The Great Gatsby: Chapter Six

Question: Select a passage that reveals the nature of the narrator. Discuss how this passage and the narrator contribute to your interpretation of the work as a whole. Identify the narrator’s tone and literary strategies that shape it. Comment on the narrator’s purpose in the chapter, as well as the effect the narrator is having on your reactions to the events and characters.

Answer:

            Nick attends another one of Gatsby’s parties in Chapter Six, but this time he goes with Daisy and Tom and he feels quite different about it. He says, “Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy's running around alone, for on the following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby's party. Perhaps his presence gave the evening its peculiar quality of oppressiveness-it stands out in my memory from Gatsby's other parties that summer. There were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same profusion of champagne, the same many-colored, many-keyed commotion, but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn't been there before. Or perhaps I had merely grown used to it, grown to accept West Egg as a world complete in itself, with its own standards and its own great figures, second to nothing because it had no consciousness of being so, and now I was looking at it again, through Daisy's eyes. It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment.” (Fitzgerald, 104).

            Nick’s change of attitude toward the party could be caused by a few things. He says that one of the things that are different is “a pervading harshness that hadn't been there before” (Fitzgerald, 104). Since the only changing factor between this party and the rest is that Daisy and Tom were in attendance, it would not be unreasonably to assume that they’re the cause of this harshness and Nick’s new feelings. One way that they could’ve done this is because of the love triangle element between the three. Daisy, who is married to Tom and has a strong romantic history with Gatsby, undoubtedly caused tension while the anger between Gatsby and Tom, Tom disliking Gatsby because he didn’t trust him around Daisy and Gatsby hating Tom for being married to the woman he loves, had its own hostility. The incessant drama and stress of the whole ordeal could have easily ruined the party for Nick. This shows that Nick is affects by the affairs of others and the emotions that they give off if tension between his two friends and his cousin managed to spoil the whole evening.

            Another thing that could have affected him is Daisy and Tom’s scrutiny of the whole event. Daisy, in particular, seemed to have an effect on him. She disliked mostly the whole evening and at dinner, when they were sitting next to people who Nick was amused by last time he was them, he became embarrassed and ashamed of them around her. He states, “We were at a particularly tipsy table. That was my fault-Gatsby had been called to the phone, and I'd enjoyed these same people only two weeks before. But what had amused me then turned septic on the air now.” (Fitzgerald, 106). He later comments that Daisy hated the party and he says, “But the rest offended her-and inarguably, because it wasn't a gesture but an emotion. She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented "place" that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village-appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short-cut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand.” (Fitzgerald, 107). He’s commenting on the differences between East Egg, where she lives and the people there are proper and do things that are deemed socially acceptable, and West Egg, where Gatsby and Nick live where they don’t worry about social boundaries and are free to do as they please for the most part since they aren’t confined by only doing what is ‘proper’. This shows the differences between the two places and the attitudes of the peoples that live there. It appears that Daisy’s disapproval of the event affected Nick to the point where the entire party became unappealing to him. This shows that Nick is a person easily swayed by the opinions of others.

            Another thing that is revealed about Nick during this chapter is how he reacts to people using Gatsby for his never-ending hospitality and considerable wealth. For example, when people stop by at Gatsby’s home unexpectedly to mooch off of him, Nick thinks snide remakes towards them, such as “"I'm delighted to see you," said Gatsby, standing on his porch. "I'm delighted that you dropped in." As though they cared!” (Fitzgerald, 101). This shows that Nick, who might be Gatsby’s one true friend, is annoyed and angered by others taking advantage of Gatsby. This suggests that Nick is very protective of his friends.