Again and Again the Great Gatsby Chapter 2

If The Great Gatsby were higher, Affiliate 2 would exist the drunk frat party that gets way out of control, with Tom Buchanan every bit that guy yelling at everyone to chug. That'due south because this affiliate is all virtually Tom'southward double life: Nick meets his mistress, gets wasted at her small-scale flat party in Manhattan, and gets an up shut and personal view into Tom's tearing tendencies.

Read on for a full The Great Gatsby Chapter 2 summary, plus explication of connections to the book'due south principal themes and analysis of important passages!

Quick Note on Our Citations

Our citation format in this guide is (chapter.paragraph). We're using this system since there are many editions of Gatsby, and then using folio numbers would merely piece of work for students with our copy of the book.

To find a quotation we cite via chapter and paragraph in your book, you can either eyeball it (Paragraph i-fifty: beginning of chapter; l-100: center of chapter; 100-on: stop of affiliate), or apply the search function if yous're using an online or eReader version of the text.

The Groovy Gatsby: Chapter two Summary

Nick describes the "valley of ashes" that is the area betwixt the rich suburb of Due west Egg and Manhattan. This is the grayness and dirty part of the borough of Queens that you lot drive through to get from Long Island to NYC.

Above this bleak, smoky, unpleasant mural is a giant billboard advert Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, an center doctor. The billboard is a set of giant eyes that seems to be surveying or judging everything below.

Tom's mistress lives in this "ash heaps" expanse.

I 24-hour interval, when Nick takes the railroad train with Tom to Manhattan, Tom of a sudden makes him get off at a random finish to see her.

They go to a garage endemic by George Wilson, who seems to exist in the middle of buying a machine from Tom. Myrtle Wilson, George'southward wife, comes down to the garage. She isn't cute, only is bonny considering she is plump and lively. Tom apace makes a plan to run into her in the city. He and Nick leave, and Tom explains that George has no idea that Myrtle is having an thing with Tom.

Tom insists Myrtle meet him in Manhattan, and so she boards the aforementioned railroad train every bit Tom and Nick, but she sits in a different car to be unimposing, and they so see up at the station.

Myrtle decides she would like a dog, and Tom buys her a puppy from a condescending passing salesman.

Nick tries to exit Tom and Myrtle, but they insist he come to their apartment very far uptown. The apartment is small, gaudily decorated, and uncomfortable. Tom brings out a bottle of whiskey.

For the second fourth dimension in his life (or and then he claims), Nick gets drunk, and then his retentiveness of what happens next is somewhat hazy. Even so, we get the sense that Tom and Myrtle accept sexual practice while Nick politely reads a book in the other room.

Then some guests come over: Myrtle's sister Catherine, as well as a photographer named McKee and his horrible wife. Myrtle lords it over her guests. The McKees fawn over her and Tom, complimenting her dress and devising means of photographing her artistically. Tom plies them with alcohol. Meanwhile, Catherine tells Nick that she's been to a party at Gatsby'due south business firm. According to her, Gatsby is so rich because he is Kaiser Wilhelm's cousin.

Catherine then tells Nick that both Tom and Myrtle hate the people they're married to; she wonders why they don't divorced and marry each other instead. When Myrtle overhears, she says something obscene most George Wilson. According to Catherine, these divorces don't happen because Daisy is Cosmic. Nick, who knows that Daisy is not Catholic, is shocked by what has obviously been Tom's lie.

Nick then remembers Mrs. McKee using an anti-Semitic slur to talk near a failed suitor. Myrtle responds that her own fault had been to marry the suitor that she should have ignored.

Nick keeps trying and declining to exit the party.

Myrtle tells him the story of how she showtime met Tom on the train. He picked her upwardly by pressing himself against her when they got out on the platform.

Later that night, Myrtle and Tom have an argument near Daisy and Tom hits her then hard that he breaks her nose.

Nick leaves the party and goes home with McKee, the photographer. The narrative gets harder and harder to follow as Nick'due south inebriation really catches upwardly with him. Nick somehow ends up at the train station, waiting for the 4 am train to get back to West Egg.

