了不起的盖茨比 The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby

Chapter 1

Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;

If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,

Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,

I must have you!"

--THOMAS PARKE D'INVILLIERS

Chapter 1

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

He didn't say any more but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret grieves of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought--frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon--for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.

And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction--Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament"--it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No--Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this middle-western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.

I never saw this great-uncle but I'm supposed to look like him--with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in Father's office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the

Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm center of the world the middle-west now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe--so I decided to go east and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep-school for me and finally said, "Why--yees" with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year and after various delays I came east, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.

The practical thing was to find rooms in the city but it was a warm season and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog, at least I had him for a few days until he ran away, and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.

"How do you get to West Egg village?" he asked helplessly.

I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees--just as things grow in fast movies--I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

There was so much to read for one thing and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides.

I was rather literary in college--one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the "Yale News"--and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the "well-rounded man." This isn't just an epigram--life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.

It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western Hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals--like the egg in the Columbus story they are both crushed flat at the contact end--but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.

I lived at West Egg, the--well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard--it was a factual imitation of some H?tel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby's mansion.

Or rather, as I didn't know Mr. Gatsby it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eye-sore, but it was a small eye-sore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor's lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires--all for eighty dollars a month.

Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed and I'd known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.

Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven--a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax. His family were enormously wealthy--even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach--but now he'd left Chicago and come east in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance he'd brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest.

It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.

Why they came east I don't know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn't believe it--I had no sight into Daisy's heart but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.

And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens--finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.

He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy, straw haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner.

Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body--he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage--a cruel body.

His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked--and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.

"Now, don't think my opinion on these matters is final," he seemed to say, "just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are." We were in the same Senior Society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.

We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.

"I've got a nice place here," he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.

Turning me around by one arm he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep pungent roses and a snub-nosed motor boat that bumped the

tide off shore.

"It belonged to Demaine the oil man." He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. "We'll go inside."

We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end.

The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling--and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.

The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall.

Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.

The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless and with her chin raised a little as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it--indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.

The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise--she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression--then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.

"I'm p-paralyzed with happiness."

She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had.

She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker.

(I've heard it said that Daisy's murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)

At any rate Miss Baker's lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly and then quickly tipped her head back again--the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.

I looked back at my cousin who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth--but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered "Listen," a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.

I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way east and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.

"Do they miss me?" she cried ecstatically.

"The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath and there's a persistent wail all night along the North Shore."

"How gorgeous! Let's go back, Tom. Tomorrow!" Then she added irrelevantly, "You ought to see the

baby."

"I'd like to."

"She's asleep. She's two years old. Haven't you ever seen her?"

"Never."

"Well, you ought to see her. She's----"

Tom Buchanan who had been hovering restlessly about the room stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.

"What you doing, Nick?"

"I'm a bond man."

"Who with?"

I told him.

"Never heard of them," he remarked decisively.

This annoyed me.

"You will," I answered shortly. "You will if you stay in the East."

"Oh, I'll stay in the East, don't you worry," he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more.

"I'd be a God Damned fool to live anywhere else."

At this point Miss Baker said "Absolutely!" with such suddenness that I started--it was the first word she uttered since I came into the room.

Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.

"I'm stiff," she complained, "I've been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember."

"Don't look at me," Daisy retorted. "I've been trying to get you to New York all afternoon."

"No, thanks," said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry, "I'm absolutely in training." Her host looked at her incredulously.

"You are!" He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. "How you ever get anything done is beyond me."

I looked at Miss Baker wondering what it was she "got done." I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.

"You live in West Egg," she remarked contemptuously. "I know somebody there."

"I don't know a single----"

"You must know Gatsby."

"Gatsby?" demanded Daisy. "What Gatsby?"

Before I could reply that he was my neighbor dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.

Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips the two young women preceded us out onto a rosy-colored porch open toward the sunset where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.

"Why CANDLES?" objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. "In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year."

She looked at us all radiantly. "Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it."

"We ought to plan something," yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.

"All right," said Daisy. "What'll we plan?" She turned to me helplessly.

"What do people plan?"

Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.

"Look!" she complained. "I hurt it."

We all looked--the knuckle was black and blue.

"You did it, Tom," she said accusingly. "I know you didn't mean to but you DID do it. That's what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great big hulking physical specimen of a----"

"I hate that word hulking," objected Tom crossly, "even in kidding."

"Hulking," insisted Daisy.

Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here--and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West where an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its close in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.

"You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy," I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. "Can't you talk about crops or something?"

I meant nothing in particular by this remark but it was taken up in an unexpected way.

"Civilization's going to pieces," broke out Tom violently.

"I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read 'The Rise of the Coloured Empires' by this man Goddard?"

"Why, no," I answered, rather surprised by his tone.

"Well, it's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be--will be utterly submerged.

It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved."

"Tom's getting very profound," said Daisy with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. "He reads deep books with long words in them.

What was that word we----"

"Well, these books are all scientific," insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. "This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It's up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things."

"We've got to beat them down," whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.

"You ought to live in California--" began Miss Baker but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.

"This idea is that we're Nordics. I am, and you are and you are and----" After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod and she winked at me again. "--and we've produced all the things that go to make civilization--oh, science and art and all that.

Do you see?"

There was something pathetic in his concentration as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned toward me.

"I'll tell you a family secret," she whispered enthusiastically. "It's about the butler's nose. Do you want to hear about the butler's nose?"

"That's why I came over tonight."

"Well, he wasn't always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people.

He had to polish it from morning till night until finally it began to affect his nose----"

"Things went from bad to worse," suggested Miss Baker.

"Yes. Things went from bad to worse until finally he had to give up his position."

For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened--then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.

The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom's ear whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.

"I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a--of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn't he?" She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation.

"An absolute rose?"

This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing but a stirring warmth flowed from her as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.

Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said "Sh!" in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond and Miss Baker leaned forward, unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.

"This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbor----" I said.

"Don't talk. I want to hear what happens."

"Is something happening?" I inquired innocently.

"You mean to say you don't know?" said Miss Baker, honestly surprised.

"I thought everybody knew."

"I don't."

"Why----" she said hesitantly, "Tom's got some woman in New York."

"Got some woman?" I repeated blankly.

Miss Baker nodded.

"She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner-time. Don't you think?"

Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.

"It couldn't be helped!" cried Daisy with tense gayety.

She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me and continued: "I looked outdoors for a minute and it's very romantic outdoors. There's a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He's singing away----" her voice sang "----It's romantic, isn't it, Tom?"

"Very romantic," he said, and then miserably to me: "If it's light enough after dinner I want to take you down to the stables."

The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at every one and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn't guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking but I

doubt if even Miss Baker who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy skepticism was able utterly to put this fifth guest's shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing--my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.

The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.

Daisy took her face in her hands, as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.

"We don't know each other very well, Nick," she said suddenly.

"Even if we are cousins. You didn't come to my wedding."

"I wasn't back from the war."

"That's true." She hesitated. "Well, I've had a very bad time, Nick, and I'm pretty cynical about everything."

Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn't say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.

"I suppose she talks, and--eats, and everything."

"Oh, yes." She looked at me absently. "Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?"

"Very much."

"It'll show you how I've gotten to feel about--things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool--that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."

"You see I think everything's terrible anyhow," she went on in a convinced way. "Everybody thinks so--the most advanced people. And I KNOW.

