The Great Gatsby: Chapter 9

Chapter 9

In chapter 9 we come to the end of the book and the Nick description of the events of what happened after Gatsby’s death. We also get the introduction of a character that I think is quite important to in understanding why Jay Gatsby was hatched from James Gatz. We also gets Nicks realisation of upper class superiority amongst the people he considered his mutual friends.
At the start of the chapter Nick phones Daisy but the person on the phone states that her and tom have left baggage and all and that they left no contact, nick puts this off and expects her to phone later, but she doesn’t he then realises that she had no intention of coming, this ties in with the last part of the chapter where Nick says “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed things up and creatures and then retreated back in to their money and their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made……” he now knows that Daisy is truly under Tom’s control as she did have the chance to leave him but she is too obsessed with the image of a perfect upper class life. Tom leads Daisy around like a dog on a leash all because she can have a nice life with her husband and daughter, it suggest that when they moved from France, to the east of America they were just waiting to ruin someone else’s life this time it just happened to be the one person who wanted her to come back. But considering she supposedly loved Gatsby you would have thought she would have phoned up or at least sent a card but she doest which suggests the whole affair was a lie.
We then get the one person who truly knows Gatsby, his father, although Nick has no possible way of contacting His father he finds out because of course Gatsby’s death is big news and it is heard all the way up in Chicago in the news papers which is where he finds out about his sons death. “He was on the point of collapse … but he wouldn’t eat and the glass of milk spilled from his trembling hand” I think Nick includes this description because it shows how truly devastated his father is, No father should have to bury their own son, maybe they didn’t speak that often but he still bought him up and was his own. “His grief began to be mixed with an awed pride” it shows just how proud he is off his son for building himself up from nothing to this great mansion.
We then get a phone call from “Mr. Klipspringer” who was the apparent border in the house. But once again it is another person who used Gatsby because he says to Nick that he wont be coming to the funeral, all these people that turned up to the parties and made up so many rumours about him, wouldn’t be coming to the funeral, he realised now that they only wanted a place to go so they be scandalous and to display their lives full of pointless gossip and money. Even “Meyer Wolfshiem” wouldn’t come to the funeral he gave a justly reason because he couldn’t be seen there as it was too risky for him to be seen. Fitzgerald now uses the perfect time to include bad weather “when I left his office the sky had turned dark and I got back to west egg in a drizzle” I think this is good language description because it symbolises that everything that Nick has been trying for, trying to get people to Gatsby funeral, has just gone out like a light, because the one person he depended on, wasn’t going to go.
I think the way Gatsby’s dad calls him “Jimmy” makes him seem a lot less profound. It makes him sound like they have a good father / son relationship. “Jimmy” makes him sound like a laid back person who was very young at heart I think this puts a positive note on Gatsby as it helps us to imagine him as a child. We then get the Schedule that Gatsby made for himself when he was younger, we know it is from his youth because one his dad has it and secondly because it is “Hopalong Cassidy”, it shows how hell-bent he was on becoming someone better then his father as it says “read one improving book or magazine per week” “practise poise elocution and how to attain it” this shows that as a young boy he just wanted his life to be better then the one he had. I think it is important that when it is Gatsby’s funeral it is raining because it shows that something truly horrible is happening and the insight into a man’s life that appeared to have many friend yet those “friends” didn’t go to his funeral. Then the one person that does turn up to the burial couldn’t believe that no-one else had turned up, which showed that even the little people matter when it comes to friends.
We then get Nicks description of his own life after Gatsby’s death and how he couldn’t stay in the east anymore because he saw Gatsby everywhere he went. I think the way he next describes his leaves is good as he says “So when the smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home” he’s like a bird, he goes where the wind takes him, in this way him and Daisy are alike.
We then get the Ending of the sub-story between Nick and Jordan, and she realises that he has done her a favour by giving her a new experience with men, I think this is important because she has more of a chance of becoming less like Daisy and hurting everyone she meets.
I think the way Nick leaves the image of Gatsby house represents the way Gatsby life turned out to be. It was built up to be something of impressive valour, much like Gatsby did to himself, and when Nick says “I went over and looked at that huge incoherent failure of a house once more” this symbolises the vast mass of emptiness insides the house and insides Gatsby’s life, it was purpose built to fill the needs of one person and that person fled when things got hard.
I think Fitzgerald in the last line is proposing one big life lesson “so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” I think he is proposing it as a big life lesson because he says we, which means he isn’t speaking to one person he is speaking about all people, I think he’s trying to say that you’ll always have the past on your shoulders, if it’s a struggle to get through it or if its easy then others, but you just have to get on with it until the day it all ends.