The Gatsby Party Mistake

Christina Bonvicin
3.13.o9
The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a rather... interesting book. The first two chapters had a lot of information about Nick, the narrator, and the people of both West Egg, East Egg, and New York City. The third chapter is when things start to pick up. There is a lot of description of the party that Nick attended and the people at the party. And even before that party, Nick describes his neighbor, Jay Gatsby, and the parties that he had that lasted until very early in the morning, and how the Monday after the party his servants would fix up the damage the partying people caused.

Nick knew the very intimate details of Gatsby's parties, even though, up until that point, he had never been to one. It seemed to me that Nick was very stalker-like in the beginning of the chapter. I found it extremely creepy that he would know about the gypsy that downed the cocktail for courage before dancing onto the canvas by herself. I could see if he knew this after Gatsby invited Nick to the party, but Nick knew before he even went to the party. It's just extremely creepy.

The one part of chapter three that I liked was the drunks in the car that lost it's tire, at the very end of the night.

"At least a dozen men, some of them a little better off than he was, explained to him that the wheel and car were no longer joined by any physical bond.

'Back out,' he suggested after a moment. 'Put her in reverse.'

'But the wheel's off!'"

This part of the dialogue was extremely funny, simply because of the sheer stupidity of the drunk driver. It's even funnier because I know that in the 20s alcohol was banned in the US, which just makes me think about when the law was passed. And if the book was written before or after that law was passed. It's funny too, because, the man still wanted to try to back the car up, even though it was impossible without the wheel on. The broken down car had caused a lot of traffic, and Gatsby just stood on his porch calmly saying goodbye. Very odd, considering the hold up of the cars in from of his house. I guess Gatsby is a very easy going guy about things like that.