I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything."

Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom's, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. "Sophisticated--God, I'm sophisticated!"

The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said.

It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.

Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the "Saturday Evening Post"--the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamp-light, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.

When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.

"To be continued," she said, tossing the magazine on the table, "in our very next issue."

Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.

"Ten o'clock," she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. "Time for this good girl to go to

bed."

"Jordan's going to play in the tournament tomorrow," explained Daisy, "over at Westchester."

"Oh,--you're JORdan Baker."

I knew now why her face was familiar--its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.

"Good night," she said softly. "Wake me at eight, won't you."

"If you'll get up."

"I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon."

"Of course you will," confirmed Daisy. "In fact I think I'll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I'll sort of--oh--fling you together. You know--lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing----"

"Good night," called Miss Baker from the stairs. "I haven't heard a word."

"She's a nice girl," said Tom after a moment. "They oughtn't to let her run around the country this way." "Who oughtn't to?" inquired Daisy coldly.

"Her family."

"Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick's going to look after her, aren't you, Nick? She's going to spend lots of week-ends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her."

Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.

"Is she from New York?" I asked quickly.

"From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white----"

"Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?" demanded Tom suddenly.

"Did I?" She looked at me. "I can't seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I'm sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know----"

"Don't believe everything you hear, Nick," he advised me.

I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called "Wait!

"I forgot to ask you something, and it's important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West." "That's right," corroborated Tom kindly. "We heard that you were engaged."

"It's libel. I'm too poor."

"But we heard it," insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. "We heard it from three people so it must be true."

Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn't even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come east. You can't stop going with an old friend on account of rumors and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumored into marriage.

Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich--nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms--but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he "had some woman in New York" was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book.

Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.

Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red gas-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its

shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud bright night with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight and turning my head to watch it I saw that I was not alone--fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor's mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.

I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn't call to him for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone--he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward--and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.

Chapter 2

About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes--a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.

Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight.

But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T.

J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic--their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.

The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour. There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan's mistress.

The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known. His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with whomsoever he knew. Though I was curious to see her I had no desire to meet her--but I did. I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon and when we stopped by the ashheaps he jumped to his feet and taking hold of my elbow literally forced me from the car.

"We're getting off!" he insisted. "I want you to meet my girl."

I think he'd tanked up a good deal at luncheon and his determination to have my company bordered on violence. The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to do.

I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg's persistent stare. The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it and contiguous to absolutely nothing. One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an

all-night restaurant approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage--Repairs. GEORGE B. WILSON. Cars Bought and Sold--and I followed Tom inside.

The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car visible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner. It had occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind and that sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead when the proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste. He was a blonde, spiritless man, anaemic, and faintly handsome. When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes. "Hello, Wilson, old man," said Tom, slapping him jovially on the shoulder. "How's business?"

"I can't complain," answered Wilson unconvincingly. "When are you going to sell me that car?"

"Next week; I've got my man working on it now."

"Works pretty slow, don't he?"

"No, he doesn't," said Tom coldly. "And if you feel that way about it, maybe I'd better sell it somewhere else after all."

"I don't mean that," explained Wilson quickly. "I just meant----"

His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage. 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. She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice:

"Get some chairs, why don't you, so somebody can sit down."

"Oh, sure," agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity--except his wife, who moved close to Tom.

"I want to see you," said Tom intently. "Get on the next train."

"All right."

"I'll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level."

She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with two chairs from his office door.

We waited for her down the road and out of sight. It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in a row along the railroad track.

"Terrible place, isn't it," said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg.

"Awful."

"It does her good to get away."

"Doesn't her husband object?"

"Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He's so dumb he doesn't know he's alive."

So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up together to New York--or not quite together, for Mrs. Wilson sat discreetly in another car. Tom deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be on the train.

She had changed her dress to a brown figured muslin which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in New York. At the news-stand she bought a copy of "Town Tattle" and a moving-picture magazine and, in the station drug store, some cold cream and a small flask of perfume. Upstairs, in the solemn echoing drive she let four taxi cabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-colored with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from the mass of the station into the

glowing sunshine. But immediately she turned sharply from the window and leaning forward tapped on the front glass.

"I want to get one of those dogs," she said earnestly. "I want to get one for the apartment. They're nice to have--a dog."

We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd resemblance to John D. Rockefeller. In a basket, swung from his neck, cowered a dozen very recent puppies of an indeterminate breed.

"What kind are they?" asked Mrs. Wilson eagerly as he came to the taxi-window.

"All kinds. What kind do you want, lady?"

"I'd like to get one of those police dogs; I don't suppose you got that kind?"

The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck.

"That's no police dog," said Tom.

"No, it's not exactly a polICE dog," said the man with disappointment in his voice. "It's more of an airedale." He passed his hand over the brown wash-rag of a back. "Look at that coat. Some coat. That's a dog that'll never bother you with catching cold."

"I think it's cute," said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. "How much is it?"

"That dog?" He looked at it admiringly. "That dog will cost you ten dollars."

The airedale--undoubtedly there was an airedale concerned in it somewhere though its feet were startlingly white--changed hands and settled down into Mrs. Wilson's lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" she asked delicately.

"That dog? That dog's a boy."

"It's a bitch," said Tom decisively. "Here's your money. Go and buy ten more dogs with it."

We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn't have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner.

"Hold on," I said, "I have to leave you here."

"No, you don't," interposed Tom quickly. "Myrtle'll be hurt if you don't come up to the apartment. Won't you, Myrtle?"

"Come on," she urged. "I'll telephone my sister Catherine. She's said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know."

"Well, I'd like to, but----"

We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds.

At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses. Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs. Wilson gathered up her dog and her other purchases and went haughtily in.

"I'm going to have the McKees come up," she announced as we rose in the elevator. "And of course I got to call up my sister, too."

The apartment was on the top floor--a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom and a bath. The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles. The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock. Looked at from a distance however the hen resolved itself into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room. Several old copies of "Town Tattle "lay on the table together with a copy of "Simon Called Peter" and some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway. Mrs. Wilson was first concerned with the dog. A reluctant elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large hard dog biscuits--one of which decomposed

apathetically in the saucer of milk all afternoon. Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door.

I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon so everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it although until after eight o'clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun. Sitting on Tom's lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at the drug store on the corner. When I came back they had disappeared so I sat down discreetly in the living room and read a chapter of "Simon Called Peter"--either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things because it didn't make any sense to me. Just as Tom and Myrtle--after the first drink Mrs. Wilson and I called each other by our first names--reappeared, company commenced to arrive at the apartment door.

The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty with a solid sticky bob of red hair and a complexion powdered milky white. Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face. When she moved about there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets jingled up and down upon her arms. She came in with such a proprietary haste and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here. But when I asked her she laughed immoderately, repeated my question aloud and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel.

Mr. McKee was a pale feminine man from the flat below. He had just shaved for there was a white spot of lather on his cheekbone and he was most respectful in his greeting to everyone in the room. He informed me that he was in the "artistic game" and I gathered later that he was a photographer and had made the dim enlargement of Mrs.

Wilson's mother which hovered like an ectoplasm on the wall. His wife was shrill, languid, handsome and horrible. She told me with pride that her husband had photographed her a hundred and twenty-seven times since they had been married.

Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time before and was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room.

