1. Chapter 8 pages 147-162
2. Chapter 8 Summary
The chapter starts off with Nick going to visit Gatsby once he arrives home from watching over Daisy from her front yard. When Nick arrives he suggests that Gatsby leaves town for a while because the police know the style of the car that killed Myrtle. After his suggestion, Gatsby starts telling Nick about his past life with Daisy. He shares the stories about how she and him were in deep love with each other, and how she was very rich and perfect, while he was poor and had nothing. Daisy had plenty of men chasing her around, but over all of them she chose Gatsby. But when Gatsby went to war he was gone for too long; Daisy could not wait for him and she decided to start dating again. She met Tom Buchanan, he was rich, handsome, and could be there for Daisy. While this was happening Gatsby was sent to Oxford in stead of being sent home. When he was released he fled back to try and find Daisy. He never did. So Daisy eventually married Tom and had put Gatsby out of her love life. After the conversation, Gatsby's gardener comes in and says he is going to drain the pool, but Gatsby wants him to wait until tomorrow because he wants to be in it one more time before the season ends. Then Nick leaves, but the last words he says are, "They're a rotten crowd . . . You're worth the whole damn bunch put together."(Page 154) When Nick gets on his train Jordan calls him and their conversation is simple and awkward, silence on the phone leads to one of them hanging up. Then Fitzgerald shifts the story to George Wilson and Michaelis. Michaelis is trying to involve George in conversation, but George won't stop talking about how he will find the murderer of his wife. After many hours, Michaelis goes home and sleeps, when he returns George is gone. He has headed to Gatsby's house. He finds Gatsby laying in the pool on a mattress and George is sure Gatsby killed his wife. So George shoots Gatsby in the pool and then shoots himself nearby in the grass. Nick and Gatsby's servants find them both dead.
3. Catherine
3a. "Catherine must have broken her rule against drinking that night, for when she arrived she was stupid with liquor and unable to understand that the ambulance had already gone to Flushing. When they convinced her of this, she immediately fainted, as if that was the intolerable part of the affair." (page 136)
"Catherine was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty, with a solid, sticky bob of red hair, and a complexion powdered milky white. Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face."(page 30)
3b. Catherine is a fake who lives with another girl in a hotel. She doesn't care that Myrtle is having an affair with George and Tom at the same time, rather she enjoys what Myrtle is doing and simply benefits from it. She represents a careless person who doesn't have a plan for their life ahead of them.
3c. She plays a significant role in allowing us to understand Tom's feelings about Myrtle and how he is still trying to maintain a relationship with Daisy. She represents one of the people in the story who knows exactly what is going on. Very few characters in the book know the details and the truth because everyone is lying to others and to themselves. When she arrives at her sisters death she faints because she knows she could have prevented the death. She knew everything about the relationships between the characters. If she didn't just sit around and benefit from her sister cheating on George, maybe Myrtle wouldn't have died.
4. "They're a rotten crowd . . . You're worth the whole damn bunch put together."(Page 154)
In the beginning of the book I liked Gatsby, then during the middle I hated him, now I have the same thought as Nick and don't think he turned out that bad. He is way better then any of their other disappointing cheaters in the book. Rather than having multiple affairs like Tom, Daisy, and Myrtle, he is just trying to accomplish his life long dream. All he wants his Daisy's love. The compliment that Nick makes is completely true about him. Even though Gatsby has been involved in illegal activities and he been made up of many harsh rumors, he doesn't represent a bad person. He is the only person in the book who knows what he wants when he is older. He is confident he will get it, but in the end I think he got what he wanted. He got Daisy's love, he in a way took a bullet for her because he took the blame for Myrtle's death. Even though he is dead, his life is complete.
http://jg007kill.blogspot.com/ Joey Guerra
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