Gatsby

16 Pages 3907 Words

1) The first party that takes place in East Egg at Daisy and Tom's mansion. Since Daisy is his cousin and Tom, a friend from Yale, Nick has the credentials to visit East Egg. Their house is "a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial Mansion" overlooking the bay. And the owner is obviously proud of his possessions. We meet Tom who is presented as a powerful man in riding clothes sort of as a knight. We then meet Daisy and Jordan who seem like two princesses in white sitting on the sofa. Fitzgerald controls the whole scene through his use of colors white and gold mainly that suggests a combination of beauty and wealth. Jordan Baker is bored and discontented. She yawns more than once in this very first scene. Tom talks about a book he has read, The Rise of the Colored Empires by Goddard. It is a piece of pure Social Darwinism, advocating that the white race preserve its own purity and beat down the colored races before they rise up and overcome the whites. Daisy pretends she does not know is going on by teasing him about his size and the big words in his book. Then the telephone rings and Jordan sort of fills Nick in on what's going on about Tom and his "other woman". The rest of the evening is awkward and painful and both Tom and Daisy try and pretend nothing happened. The second Party takes place in New York and consists of Nick, Tom, Myrtle, Myrtle's sister Catherine, and a couple named McKee who live downstairs. Nick is really more of an observer than a participant. He tells us that he has been drunk just twice in his life, and the second time was the at afternoon. In any case, all the guests at the party seem to have something unnatural or wrong with them. Catherine, the sister, has "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." Mr. McKee is a pale, feminine man who has just shaved and left a spot of lather on his cheek. His wife...