1 interpretation of Nick going dwelling with the photographer is that Nick is actually gay. Nosotros delve into this theory on NIck's character page.

Cardinal Affiliate two Quotes

About half style between Due west Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, then every bit to shrink away from a certain desolate surface 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. (ii.1)

Every time anyone goes from Long Island to Manhattan or back, they go through this depressing industrial expanse in the centre of Queens. The factories located here pollute the air and land around them—their detritus is what makes the "ash" dust that covers everything and everyone. This is the place where those who cannot succeed in the rat race end up, hopeless and defective any way to escape. Check out our focused article for a much more than in-depth analysis of what the crucial symbol of "the valley of ashes" stands for in this novel.

The optics of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blueish and gigantic--their retinas are ane thousand high. They look out of no face merely, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which laissez passer over a nonexistent nose. Plainly some wild wag of an oculist set them at that place to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved abroad. But his eyes, dimmed a piffling by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground. (ii.2)

In that location is no God in the novel. None of the characters seems to be religious, no one wonders well-nigh the moral or ethical implications of whatsoever actions, and in the end, at that place are no punishments doled out to the bad or rewards given to the good. This lack of religious feeling is partly what makes Tom's lie to Myrtle nigh Daisy being a Catholic particularly egregious. This lack of even a basic moral framework is underscored by the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, a giant billboard that is as close equally this world gets to having a watchful authoritative presence.

Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time earlier and was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she swept almost the room. With the influence of the dress her personality had besides undergone a alter. The intense vitality that had been then remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her assertions became more than violently affected moment past moment and as she expanded the room grew smaller around her until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy, creaking pin through the smoky air. (2.56)

This affiliate is our main exposure to Myrtle Wilson, Tom's mistress. Here, we see the main points of her personality—or at least the way that she comes beyond to Nick. Showtime, it's interesting to note that bated from Tom, whose hulkish physique Nick really pays a lot of attention to, Myrtle is the only character whose physicality is dwelt on at length. We hear a lot about her body and the fashion she moves in space—here, we not but get her "sweeping" beyond the room, "expanding," and "revolving," just also the sense that her "gestures" are somehow "violent." It makes sense that for Nick, who is into the cool and detached Jordan, Myrtle'southward overenthusiastic touch is a little off-putting. But remember this focus on Myrtle'southward body when you lot read Chapter 7, where this body will be exposed in a shocking way.

Some fourth dimension toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face discussing in impassioned voices whether Mrs. Wilson had whatever right to mention Daisy's name.

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

Making a short deft move Tom Buchanan bankrupt her nose with his open hand. (2.124-126)

This fleck of violence succinctly encapsulates Tom's brutality, how piddling he thinks of Myrtle, and it besides speaks volumes about their vastly diff and disturbing relationship. Two things to think virtually:

#1: Why doesn't Tom want Myrtle to mention Daisy? Information technology could be a style of maintaining discretion—to keep cloak-and-dagger her identity in order to hide the affair. But, considering everyone in boondocks apparently knows about Myrtle, this doesn't seem to be the reason. More probable is the fact that Tom does really agree Daisy in much college regard than Myrtle, and he refuses to let the lower class adult female "degrade" his loftier-course wife past talking most her freely. This is yet once again an example of his extreme snobbery.

#2: Tom is a person who uses his body to get what he wants. Sometimes this is inside socially adequate boundaries—for case, on the football field at Yale—and sometimes it is to browbeat anybody around him into compliance. It's too interesting that both Tom and Myrtle are such physically present characters in the novel—in this moment, Myrtle is the only character that actually stands up to Tom. In a style, they are a perfect match.

In my fanfic reworking of this scene, Myrtle would get to actually go to town on Tom, MMA-style.

Chapter 2 Analysis

So how does this chapter contribute to our understanding of the novel'south themes? And what are the most significant graphic symbol beats to recollect? I'll answer those questions in this section.

