of Gatsby.
Gatsby then tells Nick how he visited Louisville when Daisy and Tom
were still on their honeymoon, which seems like a poignant attempt by
Gatsby to steep himself in the atmosphere that she came from.
Note carefully and comment on:-
‘He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of
air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him.
But it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew
that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever.’
This shows us that Gatsby was aware, even at this very early stage,
that he had already reached and passed over the pinnacle of his
relationship with Daisy. Does this mean that he was aware at some
level, even before beginning the “quest”, that it was illusory and
pointless? If so, this seems to make his quest, to rise above the base
materialism that inspired it, a wasted and fruitless effort.
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