Ignorance

The final events in this chapter have really disappointed me. I could hardly believe that people wouldn’t show up to Gatsby’s funeral. This man threw the most extravagant parties, and let anyone and everyone come, you would think that people would be grateful enough come to the funeral. Nick felt the same way, he was astonished that people wouldn’t be lining up at the door to see this man in his final hours. Nick was trying to find absolutely anybody to come to this mans funeral. It was strange because Nick has mixed emotions towards Gatsby, but he feels need to be on his side and defend the dead man. Finally though Mr. Gatz (Gatsby’s dad), show’s up at Gastby’s door and tells Nick who he is. All this time Gatsby has lead us to believe that he has not had any contact with his family this whole time, when in turn he did! He sent his dad a picture of his house to show him how successful he has been, and he shows Nick to show how proud he was of his son. Later, at the funeral, owl-eyes shows up out of nowhere and his last words before he leaves are, “The poor son-of-a-bitch” (175). I believe that Fitzgerald put owl-eye’s at the funeral to signify that not everyone was superficial, and not everyone thought of Gatsby as a hollow shell, he actually had substance, and old owl-eye’s realized that. He saw when he was in the library that the books were real, and had been read, so naturally he thought of Gatsby as a real person, while other people just used Gatsby for his money, the way shallow people do. They didn’t see him for him, they didn’t really bother to know him either. After that, Jordan decides to break it off with Nick because she thinks he’s too wreck less, like her. He saw Tom before he (Tom) left for his vacation, and Tom ended up telling Nick that Wilson went to his house the day of Gatsby murder and asked who owned the yellow car that killed Myrtle, and Tom threw it all on Gatsby. So Tom is an access to murder, and he doesn’t feel any guilt about it, he and Daisy just decide to leave their dirty mess for everybody else to clean up. “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreat back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had mad…” (179). After that happened Nick decided that he was too squeamish for the east, so he was going to move back west. The very end of the story had so much symbolism, it’s hard to know where to start. Nick mentions when the island was very young that when the Dutch sailors came over they saw a lot of promise in this new land, it was their dream to go west to America, where they were promised that they could build themselves up from nothing and make a living. But ironically that was just the opposite for Gatsby, he moved out east to find Daisy and made cheap easy money, in-turn it destroyed him, his American dream was twisted into something that was not real, a fake reality. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” (180) as for Gatsby this meant that no matter how hard he tried to have Daisy he just couldn’t get her because he already had her once and he can’t live in the past. No one can just simply live in the past, one must move forward in time the way it was meant to be. It was a very powerful quote to end with and it really stuck with me. This overall was one of the best books I’ve read this year, it’s very relatable even for being wrote back in the twenties, which makes it such a success (with me).