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 into 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. "My dear," she told her sister in a high mincing shout, "most of these fellas will cheat you every time. All they think of is money. I had a woman up here last week to look at my feet and when she gave me the bill you'd of thought she had my appendicitus out."

"What was the name of the woman?" asked Mrs. McKee.

"Mrs. Eberhardt. She goes around looking at people's feet in their own homes."

"I like your dress," remarked Mrs. McKee, "I think it's adorable."

Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrow in disdain.

"It's just a crazy old thing," she said. "I just slip it on sometimes when I don't care what I look like." "But it looks wonderful on you, if you know what I mean," pursued Mrs. McKee. "If Chester could only get you in that pose I think he could make something of it."

We all looked in silence at Mrs. Wilson who removed a strand of hair from over her eyes and looked back at us with a brilliant smile. Mr. McKee regarded her intently with his head on one side and then moved his hand back and forth slowly in front of his face.

"I should change the light," he said after a moment. "I'd like to bring out the modelling of the features. And I'd try to get hold of all the back hair."

"I wouldn't think of changing the light," cried Mrs. McKee. "I think it's----"

Her husband said "SH!" and we all looked at the subject again whereupon Tom Buchanan yawned audibly and got to his feet.

"You McKees have something to drink," he said. "Get some more ice and mineral water, Myrtle, before everybody goes to sleep."

"I told that boy about the ice." Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. "These people! You have to keep after them all the time."

She looked at me and laughed pointlessly. Then she flounced over to the dog, kissed it with ecstasy and swept into the kitchen, implying that a dozen chefs awaited her orders there.

"I've done some nice things out on Long Island," asserted Mr. McKee.

Tom looked at him blankly.

"Two of them we have framed downstairs."

"Two what?" demanded Tom.

"Two studies. One of them I call 'Montauk Point--the Gulls,' and the other I call 'Montauk Point--the Sea.' "

The sister Catherine sat down beside me on the couch.

"Do you live down on Long Island, too?" she inquired.

"I live at West Egg."

"Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago. At a man named Gatsby's. Do you know him?" "I live next door to him."

"Well, they say he's a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm's. That's where all his money comes from." "Really?"

She nodded.

"I'm scared of him. I'd hate to have him get anything on me."

This absorbing information about my neighbor was interrupted by Mrs. McKee's pointing suddenly at Catherine:

"Chester, I think you could do something with HER," she broke out, but Mr. McKee only nodded in a bored way and turned his attention to Tom.

"I'd like to do more work on Long Island if I could get the entry. All I ask is that they should give me a start."

"Ask Myrtle," said Tom, breaking into a short shout of laughter as Mrs. Wilson entered with a tray. "She'll give you a letter of introduction, won't you, Myrtle?"

"Do what?" she asked, startled.

"You'll give McKee a letter of introduction to your husband, so he can do some studies of him." His lips moved silently for a moment as he invented. " 'George B. Wilson at the Gasoline Pump,' or something like that."

Catherine leaned close to me and whispered in my ear: "Neither of them can stand the person they're married to."

"Can't they?"

"Can't STAND them." She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. "What I say is, why go on living with them if they can't stand them? If I was them I'd get a divorce and get married to each other right away." "Doesn't she like Wilson either?"

The answer to this was unexpected. It came from Myrtle who had overheard the question and it was violent and obscene.

"You see?" cried Catherine triumphantly. She lowered her voice again.

"It's really his wife that's keeping them apart. She's a Catholic and they don't believe in divorce."

Daisy was not a Catholic and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie.

"When they do get married," continued Catherine, "they're going west to live for a while until it blows over."

"It'd be more discreet to go to Europe."

"Oh, do you like Europe?" she exclaimed surprisingly. "I just got back from Monte Carlo." "Really."

"Just last year. I went over there with another girl."

"Stay long?"

"No, we just went to Monte Carlo and back. We went by way of Marseilles.

We had over twelve hundred dollars when we started but we got gypped out of it all in two days in the private rooms. We had an awful time getting back, I can tell you. God, how I hated that town!"

The late afternoon sky bloomed in the window for a moment like the blue honey of the Mediterranean--then the shrill voice of Mrs. McKee called me back into the room.

"I almost made a mistake, too," she declared vigorously. "I almost married a little kyke who'd been after me for years. I knew he was below me. Everybody kept saying to me: 'Lucille, that man's way below you!' But if I hadn't met Chester, he'd of got me sure."

"Yes, but listen," said Myrtle Wilson, nodding her head up and down, "at least you didn't marry him." "I know I didn't."

"Well, I married him," said Myrtle, ambiguously. "And that's the difference between your case and mine."

"Why did you, Myrtle?" demanded Catherine. "Nobody forced you to."

Myrtle considered.

"I married him because I thought he was a gentleman," she said finally.

"I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn't fit to lick my shoe."

"You were crazy about him for a while," said Catherine.

"Crazy about him!" cried Myrtle incredulously. "Who said I was crazy about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there."

She pointed suddenly at me, and every one looked at me accusingly.

I tried to show by my expression that I had played no part in her past.

"The only CRAZY I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed somebody's best suit to get married in and never even told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he was out.

She looked around to see who was listening: " 'Oh, is that your suit?' I said.

'This is the first I ever heard about it.' But I gave it to him and then I lay down and cried to beat the band all afternoon."

"She really ought to get away from him," resumed Catherine to me.

"They've been living over that garage for eleven years. And Tom's the first sweetie she ever had."

The bottle of whiskey--a second one--was now in constant demand by all present, excepting Catherine who "felt just as good on nothing at all."

Tom rang for the janitor and sent him for some celebrated sandwiches, which were a complete supper in themselves. I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

Myrtle pulled her chair close to mine, and suddenly her warm breath poured over me the story of her

first meeting with Tom.

"It was on the two little seats facing each other that are always the last ones left on the train. I was going up to New York to see my sister and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes and I couldn't keep my eyes off him but every time he looked at me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head.

When we came into the station he was next to me and his white shirt-front pressed against my arm--and so I told him I'd have to call a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited that when I got into a taxi with him I didn't hardly know I wasn't getting into a subway train. All I kept thinking about, over and over, was 'You can't live forever, you can't live forever.' "

She turned to Mrs. McKee and the room rang full of her artificial laughter.

"My dear," she cried, "I'm going to give you this dress as soon as I'm through with it. I've got to get another one tomorrow. I'm going to make a list of all the things I've got to get. A massage and a wave and a collar for the dog and one of those cute little ash-trays where you touch a spring, and a wreath with a black silk bow for mother's grave that'll last all summer. I got to write down a list so I won't forget all the things I got to do."

It was nine o'clock--almost immediately afterward I looked at my watch and found it was ten. Mr. McKee was asleep on a chair with his fists clenched in his lap, like a photograph of a man of action. Taking out my handkerchief I wiped from his cheek the remains of the spot of dried lather that had worried me all the afternoon.

The little dog was sitting on the table looking with blind eyes through the smoke and from time to time groaning faintly. People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other, searched for each other, found each other a few feet away. Some time toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face discussing in impassioned voices whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy's name.

"Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!" shouted Mrs. Wilson. "I'll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai----"

Making a short deft movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.

Then there were bloody towels upon the bathroom floor, and women's voices scolding, and high over the confusion a long broken wail of pain. Mr. McKee awoke from his doze and started in a daze toward the door.

