The second chapter was generally more interesting for me than the first one. The chapter starts with a calm scene. Dr. T. J. Eckleburg is staring endlessly, ‘’above the gray land and spasms of bleak dust’’ with his gigantic, piercing blue eyes. I thought that this portrait was overly calm; but the sort of calm and quiet that comes after a raging thunderstorm (and the dust and the grayness of the scene gave me a post war image). After I read the info on the back, I understood that this was a very important scene that will also come up later in the story.
The chapter got interesting for me after Tom said ‘’I want you to meet my girl’’ to Nick. I didn’t quite understand why he would do this, since Nick is the cousin of his wife, but I was more surprised and perhaps eager to find out whom this woman was. ‘’Then I heard footsteps on a stairs, and in a moment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door’’: I thought that this quote was a very important one, as in giving the reader the first impression on this woman. The first impression I got wasn’t nice; I thought that his woman is everything that Daisy is not (first of all being thick). The fact that she also blocked the light from the office door also made me think that this woman brings darkness and bad with her; again, unlike Daisy who lights up the room that she is in. This woman also had a ‘’immediately perceptible vitality’’ on her face, which is also unlike Daisy, who has a smile that brightens the dark room.
I think the fact that Myrtle picked up a copy of Town Tattle and there are also several copies at the apartment shows that she is a low class woman who likes gossip and isn’t interested in reading anything but it. There is also a copy of Simon Called Peter next to the Town Tattles, which in reality is a novel that Fitzgerald harshly criticized and described it as ‘’immoral.’’ I think that Fitzgerald implies that she is not a very good woman by making her read that book that he absolutely loathes.
The most important part of the chapter is I think on page 21 (‘’With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted to impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment, and as she expanded the room grew smaller around her, until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air.’’) . This part shows that Myrtle turns to one of these stuck-up, newly rich people when she comes to New York; taking courage from Tom and his money. Myrtle thinks highly of herself, thinks that she is something, when in reality she is just a mistress, without any class or decency as we can also see in chapter 1, when she phones Tom from his house at dinnertime. I don’t understand what Tom sees in her, when he has a woman like Daisy as his wife.
We also find out a little more about Mr. Gatsby in this chapter. Myrtle’s sister Catherine says that she went to one of his parties and says that he is rumored to be a cousin or a nephew of Kaiser Wilhelm’s and that is where his money comes from. She also says that she is scared of him and would hate to give him anything on herself. Mr. Gatsby still remains to be a mysterious character for me; all we know is that his parties are very popular. Mysterious Mr. Gatsby is probably the most interesting character in the book so far.
Nick and Catherine’s small talk in this chapter had a lot of information. First we learned that she knows Mr. Gatsby, and then we learn that Tom and Myrtle both can’t stand the person they’re married to. Catherine later on says ‘’You see, it’s really his wife that’s keeping them apart. She’s a Catholic, and they don’t believe in divorce’’ (page 23) which shows that Tom is a hypocrite: he is not only lying to Daisy and going to another woman, but he is also lying to Myrtle about Daisy, saying that she is a Catholic and that is the reason that he can’t get a divorce. I really want to know the real reason.
Towards the end of the chapter Tom and Myrtle have a fight about whether she is aloud to mention Daisy’s name or not. From the description in the first chapter, I thought that Tom was a scary man, but when he broke Myrtle’s nose, that only proved me right.
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