The Great Gatsby - Chapter 3 Summary and Analysis
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- Опубликовано: 12 дек 2024
- Here is a summary and analysis of The Great Gatsby, Chapter 3.
Yet Gatsby’s party is starkly different from the other two. First, Nick is the only guest who seems to have been invited…everyone else just shows up to Gatsby’s house on the weekends. Nick has seen Gatsby’s parties from his lawn, watching fruit, caterers, decorators, musicians, alcohol, and loads of guests from the city crawl there. Nick in fact opens the chapter with long descriptions of the party set up and clean up, mostly to show us how over-the-top the whole ordeal appears. This is not all that different than a sort of catalog or lengthy list that’s traditionally given in epic poetry…but we’ll really see this in action in Chapter 4.
When Nick actually goes to the party he’s impressed - or disgusted - at how riotous the whole thing is. He says the guests “conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with amusement parks” which shows you a lot about how these “new money” parties like Gatsby’s bring out the true party animal spirit in people. Carraway actually gives a lot of attention toward describing how vivid and chaotic the party scene actually is. Everyone is getting drunk - Carraway himself says he’s practically his way there before he runs into Jordan Baker - and Carraway tries to capture the party scene with run-on sentences sprawling paragraphs, telling us that “laughter is easier, minute by minute spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly and swell, with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath - already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp joyous moment the center of a group and then excited with triumph glide on through the seachange of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.” There’s a lot of laughter and happy socializing, but also a heavy air of superficiality.
And in the midst of this Carraway finally gets his chance to attend one of Gatsby’s parties. He’s certainly been watching these galas from the sideline - how could he miss it as Gatsby’s neighbor - but in this chapter he tells us of his first night actually at Gatsby’s house. I’m sure we’ve all been in those situations where we don’t know anybody in a social setting and it’s pretty awkward. Nick finds himself in that scenario - wandering around and watching the action unfold around him - until he runs into Jordan Baker, and then his evening really gets started: Jordan temporarily ditches the East Egg folks she came with and takes Nick to begin searching for Gatsby. They search for him because there’s one clear point that Nick emphasizes throughout the chapter: no one really knows who Gatsby is. Rumors about him being a murderer, a spy, a soldier, an Oxford grad all swirl around, and even by the end of the party the only thing people know about him is that he is basically a non-person who hosts large parties.
As Jordan and Nick search, they end up in the library where they have an extremely interesting conversation with a man with “enormous owl-eyed spectacles” who is also very drunk. What stands out right away is the focus on his eyes, which ties back to Eckleberg’s eyes from Chapter 2. And beyond that, this man, who we’ll call “Owl Eyes” actually sees something about Gatsby that no one else does: he sees the entire persona of Gatsby as a performance. He’s impressed that the books are not fake, calling Gatsby a “regular Belasco” - an allusion to a big time producer in their era. Owl-Eyes - despite being drunk for a week - alleges that he can see through Gatsby’s performance and hints that there may be something very different beneath the feverish guise he portrays.
Even though Owl-Eyes says this in a sort of drunken ramble, when Nick finally does meet Gatsby later in the chapter, he gets the feeling that Gatsby is putting on a sort of act. Nick says Gatsby has an “elaborate formality of speech” and he’s “picking his words with care.” He even remembers that Jordan didn’t believe much of Gatsby’s backstory. All this reminds us of what Nick says about Gatsby in Chapter 1, which was “if personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him.”
At any rate, Gatsby has an incredible smile, doesn’t drink, and doesn’t engage in any of the frivolity of his guests. Nick says he was happy “looking from one group to another with approving eyes.” These bizarre descriptions, along with Gatsby taking mysterious phone calls from various cities only deepens the mysterious aura surrounding him. But what really draws us in by the end of the party is that Jordan Baker is pulled away and spends about an hour speaking with Gatsby privately. She only reports that she heard “the most amazing thing” and we - along with Nick - are left somewhat bedazzled by this wealthy and mystery that surrounds Gatsby.
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Owl guy is constanly drunk which in many ways, people who are drunk or high on muchrooms, say things or thoughts that are true or somewhat true. I dont think a sober person would be able to make a clear assessment if sober simlair to Nick??
Maybe. But everyone was drunk at the party, including Nick. I think it was the glasses/eyes. But in general you're right - clowns, jesters, hobos - these sorts of characters often speak truth in a society where everyone else just follows the crowd to stay in the crowd. Those who are already out of the crowd care less about pleasing everyone and therefore are better able to speak the truth.