The Great Gatsby - Chapter 6

'The Great Gatsby' Reading Log - Chapter 6

Key Events

- A reporter turns up at Gatsby’s house

- We find out more about Gatsby’s true past – he was from a poor family – saved Dan Cody and in return was allowed to help him until he mysteriously died – he should have inherited 25,000 dollars but Kaye took the money illegally, giving Gatsby the idea that mass amounts of money can only be obtained illegally

- Tom goes to Gatsby’s for the first time

- Tom and Daisy attend one of Gatsby’s parties

- Gatsby believes he can repeat the past

- An insight into Gatsby and Daisy 5 years ago is revealed

Significant moments

- Rumours are being spread about Gatsby and are beginning to reach reporters

- Gatsby finds out that the only way you can earn a lot of money is by being corrupt and doing it illegally, by Dan Cody’s death

- Tom swears he is going to find out what Gatsby does

Scenes and places

- Gatsby’s house – ‘perhaps his presence gave the evening its peculiar quality of oppressiveness’- Tom was a burden – his presence completely changed the theme of the party

- ‘there were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same profusion of champagne, the same many-coloured, many-keyed commotion, but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn’t been there before’ - everything is the same but with Daisy and Tom there, there was a completely different atmosphere

- ‘or perhaps I had merely grown used to I, 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’ – through Nick’s eyes, West egg is how people who live there perceive it. But Tom and Daisy see it differently as they are from East Egg. They see rude and uneducated people – proves difference between social class

- ‘Mrs. Buchanan …and Mr. Buchanan –‘ After an instant’s hesitation he added: ‘the polo player’ ‘Oh no,’ objected Tom quickly, ‘not me’ But evidently the sound of it please Gatsby, for Tom remained ‘the polo player’ for the rest of the evening’  – Daisy introduced first – shows Gatsby cares for her but is also inversion of society – humorous – Gatsby needs something else to introduce Daisy and Tom to make them sound interesting – Tom disagrees to the polo player but guests remember him this way – making Gatsby pleased

Characters

- Jay Gatsby – ‘heard Gatsby’s name around his office in a connection which he either wouldn’t reveal or didn’t fully understand’ – rumours are becoming well known – ‘Gatsby’s notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his hospitality’ – ‘until he fell just short of being news’ – people who should be thankful for…