Fitzgerald, Francis Scott - The great Gatsby (2)

The great Gatsby

The great Gatsby.

Chapter one.
Nick Carraway was a young man from an upper middle-class family. He graduated from New Haven University and then took part in the First World War. He then joined the bond business and rented a house in the country, in the West Egg of Long Island, east of New York City. His house was ugly and small, but stand between two rich and beautiful houses, one of which was Mr. Gatsby’s home.
One day Nick visited two old friends he hardly knew: Tom and Daisy Buchanan.

Chapter two.
One Sunday Nick went to New York with Tom and met his mistress. She was the wife of a garage’s owner, George Wilson, but he didn’t know about her wife’s love affair with Tom. Tom and Mrs. Wilson organized a party at Tom’s apartment in New York. They invited a lot of people, including Nick, who eve got drunk. During the party, Mrs. Wilson told Nick about her first meeting with Tom: they were sitting in front of each other on the train to New York.

Chapter three.
Meanwhile, Gatsby went on organizing great parties at his house. One day Nick was invited to one of these parties: there were a dance floor, an orchestra and a rich buffet. Nick noted that a lot of people had no invitation: they just went to Gatsby’s parties. During the party he met Jordan Baker and joined her group of friends. Among the guests there were rumors about Gatsby, and it seemed that nobody actually knew anything about the host: someone said the Gatsby killed a man once, someone else said he was a German spy during the war, a woman replied he was in the American army during the war. In the end Nick met Gatsby for the first time

Chapter four.
One day in July, Gatsby visited Nick and asked him to spend the day with him. He wanted him to know something about his life: he told Nick he was the son of some wealthy people from San Francisco, who left him a good amount of money; with this sum, he travelled in the capitals of Europe and lived like a prince. He then joined the army, becoming first an officer and then a mayor, receiving a medal for extraordinary courage. Nick listened to this story but didn’t believe a word of it. They went lunch together in a little restaurant and there Nick met a small man with a large head called Mr. Wolfshiem, who was a friend of Gatsby’s and a gambler. At the restaurant Nick even met Tom Buchanan and introduced him to Gatsby, who seemed embarrassed and soon disappeared. In the afternoon, Nick met Jordan Backer for tea and she told him her story: one day in 1917 she was walking along the street where Daisy lived; she was eighteen and she was a very popular girl. Daisy was sitting in her car with a young officer: he wa Jay Gatsby. After so many years Jordan hadn’t realized he was the same man who lived next to Nick. After that day, Jordan didn’t see Daisy for some time, until her marriage, the year after, with Tom Buchanan. She was a bridesmaid at her wedding and she remembered that, before the ceremony, she found Daisy drunk lying on the bed: she had a letter in her hand and she told her she had changed her mind. But after a cold bath she married Tom and left for a three-month trip to the South Seas. Jordan saw them again that trip and saw Daisy very crazy about her husband, even if Tom started to have his affairs. Daisy then had a child and, after a year in France, they finally settled down in Chicago. Here Daisy heard from Jordan the name Gatsby for the first time in years. Jordan told Nick that it wasn’t a coincidence that Gatsby’s house was so close to Daisy’s. He had actually bought that house to have Daisy just across the bay. Gatsby wanted Jordan to ask Nick if he could invite Daisy to his house and let him come over: Nick agreed and then asked Jordan to have dinner with him.

Chapter five.
Nick invited Daisy for a tea and informed Gatsby about it. Gatsby sent a man to cut Nick’s grass and examined the cakes Nick had brought, in order to have everything perfect. He was very nervous and pale as death. When Daisy arrived, he met her in the living room. They looked at each other’s eyes for a long time, and they were both very nervous and embarrassed. Nick decided to leave them alone and went out in the garden. When he came back, there were tears on Daisy’s face and Gatsby was full of joy: he invited Nick and Daisy to his house to show them around. Daisy was amazed by his huge house. She loved every simple luxurious room and Gatsby looked at her as he would do everything to please her. Then they went to visit the gardens until it started raining; so they returned into the house and Gatsby asked his house guest, Mr. Klipspringer, to play the piano. Gatsby and Daisy were so absorbed in each other that they forgot about Nick.