When he had gone half way he turned around and stared at the scene--his wife and Catherine scolding and consoling as they stumbled here and there among the crowded furniture with articles of aid, and the despairing figure on the couch bleeding fluently and trying to spread a copy of "Town Tattle" over the tapestry scenes of Versailles.

Then Mr. McKee turned and continued on out the door. Taking my hat from the chandelier I followed. "Come to lunch some day," he suggested, as we groaned down in the elevator.

"Where?"

"Anywhere."

"Keep your hands off the lever," snapped the elevator boy.

"I beg your pardon," said Mr. McKee with dignity, "I didn't know I was touching it."

"All right," I agreed, "I'll be glad to."

... I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.

"Beauty and the Beast... Loneliness... Old Grocery Horse...

Brook'n Bridge...."

Then I was lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the Pennsylvania Station, staring at the morning "Tribune" and waiting for the four o'clock train.

Chapter 3

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city, between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants including an extra gardener toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York--every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour, if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb.

At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold.

In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another.

By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived--no thin five-piece affair but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing upstairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors and hair shorn in strange new ways and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside until the air is alive with chatter and laughter and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names.

The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier, minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath--already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the center of a group and then excited with triumph glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.

Suddenly one of these gypsies in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and moving her hands like Frisco dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the "Follies." The party has begun.

I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited--they went there. They got into automobiles which bore them out to Long Island and somehow they ended up at Gatsby's door. Once there they were introduced by somebody who knew Gatsby and after that they conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with amusement parks. Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission.

I had been actually invited. A chauffeur in a uniform of robin's egg blue crossed my lawn early that Saturday morning with a surprisingly formal note from his employer--the honor would be entirely

Gatsby's, it said, if I would attend his "little party" that night. He had seen me several times and had intended to call on me long before but a peculiar combination of circumstances had prevented it--signed Jay Gatsby in a majestic hand.

Dressed up in white flannels I went over to his lawn a little after seven and wandered around rather ill-at-ease among swirls and eddies of people I didn't know--though here and there was a face I had noticed on the commuting train. I was immediately struck by the number of young Englishmen dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a little hungry and all talking in low earnest voices to solid and prosperous Americans. I was sure that they were selling something: bonds or insurance or automobiles. They were, at least, agonizingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few words in the right key.

As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host but the two or three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table--the only place in the garden where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone.

I was on my way to get roaring drunk from sheer embarrassment when Jordan Baker came out of the house and stood at the head of the marble steps, leaning a little backward and looking with contemptuous interest down into the garden.

Welcome or not, I found it necessary to attach myself to someone before I should begin to address cordial remarks to the passers-by.

"Hello!" I roared, advancing toward her. My voice seemed unnaturally loud across the garden.

"I thought you might be here," she responded absently as I came up.

"I remembered you lived next door to----"

She held my hand impersonally, as a promise that she'd take care of me in a minute, and gave ear to two girls in twin yellow dresses who stopped at the foot of the steps.

"Hello!" they cried together. "Sorry you didn't win."

That was for the golf tournament. She had lost in the finals the week before.

"You don't know who we are," said one of the girls in yellow, "but we met you here about a month ago." "You've dyed your hair since then," remarked Jordan, and I started but the girls had moved casually on and her remark was addressed to the premature moon, produced like the supper, no doubt, out of a caterer's basket. With Jordan's slender golden arm resting in mine we descended the steps and sauntered about the garden. A tray of cocktails floated at us through the twilight and we sat down at a table with the two girls in yellow and three men, each one introduced to us as Mr. Mumble.

"Do you come to these parties often?" inquired Jordan of the girl beside her.

"The last one was the one I met you at," answered the girl, in an alert, confident voice. She turned to her companion: "Wasn't it for you, Lucille?"

It was for Lucille, too.

"I like to come," Lucille said. "I never care what I do, so I always have a good time. When I was here last I tore my gown on a chair, and he asked me my name and address--inside of a week I got a package from Croirier's with a new evening gown in it."

"Did you keep it?" asked Jordan.

"Sure I did. I was going to wear it tonight, but it was too big in the bust and had to be altered. It was gas blue with lavender beads. Two hundred and sixty-five dollars."

"There's something funny about a fellow that'll do a thing like that," said the other girl eagerly. "He doesn't want any trouble with ANYbody."

"Who doesn't?" I inquired.

"Gatsby. Somebody told me----"

The two girls and Jordan leaned together confidentially.

"Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once."

A thrill passed over all of us. The three Mr. Mumbles bent forward and listened eagerly.

"I don't think it's so much THAT," argued Lucille skeptically; "it's more that he was a German spy during the war."

One of the men nodded in confirmation.

"I heard that from a man who knew all about him, grew up with him in Germany," he assured us positively.

"Oh, no," said the first girl, "it couldn't be that, because he was in the American army during the war." As our credulity switched back to her she leaned forward with enthusiasm. "You look at him sometimes when he thinks nobody's looking at him. I'll bet he killed a man."

She narrowed her eyes and shivered. Lucille shivered. We all turned and looked around for Gatsby. It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.

The first supper--there would be another one after midnight--was now being served, and Jordan invited me to join her own party who were spread around a table on the other side of the garden. There were three married couples and Jordan's escort, a persistent undergraduate given to violent innuendo and obviously under the impression that sooner or later Jordan was going to yield him up her person to a greater or lesser degree. Instead of rambling this party had preserved a dignified homogeneity, and assumed to itself the function of representing the staid nobility of the countryside--East Egg condescending to West Egg, and carefully on guard against its spectroscopic gayety.

"Let's get out," whispered Jordan, after a somehow wasteful and inappropriate half hour. "This is much too polite for me."

We got up, and she explained that we were going to find the host--I had never met him, she said, and it was making me uneasy. The undergraduate nodded in a cynical, melancholy way.

The bar, where we glanced first, was crowded but Gatsby was not there.

She couldn't find him from the top of the steps, and he wasn't on the veranda. On a chance we tried an important-looking door, and walked into a high Gothic library, panelled with carved English oak, and probably transported complete from some ruin overseas.

A stout, middle-aged man with enormous owl-eyed spectacles was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with unsteady concentration at the shelves of books. As we entered he wheeled excitedly around and examined Jordan from head to foot.

"What do you think?" he demanded impetuously.

"About what?"

He waved his hand toward the book-shelves.

"About that. As a matter of fact you needn't bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They're real."

"The books?"

He nodded.

"Absolutely real--have pages and everything. I thought they'd be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they're absolutely real. Pages and--Here! Lemme show you."

Taking our skepticism for granted, he rushed to the bookcases and returned with V olume One of the "Stoddard Lectures."

"See!" he cried triumphantly. "It's a bona fide piece of printed matter.

It fooled me. This fella's a regular Belasco. It's a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop too--didn't cut the pages.

But what do you want? What do you expect?"

He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable to collapse.

"Who brought you?" he demanded. "Or did you just come? I was brought.

Most people were brought."

Jordan looked at him alertly, cheerfully without answering.

"I was brought by a woman named Roosevelt," he continued. "Mrs. Claud Roosevelt. Do you know her?

I met her somewhere last night. I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library."

"Has it?"

"A little bit, I think. I can't tell yet. I've only been here an hour. Did I tell you about the books? They're real. They're----"

"You told us."

We shook hands with him gravely and went back outdoors.

