The Great Gatsby- Chapter 8

Location
-Gatsby’s house

-Places from Gatsby’s past- Daisy’s old house
-Wilson’s petrol station in Valley of Ashes

Themes

The themes in this chapter are love between Daisy and Gatsby, Daisy's wealth and Wilson's revenge on Gatsby.

         - Daisy and Gatsby's love is explained more than in most of the other chapters through Gatsby's recollection of when they both fell in love when they were younger. We finally understand what Gatsby wants back because he talks about going back in time with Nick and we know that this is impossible so Gatsby comes across as quite a tragic character. He has idealised this summer with Daisy and so nothing could ever live up to it again and this only brings him disappointment.  

         - Daisy is very wealthy from a young age and Nick describes her as having a 'superficial world' and this is what Gatsby falls in love with. He has grown up as quite poor and so to meet someone who is rich but also doesn't appreciate this because it is their normal makes him curious about her world. From this moment in his life, this is what his whole life was made about and yet even when he was rich, he was never really one of them and this is explained when Nick says 'They're a rotten crowd, you're worth the whole damn bunch put together.'

         - Wilson seeks revenge on Gatsby when he hears the rumour that Gatsby was the one driving the car that killed his wife, Myrtle. As the readers, we know that in actual fact it was Daisy driving the car and yet Gatsby's one last act was saving her and taking the blame for the killing. This brings a sadness for the tone because Daisy lets him do this and takes everything from him and she doesn't give him anything back, this can affect the readers mood into feeling angry at her.

Characters

-Daisy appears in Gatsby’s flashback when he remembers how it all started. She was very wealthy from a young age and this is what, it becomes clear, Gatsby fell in love with and was fascinated by. She seems to be very dependent on others because once Gatsby has gone back to war but through some confusion he was sent to Oxford and ‘there was a quality of nervous despair in Daisy’s letters.’ She was so used to getting what she wanted in her ‘artificial world’ that when Gatsby couldn't come home, she began to feel nervous. This is why she then turned to Tom Buchanan for a safe and practical life.

-Gatsby looks back to the perfect summer that he spent with Daisy and idealises this and has built his whole life around trying to get back to that perfect summer. He comes across as materialistic because he talks about Daisy’s wealth more than his love for Daisy and he seems to be quite transfixed with the wealthy lifestyle. He found her mysterious and this is what was appealing to him.

Narrative elements

Imagery

-Imagery is used to describe Daisy’s house ‘a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through its corridors, and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender’, this explains his fascination with the house.

Dramatic Irony

-Dramatic Irony is used when the reader knows that Nick ‘drew a small circle around the three-fifty train’ but Wilson was already in west-egg by half-past two  so we already know that he will be too late to save Gatsby from his death.

The brief mentioning of a important scene

Gatsby’s death is only mentioned in brief and is only obvious if you are reading the text really well. This could be because it upsets Nick to talk about it but this contrasts with Myrtle’s death which was described very vividly.