Summary

• Nick is not able to sleep after the traumatic events and rises early to visit Gatsby at his mansion
• Gatsby explains that he waited until very early in the morning but nothing happened to Daisy and she did not come outside either
• sensing Gatsby‘s confusion about that, Nick suggests that he should forget about Daisy and leave Long Island
• Gatsby refuses and tells Nick that he has loved Daisy back in the days for her vitality, youth, beauty, wealth and popularity
• Daisy was the first girl he truly loved which is why he lied to her about his background
• when Gatsby and Daisy slept together, Gatsby felt as if they where married
• although she promised to wait for Gatsby, she married Tom who had a stable social position and whom her parents agreed to
• Gatsby‘s gardener comes in and claims that he plans to drain the pool because it was some kind of autumn in the air and the gardener does not want leaves clogging the pool
• Gatsby asks the gardener to wait one more day since he wants to use the pool for the first time
• Nick realizes that he has spent too much time with Gatsby that day and that he is late for work
• he says goodbye to Gatsby and also tells him that he worth much more than the Buchanans and the like
• Nick spends his day rather distracted and does not even want to meet Jordan
• the reader learns about what happened the night that Myrtle was killed
  
  • George Wilson talks to Michaelis (the Greek restaurant owner) about Myrtle
  • before she died, George confronted her about her affair and stated that she couldn‘t hide her sinful life from the eyes of God
  • the next day, the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg stun George and he considers them to be the eyes of God
  • he draws the conclusion that the person who ran Myrtle over mus have been her lover
  • in his opinion, God demands revenge and he goes looking for Tom because he knows that Tom is acquainted with the owner of the yellow car who crashed into Myrtle
• George Wilson finds out that the car belongs to Gatsby and heads to his house
• Gatsby lies on an air mattress in his pool and looks at the sky when George Wilson shoots him and shoots himself shortly afterwards
• both are killed instantly
• since Nick feels strange, he heads back to Gatsby‘s mansion and finds him dead in the pool
• Nick thinks about what Gatsby must have felt in his last hours: the meaninglessness and emptiness of his own life without Daisy

Function

• through Gatsby‘s recounting of his life five years ago, Nick is able to analyze his deep love for Daisy
  
  • Nick finally grasps what Gatsby found so attractive about Daisy: her wealth, lack of fear, her being privileged
  • wealth and Daisy are intricately interwoven for Gatsby
  • by surrendering to the dream of attaining Daisy, Gatsby also surrenders his power of visionary hope to the task of amassing his fortune
  • he is "great" because of his power of dreaming, but he destroys it himself because he reduces it to a mere motivation to gain material things
  • thus, Gatsby is again a symbol of the corrupted American Dream of the Roaring 20s
• although Daisy has finally abandoned Gatsby, he still holds on to his perception with her and tries to recreate the past
  
  • he is even forced to talk to Nick about his past with Daisy in order to keep it alive
  • Gatsby is so disillusioned that he still believes that Daisy will call him
  • however, he has made her into a symbol and is not able to see her as the person she really is: the bored, rich, young, shallow, fickle woman who lacks both loyalty and moral strength
• connection between weather and Gatsby‘s feeling is further established
  
  • the confrontation between Tom and Gatsby takes place on the hottest day of summer
  • since the fire - Daisy - has left his life now finally, the weather cools down and the gardener considers it to be autumn soon
  • by insisting on using the pool, Gatsby holds on to the summer, the time when he spend his days together with Daisy
  • Gatsby does not understand that he can not control the passage of time
• the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg
  
  • although the eyes have no explicit meaning, Wilson considers them to be the eyes of God
  • for him, they represent a certain moral standard which is also why he wants to avenge Myrtle‘s death