There was dancing now on the canvas in the garden, old men pushing young girls backward in eternal graceless circles, superior couples holding each other tortuously, fashionably and keeping in the corners--and a great number of single girls dancing individualistically or relieving the orchestra for a moment of the burden of the banjo or the traps. By midnight the hilarity had increased. A celebrated tenor had sung in Italian and a notorious contralto had sung in jazz and between the numbers people were doing "stunts" all over the garden, while happy vacuous bursts of laughter rose toward the summer sky. A pair of stage "twins"--who turned out to be the girls in yellow--did a baby act in costume and champagne was served in glasses bigger than finger bowls.

The moon had risen higher, and floating in the Sound was a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drip of the banjoes on the lawn.

I was still with Jordan Baker. We were sitting at a table with a man of about my age and a rowdy little girl who gave way upon the slightest provocation to uncontrollable laughter. I was enjoying myself now.

I had taken two finger bowls of champagne and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental and profound.

At a lull in the entertainment the man looked at me and smiled.

"Your face is familiar," he said, politely. "Weren't you in the Third Division during the war?"

"Why, yes. I was in the Ninth Machine-Gun Battalion."

"I was in the Seventh Infantry until June nineteen-eighteen. I knew I'd seen you somewhere before."

We talked for a moment about some wet, grey little villages in France.

Evidently he lived in this vicinity for he told me that he had just bought a hydroplane and was going to try it out in the morning.

"Want to go with me, old sport? Just near the shore along the Sound."

"What time?"

"Any time that suits you best."

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask his name when Jordan looked around and smiled.

"Having a gay time now?" she inquired.

"Much better." I turned again to my new acquaintance. "This is an unusual party for me. I haven't even seen the host. I live over there----" I waved my hand at the invisible hedge in the distance, "and this man Gatsby sent over his chauffeur with an invitation."

For a moment he looked at me as if he failed to understand.

"I'm Gatsby," he said suddenly.

"What!" I exclaimed. "Oh, I beg your pardon."

"I thought you knew, old sport. I'm afraid I'm not a very good host."

《了不起的盖茨比》读后感1000字

《了不起的盖茨比》读后感1000字 这城市太空洞，这都市太冷漠，这人世太虚假，这人心太复杂，这感情太脆弱，这爱情太虚无，这人性太险恶，这人类太可憎，这现实太残忍，这结局太可悲。 作为《了不起的盖茨比》这个故事的叙述者，尼克对盖茨比有着很特殊的情感，有着非同寻常的深刻印象。尼克曾经这样描述盖茨比的微笑，他说：“一瞬间这种微笑面对着—或者似乎面对着整个永恒的世界，然而一瞬间，它凝聚到你身上，对你表现出一种不可抗拒的偏爱。”以此来看，盖茨比是一个喜欢微笑的人是一个乐观的人，是一个温柔的人。不过事实也的确如此，盖茨比的为人确实很和善，很亲和，很容易让人亲近，很容易叫人产生好感。 读了这本书之后，我觉得盖茨比是一个极其矛盾的人，是一个让人想不通、看不透的人，是一个叫人又爱又恨的人，是一个叫人恨铁不成钢的人，是一个让人既同情又怜惜的人。对于爱情，盖茨比太过执著，太过沉迷；对于感情，盖茨比非常用心，极其费心；对于黛西，盖茨比付出真心，给予浪漫；对于爱人，盖茨比太过真情，太多执念；对于生活，盖茨比太多设想，太过幻想；与人相交，盖茨比的确真心真意，确实纯洁和善；对于朋友，盖茨比非常真诚，极其认真；对于财富，盖茨比拼命追求却不屑享乐。 对于黛西这个女人，我心中有很多不满，很多责备，很多怨言，很多不理解。与此同时，我又觉得她很可怜，很可悲，毕竟在那个乱世来看，她也不过是一个为情所困，为生活所困的可怜人罢了。 黛西既风情又美丽，既娇憨又可爱，既狭隘又善妒，既可怜又可恨，既有一点真诚又极其善于做作，既喜欢寻找刺激又屈服于命运。黛西是一个追求物质，喜欢权贵的人，她为了荣华贪恋上了富贵，为了财富攀附上了富豪，为了豪门放弃了真爱，为了自我伤害了他人，为了脱罪，牺牲了盖茨比。她的这种阴险狠毒，这种蛇蝎心肠，这种懦弱胆小，这种无情无义，这种寡情薄意，着实叫人生气，让人愤怒。 黛西的故意靠近，故意撩拨，故意卖弄，故意隐瞒，故意伤害，让盖茨比深陷其中不可自拔，更是让盖茨比失去了真心，葬送了生命。盖茨比死了，为了所谓的真爱，他就那样无辜的死了，可是悲哀的是，他到死都不知道黛西的真面目，他不知道黛西一直以来都在欺骗他的感情，玩弄他的真心，嘲笑他的痴情，讥讽他的善心，他更不知道，就算他死了，黛西也不在乎他的牺牲，不屑于他的死亡，不在意他的付出，不感谢他的真情，不承认他的感情。 盖茨比的人生是一个悲剧，他的爱情更是一个笑话，可是造成他这种结局的，除了可恶的黛西，除了可悲的盖茨比本身，还在于那个动乱的年代，那个残酷的年代，那个浮躁的年代，那个腐败的年代。我希望，有更多的人可以从这部书中受到一些启发，得到一些教训，我更期望，这个世界可以多一些善心，多一些真心，多一些真实，多一些真情。

《了不起的盖茨比》中绿色的象征内涵

World Literature Studies 世界文学研究, 2018, 6(3), 114-118 Published Online September 2018 in Hans. https://www.wendangku.net/doc/5a8313989.html,/journal/wls https://https://www.wendangku.net/doc/5a8313989.html,/10.12677/wls.2018.63017 Symbolic Meanings of Green in The Great Gatsby Junlan Ming School of Humanities, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), Beijing Received: Aug. 9th, 2018; accepted: Aug. 22nd, 2018; published: Aug. 29th, 2018 Abstract F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most famous masterpiece The Great Gatsby, written in 1925, is a good depiction of the “Jazz Age”. The novel applies various colors, especially green, which runs through the whole novel. The color of green in this novel implies a lot, reflecting different lights from different aspects. Keywords Green, Symbolic Meaning, Gatsby 《了不起的盖茨比》中绿色的象征内涵 明俊兰 北京邮电大学人文学院，北京 收稿日期：2018年8月9日；录用日期：2018年8月22日；发布日期：2018年8月29日 摘要 弗·司各特·菲茨杰拉德生活在“爵士时代”，是20世纪20年代“迷惘的一代”的代表。他被视为美国历史上这一特殊时代的代言人。他的杰作《了不起的盖茨比》写于1925年，这部作品很好地描绘了“爵士时代”。小说运用了各种颜色，特别是绿色贯穿了整个小说。这部小说中的绿色有很多象征意义，从不同的角度反映了不同的涵义。 关键词 绿色，象征意义，盖茨比