Chapter six.
Thanks to all the people he invited to his parties, Gatsby was becoming notorious. One day he told Nick his true story: his real name was James Gatz. He was the son of poor people but wanted a brilliant future; at the age of 17 he changed his name and then worked as a sailor, a secretary and a cleaning man on the yacht of the millionaire Dan Cody. He looked after him when he was drunk. When he died, he left Gatsby twenty-five thousand dollars but Gatsby never got the money because Cody’s lover, Ella Kaye, used several legal strategies to inherit the millions.
On afternoon Gatsby invited Tom Buchanan for a party, and Tom and Daisy were at Gatsby’s house again on Saturday night. Tom’s presence was arrogant and full of heaviness while Daisy was very excited: she danced with Gatsby and then they sat together on the steps of Nick’s house for half an hour. At the end of the party, Tom told his wife he wanted to find out who Gatsby was and what he did as a job. Daisy answered he owned many drugstores. Meanwhile Nick was talking with Gatsby, and Gatsby told him he wanted Daisy to break up with her husband, to run away with him and to marry him, as they were supposed to do five years before.

Chapter seven.
One Saturday night, a lot of people went to Gatsby’s house for a party but found the lights switched off so they came back home. Rumors said that Gatsby had fired all his servants and replaced them with five or six others. Gatsby explained to Nick that it was because Daisy came often to his house in the afternoons and he didn’t want his servants to gossip.
One day Nick and Gatsby were invited by Daisy for lunch. During the meal, Tom Buchanan noticed that Daisy and Gatsby stared at each other in a special way. When Tom was in the other room, Daisy kissed him and told him she loved him. After lunch, they all decided to go to town, but Tom, Nick and Jordan Baker would use Gatsby’s car while Daisy and Gatsby would drive Tom’s car. When Tom stopped at Wilson’s garage ‘cause the gas was running out, Mrs. Wilson from the window stared at Jordan with jealousy, thinking she was Tom’s wife.

Chapter eight.
They decided to spend the afternoon in a suite in the Plaza Hotel. There Daisy, Tom and Gatsby started to argue: Gatsby said that Daisy loved him and that she had never loved Tom. Actually, Daisy loved Gatsby, but she couldn’t say she had never loved Tom, because she did. Tom was persuaded that with this admission the affair between Daisy and Gatsby was over, so he told them to go home in Mr. Gatsby’s car.
When Nick, Jordan and Tom drove back home, they knew about the accident: a big, yellow car had ran over Mrs. Wilson while she was running out of the garage. The car didn’t stop and Mrs. Wilson died instantly. Tom was shocked by his mistress’ death and he and Nick understood the car was Gatsby’s. Nick went to Daisy’s home and found there Gatsby, who was waiting for her to go to bed. Gatsby admitted the accident was caused by his car, but that Daisy was driving; to protect her, he would say he was driving, but at the moment she was shocked.

Chapter nine.
Nick couldn’t sleep all night. He was worried about Gatsby so he went to his house to have breakfast with him. Gatsby talked a lot about Daisy, about the first time he met her, how he deeply fell in love with her. Nick didn’t want to leave Gatsby but he had to go to work: he went to the city but he was so worried about something that he returned in the early afternoon. When he arrived at Gatsby’s house, he, the driver, the butler and the gardener found Gatsby in the swimming pool, dead. Next to the pool, near the grass, there was also Wilson’s body.

Chapter ten.
It was clear that Wilson had discovered who was the owner of the car and decided to take his revenge. Nick wanted to organize Gatsby’s funeral but it seemed that all the people he had dealt with while he was alive had disappeared. One day before the funeral Gatsby’s father arrived. There were only him and Nick at the funeral: nobody else came; Tom and Daisy had gone far away without leaving any address.
After the funeral, Nick decided to leave the East and to come back home. He left Jordan Baker with a shake of hands. One year later he met Tom and found out that he had told Wilson who was the owner of the car. Nick understood that Tom and Daisy were careless people who broke up things and people without feeling guilty for it. He didn’t want to deal with them again.