Themes and Symbols

Love, Desire, and Relationships. At the political party, the guests discuss dear and marriage. 2 separate threads in this chat stand out:

#i: In Catherine's eyes, the situation betwixt Myrtle and Tom couldn't be clearer: both don't like their spouses, both are into each other, and then the obvious solution would be for the ii of them to run off together. Of course, we come across that Tom would never go out Daisy for Myrtle—she is simply someone he can experience free to corruption, since he can always buy her compliance with more than cheap gifts.

#2: Myrtle describes her decision to marry Wilson as a case of mistaken identity. She idea he was a gentleman, just his veneer of grade—exemplified past the fact that he "He borrowed somebody'southward best suit to go married in and never fifty-fifty told me" (ii.116)—was almost immediately dispelled afterwards the wedding. This is very reminiscent of both what happens to Daisy, as Tom cheats on her during their honeymoon, revealing his MO; and what near happens to Daisy and Gatsby, who is however some other human being who seems similar a gentleman only is actually living in a borrowed "suit" and a borrowed identity.

Society and Class. After seeing the heights of the upper classes on East Egg and the lows of the factory workers in the valley of ashes, this chapter shows us what life is similar for a segment of the centre class. Myrtle is desperate to get equally far away from her depressing life with Wilson at the gas station as she can, surrounding herself with the material trappings that Tom can provide: an apartment, wearing apparel, and an accessory dog.

The American Dream. In a novel that is all about the American drive to get ahead, Myrtle is ane of the strivers, willing to put up with terrible treatment in commutation for a run a risk to climb college. Then are the people hanging on her coattails, like the McKees and Catherine. Seeing her with this shows us just how striated (separated into layers) society is, as Myrtle grabs every tiny opportunity to demonstrate her slightly higher status to her entourage.

The Optics of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. This world is defined by its lawless amorality, and there is no voice of moral authority to pass judgment on the bad behavior of the characters. All we get is an inanimate object that hints at the possibility of a divine watcher. But, even though these disembodied eyes do make wrong-doers feel uncomfortable under their gaze, they tin't really forestall annihilation. For example, Tom is entirely comfortable lying. He maintains a mistress, lying to Daisy about his phone calls. And it turns out that he is lying to Myrtle as well, telling her that the reason he can't divorce his married woman is that Daisy is a Catholic. He winces under the eyes of the billboard, simply it doesn't deter him in whatsoever mode.

The Valley of Ashes. At that place are those who live in palaces in Westward and East Egg. At that place are those who political party in apartments in Manhattan. Merely this chapter shows the states what happens to the people who get left behind, and who can't muster up the luck and energy needed to "win." They end up in the gray wasteland of industrial Queens, enabling the rich to get richer through their depressing, polluted, and monotonous labor.

Are there whatever happy marriages in this book? Like, how are Nick's parents doing? Or that random horseback riding couple nosotros'll come across later? Anybody?

Crucial Character Beats

• Tom drags Nick to run into Myrtle at Wilson's gas station, in the middle of the "valley of ashes" that is industrial Queens.

• They accommodate to meet in Manhattan, where Myrtle hosts a little party in her apartment.

• Myrtle lords information technology over her guests and reveals how miserable she is in her marriage.

• Information technology's also clear that Tom has been lying to Myrtle about his own matrimony in club to string her along.

• The party breaks up later Tom punches Myrtle in the face up and breaks her nose. He does information technology because she mentions Daisy's name.

What'south Next?

Become deeper into the characters of Tom and Myrtle to really dig into what function they play in the novel.

Draw comparisons between Myrtle and Daisy to see how these two almost diametrically opposed women actually take some important things in common. Likewise, explore how each perceives her relationships with men.

Move on to the summary of Chapter 3, or revisit the summary of Chapter ane.

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About the Author

Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high schoolhouse, and went on to major in English language at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English language Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student admission to higher education.

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Source: https://blog.prepscholar.com/the-great-gatsby-chapter-2-summary

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