名著中的优美句子(一)_优美语句

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里，把生育当作性的目的，把无知当纯洁，把愚昧当德行，把偏见当原则。”——柴静《看见》 ★“也许每一个男子都有过这样的两个女人，至少两个。娶了红玫瑰，久而久之，红的变了墙上的一抹蚊子血，白的还是床前明月光。娶了白玫瑰，白的便是衣服上沾的一粒饭粘子，红的却是心口上一颗朱砂痣。”—张爱玲 ★爱情应该给人一种自由感，而不是囚禁感。——《儿子与情人》★爸爸的花儿落了，我已不是小孩子。──《城南旧事》 ★被真相伤害总比被谎言欺骗的好，得到了再失去，总是比从来就没有得到更伤人。——《追风筝的人》！ ★不是兄弟你不好是这世道不干净容不得你这样做人——施耐庵《水浒传》 ★从今往后，咱们只有死别，再无生离。——钱钟书《我们仨》★从前的日色变得慢。车，马，邮件都慢。一生只够爱一个人。——木心《从前慢》 ★对于丑人，细看是一种残忍。——钱钟书《围城》 ★对于世界而言，你是一个人；但是对于某个人，你是他的整个世界。——玛格丽特·米切尔《飘》 ★孩子，我要求你读书用功，不是因为我要你跟别人比成绩，而是因为，我希望你将来会拥有选择的权利，选择有意义、有时间的工作，而不是被迫谋生。当你的工作在你心中有意义，你就有成就感。当你的工作给你时间，不剥夺你的生活，你就有尊严。成就感和尊严，

了不起的盖茨比观后感(精选多篇)

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却在一开始就注定已经是一场悲剧。在那个物欲横流的社会，再美好的爱情也抵挡不住金钱和地位的诱惑。数年的等待已经 * 改变了黛西以及她与盖茨比之间曾经看起来坚贞不渝的爱情。影片最后黛西无情地离开了一直深爱着她的盖茨比。看到最后我们不禁为盖茨比对爱情的坚贞不渝 而感动，同时也对黛西的无情和势利感到心痛。我们不禁要问：难道爱情真的会败给现实和时间吗？其实回过头来想想盖茨比美好的幻想其实从一开始就注定会是一场梦而已。爱情固然伟大美好并且值得我们为此坚守一生，可是现实往往是残酷的，任何事情都抵挡不住时间的消磨和名利的诱惑。纵使曾经和自己深爱并且许下海誓山盟的誓言的爱人。黛西最后连盖茨比的葬礼也没来参加，就说明爱情在现实面前有时会是多么的不堪一击。盖茨比的故事以一场悲剧结束，我想原著作者菲茨杰拉德更想要表现的是在那个充满物质欲望和不 安定社会氛围中的一种对社会崇尚奢侈之风的不满以及对于物质欲 望泯灭人性的思考。 20世纪初期美国经济迅速发展，处于盛极一时的柯立芝时代，迅速发展的经济造就了一批类似于盖茨比和汤姆一样的富豪。但是与此同时社会贫富差距日益扩大，追求金钱利益似乎成了每个人共同的愿望，男人追求财富和美女，女人热衷于地位和金钱。黛西最终在盖茨比回到她身边之前嫁给了富商汤姆，这体现了她对于名利的渴望。试想如果她果真是个对爱情坚贞不渝的人的话，那为何在盖茨比数年后再次回到她身旁时她却失去了想和盖茨比度过余生的勇气。这种结果

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《了不起的盖茨比》经典语录名言大全 1、如果打算爱一个人，你要想清楚，是否愿意为了他，放弃如上帝般自由的心灵，从此心甘情愿有了羁绊。《了不起的盖茨比》 2、我年纪还轻，阅历不深的时候，我父亲教导过我一句话，我至今还念念不忘。“每逢你想要批评任何人的时候，”他对我说，“你就记住，这个世界上所有的人，并不是个个都有过你拥有的那些优越条件。”——菲茨杰拉德《了不起的盖茨比》 3、All the bright，precious things fade so fast.And they don’t come back.所有的光鲜靓丽都敌不过时间，并且一去不复返。—《了不起的盖茨比》 4、我们继续奋力向前，逆水行舟，被不断地向后推，直至回到往昔岁月。——菲茨杰拉德《伟大的盖茨比》 5、人的本能，总是追逐离开我们的东西，同时却逃避追逐我们的东西。《大亨小传》 6、I was within and without. 我既是旁观者清亦是当局者迷。——菲茨杰拉德《了不起的盖茨比》 7、可是我一面心里想，我们这排灯火辉煌的窗户高高在这都市之上，从底下暮色苍茫的街道望上来，不知道蕴藏着何等人生的秘密，而我脑海中也见到这么一位过客，偶尔路过此地，抬头望望，不知所以。我自己似乎又在里边又在外边，对这幕人

生悲喜剧无穷的演变，又是陶醉又是恶心。《了不起的盖茨比》8、"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. 我们奋力前行，小舟逆水而上，不断地被浪潮推回到过去。——菲茨杰拉德《了不起的盖茨比》" 9、我们继续奋力向前，逆水行舟，被不断地向后推，直至回到往昔岁月。——《了不起的盖茨比》（用这句作为在句子迷的开始）——菲茨杰拉德《了不起的盖茨比》10、当一个人痛苦的时候才会变得才华横溢，当我的生活步入正轨时，我开始跟你一样，像你忘记我那样忘记你，然后忘掉那些痛苦，开始变得平庸可耻。我不愿这样，也不愿意这样，我无法触及你，你就像盖茨比的梦，璀璨无比，却又触不可及。前方的路上诱惑太多，我没有盖茨比那么了不起，我可能走上其他的路，无法一直追逐你的脚步。——菲茨杰拉德《了不起的盖茨比》11、隐藏自己的判断体现了一种博大的胸襟。——菲茨杰拉德《了不起的盖茨比》12、每个人都以为他自己至少有一种主要的美德，而这就是我的：我所认识的诚实的恶人并不多，而我自己恰好就是其中的一个。——菲茨杰拉德《了不起的盖茨比》13、“要不是有雾，我们可以看见海湾对面你家的房子，”盖茨比说，“你家码头的尽头总有一盏通宵不灭的绿灯。”黛西蓦然伸过胳臂去挽着他的胳臂，

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Why is Gatsby great? After finishing this novel, this question keep me puzzled for a long time. Is this an irony? As a result of deep thinking and analyzing others' reviews, I finally came to a conclusion, that it isn't a irony. Gatsby is dramatically great. First, he is a man of ambition and diligence. He was born poor materially but not mentally ,longing for a broader world outside. Accidentally he met Dan Cody, a wealthy captain who bring him to the upper class, changing his life. Gatsby was not Gat was called James Gatz originally, but he changed his name in order to suit his status. When he was young, he fell in love with a beautiful debutante, Daisy, when the first world war broke out abruptly. Gatsby reluctantly joined the army, expecting to marry her as soon as the war ended. To his depression, he couldn’t return to America for some particular reason, and five years passed, Daisy married a rich football player, which convinced Gatsby that it was the desire of money captivated Daisy’s pure soul, so he exerted himself to make money, though by some shady business. In consequence of his diligence, he became a famous millionaire that everyone knew in West Egg. It was an typical American story: a poor man managed to be rich Second, he is a man of romantic dream and honest love. He built a luxurious mansion across the bay of Daisy’ house, holding extravagant parties every night, merely because maybe someday she would come. After several twists and turns, he got the opportunity to met her again. He was so into her that as a middle-aged man he couldn’t calm himself. He decorated the room with fresh flowers like garden, just as a teenage boy who is to date with his crushed girl for the first time. When the doorbell rang, he went out and ran in the pouring rain in order to hold back his excitement. There wouldn’t be a more honest man in the world, let alone in the materialistic society where unction was learnt by everyone and honesty was seen as foolishness. His love was the purest in the world and no one would have the honor to accept it. Even though it struck him that Daisy no longer loved him, what she loved was merely his money and the stimulation caused by affairs. After Daisy killed a woman by car accident, he chose to take the responsibility, in order that she would lead an easier life. Last but not the least, he is a man who can find devout hope in impasse and keep it on in the firm belief. He was convinced that it was himself who was the man Daisy ever loved from the beginning to the end, and that she merely married her husband for money. Even after she told him literally that she once love both of them but she only love Gatsby at that moment, he couldn’t accept it.‘Daisy will call’, he just believed for no reason. He moved the telephone around the swimming pool, for fear that he might miss her call. He believed that everyone was as kind as he. He believed in the diming green light. At the same time, “the great Gatsby” is also an irony. The narrator Nick Carraway who hardly ever commented on anybody else said that Gatsby were worth the whole damn bunch put together. The people around Gatsby, including Tom

最经典的励志句子讲课教案

最经典的励志句子

?生有很多事，需要忍；人生有很多欲，需要忍；人生有很多情，需要忍；人生有很多苦，需要忍；人生有许多痛，需要忍；人生有很多话，需要 忍。人生有很多气，需要忍。忍是一种眼光，忍是一种胸怀，忍是一种领悟， 忍是一种人生的技巧，忍是一种规则的智慧。 查看原图向左转向右转更多图片 世界上最浪漫的英文经典歌曲！】1.《yesterday》2.《let it be》3.《it's my life》4.《you can't say》5.《heal the world》6.《the girl is mine》7.《under the sea》8.《Crying in the Rain》9.《never say goodbye》。 ? A layer of a cool autumn rain, a valve and a fragrance, as time since unforgettable, a busy but nowhere to hide.一层秋雨一阵凉，一瓣落花一脉 香，一样流年自难忘，一把闲愁无处藏。 爱，得之，我幸。不得，我命，如此而已。轻吟一句情话，执笔一副情画，绽 放一地情花，覆盖一片青瓦，共饮一杯清茶，同研一碗青砂，挽起一面轻纱， 看清天边月牙，爱像水墨青花，何惧刹那芳华。——徐志摩。 ?世上之所以有矢志不渝的爱情，忠肝义胆的气概，皆因为时间相当短暂，方支撑得了。久病床前无孝子，旷日持久不容易，一切事物之美好在于“没时间变坏”。——李碧华 ?Just because you can’t understand something, it doesn’t mean it’s wrong.不能因为你无法理解一些东西，就代表那些是错的。

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An Analysis of the Image of Gatsby in the Great Gatsby 《了不起的盖茨比》中主人公盖茨比形象浅析 Major: English 专业：英语 Author: 作者： 指导教师：曹晓玲 University: Eastern Liaoning University 学位授予单位：辽东学院 Time: June, 2014 完成时间：2014年6月 辽东学院本科毕业论文原创性声明 本人郑重声明：此处所提交的本科毕业论文《<了不起的盖茨比>中主人公人物形象浅析》是本人在导师指导下，在辽东学院外语学院学习期间独立进行研究所取得的成果。据本人所知，论文中除已注明部分外不包含他人已发表或撰写过的研究成果，对本文的研究工作做出重要贡献的个人和集体均已注明。本声明的法律结果与导师无关，将完全由本人承担。 作者签名：日期：年月日 辽东学院本科毕业论文（设计）版权使用授权书 本论文作者及指导教师完全了解“辽东学院论文版权使用规定”，同意辽东学院保留并向国家有关部门或机构送交毕业论文的复印件和电子版，允许论文被查阅和借阅。本人授权辽东学院可以将本学位论文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行检索，也可采用影印、缩印或扫描等复制手段保存和汇编毕业论文。 作者签名： 导师签名： 年月

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Upon the completion of this paper, An Analysis of the Image of Gatsby in The Great Gatsby, I am grateful to the professor who offers my sincere encouragement and generous support during the course of my study for the Bachelor’s degree. First and foremost I am deeply indebted to my supervisor, Mrs. Cao Xiaoling, who guided me with academic expertise, critical insights throughout each stage of my study and initiated me into my research. Her instruction enabled me to express my idea in a better way. Without her patient and insightful supervision, this paper would not be possible. What’s more, I also extend my heart-felt thanks to my classmates and friends, for their valuable guidance and sincere help. Last but not least, I would like to express thanks to my parents, for their encouragement and support.

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了不起的盖茨比中颜色象征意义的研究

苏州大学应用技术学院 2009级学士学位论文 A Study of Color Symbolism in The Great Gatsby 《了不起的盖茨比》中颜色象征意义研究 专业：09英语 学号：0916411014 姓名：周丽莎 导师：张荣兴 2012.12.23

Acknowledgements The thesis would probably have never been possible without the help, support, foresight and inspiration of my supervisor, teachers and classmates, so I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude to all of them. My deepest gratitude goes first to my supervisor, Mr. Zhang Rongxing, who has contributed to getting the nuts and bolts of the thesis into place. His careful and microscopic scrutiny of the manuscript resulted in the elimination of many inconsistencies and in the development of the study throughout the thesis. His witty ideas and valuable advice brought me a new way of learning and different vision of the research. What’s m ore, my thanks go to my parents and friends who give me support and encouragement.

了不起的盖茨比20名句

1.All the bright，precious things fade so fast.And they don’t come back.所有的光鲜靓丽都敌不过 时间，并且一去不复返。——菲茨杰拉德《了不起的盖茨比》 2.我们继续奋力向前，逆水行舟，被不断地向后推，直至回到往昔岁月。——菲茨杰拉德 《了不起的盖茨比》 3.世界不会在意你的自尊，人们看的只是你的成就。在你没有成就以前，切勿过分强调自尊。（因为你越强调自尊，越对你不利）。——菲茨杰拉德《了不起的盖茨比》 4.每个人都以为他自己至少有一种主要的美德，而这就是我的：我所认识的诚实的恶人并不多，而我自己恰好就是其中的一个。——菲茨杰拉德《了不起的盖茨比》 5.社会充满不公平现象。你先不要想去改造它，只能先适应它。（因为你管不了它）。—— 菲茨杰拉德《了不起的盖茨比》 6.人们的品行有的好像建筑在坚硬的岩石上，有的好像建筑在泥沼里，不过超过一定的限度，我就不在乎它建在什么之上了。——菲茨杰拉德《了不起的盖茨比》 7.他走过漫漫长路才来到这片蓝色的港湾，肯定觉得梦想已经离得非常近，几乎伸出手就能 抓到。他所不知道的是，梦想已经落在他身后，落在纽约以西那广袤无垠的大地上，落在黑 暗夜幕下连绵不断的美国原野上。——菲兹杰拉德《了不起的盖茨比》 8.我知道像我这样的人，坠入爱河便犯了大错。——菲茨杰拉德《了不起的盖茨比》 9.那天下午一定有过一些时刻，黛西远不如他的梦想——并不是由于她本人的过错，而是由 于他的幻梦有巨大的活力。他的幻梦超越了她，超越了一切。他以一种创造性的热情投入了 这个幻梦，不断添枝加叶，用飘来的每一根绚丽的羽毛加以缀饰。再多的激情或活力都赶不 上一个阴凄凄的心里所能集聚的情思。——菲茨杰拉德《了不起的盖茨比》 10.他是上帝之子，如果这个词还有什么别的含义的话，这里只能用它的本意，他要为天父的 事业而献身，服务于这一博大而又粗俗、浮华而又美丽的事业。《了不起的盖茨比》 11.他理解体谅地笑了——这笑比理解和体谅有的含义。这是那种不多见的使你忐忑不安的情 绪能很快地平静下来的笑，这种笑容人的一生中顶多能碰上四五次。它先是再一刹那间面对——或者说似乎在面对——整个外部世界，然后他就全副心神地倾注到你的身上，对你充满 一种不可抵御的偏爱之情。它对你的理解恰是你想被人理解的那么多，它对你的信任恰像 你平时愿意对自己所信任到的那种程度，它叫你确信它对你的印象恰是你所希望造成的那么多。《了不起的盖茨比》 12.当一个人奋斗了很久，看到梦想如此之近，他是不会轻易放弃的《了不起的盖茨比》 13.月光渐渐升高，显得渺小的房屋开始融入这溶溶的月色中去，此时我的眼前逐渐浮现出这 座古老的岛屿当年在荷兰航海者眼中的那种妖娆风姿——一个新世界的翠绿欲滴胸膛。它那 现在不复存在的林木（为修造盖茨比住过的这座别墅被砍伐掉了）曾经温馨地煽起人类最后 的也是最伟大的梦想；在那短暂的神奇时刻里，人类一定在这片大陆前屏住了呼吸，情不自 禁地耽入到他既不理解也没希冀过的美的享受之中，在历史上最后一次面对面地欣赏着，这 一与他的感受惊奇的力量相称的景观。——菲茨杰拉德《了不起的盖茨比》 14.可是我一面心里想，我们这排灯火辉煌的窗户高高在这都市之上，从底下暮色苍茫的街道 望上来，不知道蕴藏着何等人生的秘密，而我脑海中也见到这么一位过客，偶尔路过此地， 抬头望望，不知所以。我自己似乎又在里边又在外边，对这幕人生悲喜剧无穷的演变，又是 陶醉又是恶心。——菲茨杰拉德《了不起的盖茨比》 15.世界上只有被追求者和追求者，忙碌者和疲惫者。——菲茨杰拉德《了不起的盖茨比》

the_great_gatsby(了不起的盖茨比)_英文介绍及赏析

The Great Gatsby F.Scott.Fitzgerald . Character List Daisy Buchanan - Nick’s cousin, and the woman Gatsby loves. As a young woman in Louisville before the war, Daisy was courted by a number of officers, including Gatsby. She fell in love with Gatsby and promised to wait for him. However, Daisy harbors a deep need to be loved, and when a wealthy, powerful young man named Tom Buchanan asked her to marry him, Daisy decided not to wait for Gatsby after all. Now a beautiful socialite, Daisy lives with Tom across from Gatsby in the fashionable East Egg district of Long Island. She is sardonic and somewhat cynical, and behaves superficially to mask her pain at her husband’s constant infidelity. Daisy Buchanan (In-Depth Analysis) Tom Buchanan - Daisy’s immensely wealthy husband, once a member of Nick’s social club at Yale. Powerfully built and hailing from a socially solid old family, Tom is an arrogant, hypocritical bully. His social attitudes are laced with racism and sexism, and he never even considers trying to live up to the moral standard he demands from those around him. He has no moral qualms about his own extramarital affair with Myrtle, but when he begins to suspect Daisy and Gatsby of having an affair, he becomes outraged and forces a confrontation. Jordan Baker - Daisy’s friend, a woman with whom Nick becomes romantically involved during the course of the novel. A competitive golfer, Jordan represents one of the “new women” of the 1920s—cynical, boyish, and self-centered. Jordan is beautiful, but also dishonest: she cheated in order to win her first golf tournament and continually bends the truth. Myrtle Wilson - Tom’s lover, whose lifeless husband George owns a run-down garage in the valley of ashes. Myrtle herself possesses a fierce vitality and desperately looks for a way to improve her situation. Unfortunately for her, she chooses Tom, who treats her as a mere object of his desire. Analysis of Major Characters Daisy Buchanan Partially based on Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, Daisy is a beautiful young woman from Louisville, Kentucky. She is Nick’s cousin and the object of Gatsby’s love. As a young debutante in Louisville, Daisy was extremely popular among the military officers stationed near her home, including Jay Gatsby. Gatsby lied about his background to Daisy, claiming to be from a wealthy family in order to convince her that he was worthy of her. Eventually, Gatsby won Daisy’s heart, and they made love before Gatsby left to fight in the war. Daisy promised to wait for Gatsby, but in 1919 she chose instead to marry Tom Buchanan, a young man from a solid, aristocratic family who could promise her a wealthy lifestyle and who had the support of her parents. After 1919, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back, making her the single goal of all of his dreams and the main motivation behind his acquisition of immense wealth through criminal activity. To Gatsby, Daisy represents the paragon of perfection—she has the aura of charm, wealth, sophistication, grace, and aristocracy that he longed for as a child in North Dakota and that first attracted him to her. In reality, however, Daisy falls far short of Gatsby’s ideals. She is beautiful and charming, but also fickle, shallow, bored, and sardonic. Nick characterizes her as a careless person who smashes things up and then retreats behind her money. Daisy proves her real nature when she chooses Tom over Gatsby in Chapter VII, then allows Gatsby to take the blame for killing Myrtle Wilson even though she herself was driving

《了不起的盖茨比》读后感(推荐10篇)

《了不起的盖茨比》读后感（推荐10篇） 这篇《了不起的盖茨比》读后感范文是我们精心挑选的，但原对你有参考作用。 花了几天，断断续续读完该书。其实是昨晚一口气读了后面的70％的内容，读完后却发现没啥特别的感觉，这种感觉早在读完前言时就有了，却因为这是本众人推荐的世界名著，所以坚持读完。 不知是不是很久不读名著了，有些不明白读这些是为了什么了。读历史可以了解史实，读散文可以欣赏其文笔，读名言警句可以励志明理，读言情可以见证主人公的爱恨别离。 那么对这些名著呢？通过主人公的性格遭遇反应出一些道理？反衬出当时的社会风气习俗？批判一些褒奖某种？细想来大概吧。 看来真的是太久没有静下心来读过书了，连读书都带有了一定的目的性，想着读了哪些小说名著或许就能弥补之前落下的功课了！ 看来我真是太急功近利了，想着读一本书要么让我学到什么，要么使我懂得一些，其他便只是走马观花。

还好，我及时反省，明白这是一个长期坚持积累的过程，而非一蹴而就。 一本好书，自然有其值得阅读的道理，或许并非每本我都能读得其真谛懂得其精髓，但总会收获一些我自己的体会和领悟不是么？既如此，便要做好笔记或是记下感悟。日复一日，总归会有所长进！ 来说说盖茨比。我不太懂得他所生活的年代背景，更很少读过外国名著，所以单纯讲他的这些经历，我确实没懂作者说的了不起指什么？ 指对梦想的坚持？对感情的忠贞？还是其他？有人说他偏执，所以也才有了最终的悲剧收场。 有人敬佩他对戴茜的爱矢志不移，痛恨戴茜自私自利纸醉金迷。 想想盖茨比父亲描述中的盖茨比，从小就对自己严格要求，这也就难怪他最后能成为富豪。 可是我真的怀疑他对戴茜的感情，真的是那么坚贞那么不移？或者年轻的时候确实如此，可是时日愈久愈发成了一种执念，亦或只是为了证明？