The Great Gatsby Chapter 7 Close Read

Chapter 7 marks the climax of The Great Gatsby. Twice as long equally every other chapter, it first ratchets up the tension of the Gatsby-Daisy-Tom triangle to a breaking bespeak in a claustrophobic scene at the Plaza Hotel, so ends with the grizzly gut punch of Myrtle's decease.

Read our full summary of The Great Gatsby Chapter seven to run into how all dreams die, but to be replaced with a grim and cynical reality.

Image: Helmut Ellgaard/Wikipedia

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The Great Gatsby: Chapter 7 Summary

Suddenly one Sabbatum, Gatsby doesn't throw a party. When Nick comes over to run across why, Gatsby has a new butler who rudely sends Nick away.

It turns out that Gatsby has replaced all of his servants with ones sent over by Wolfshiem. Gatsby explains that this is considering Daisy comes over every afternoon to continue their thing—he needs them to be discreet.

Gatsby invites Nick to Daisy's house for lunch. The plan is for Daisy and Gatsby to tell Tom most their relationship, and for Daisy to leave Tom.

The adjacent day it is extremely hot. Nick and Gatsby prove up to accept lunch with Daisy, Jordan, and Tom. Tom is on the telephone, seemingly arguing with someone about the car. Daisy assumes that he is only pretending, and that he is actually talking to Myrtle.

While Tom is out of the room, Daisy kisses Gatsby on the oral cavity.

The nanny brings Tom and Daisy's daughter into the room and Gatsby is shocked to realize that the child actually exists and is existent.

Tom and Gatsby go exterior, and Gatsby points out that it'southward his business firm is directly across the bay from theirs. Everyone is restless and nervous.

From the mode Daisy looks at and talks to Gatsby, Tom suddenly figures out that she and Gatsby are having an thing.

Daisy asks to go into Manhattan and Tom agrees, insisting that they get immediately. He gets a canteen of whiskey to bring with them. There is a short, but crucial, argument well-nigh who volition take which car. In the terminate, Tom takes Nick and Hashemite kingdom of jordan in Gatsby'southward automobile while Gatsby takes Daisy in Tom's car.

On the bulldoze, Tom explains to Nick and Jordan that he'south been investigating Gatsby, which Hashemite kingdom of jordan laughs off. They terminate for gas at Wilson's gas station. Tom shows off Gatsby's car, pretending it's his own. Wilson complains about beingness sick and again asks for Tom'due south motorcar because he needs money fast (the assumption is that he will resell it at a profit).

Wilson explains the he's figured out that Myrtle is cheating on him, then he'southward taking her the style from New York to a different state. Glad that Wilson hasn't figured out who Myrtle is having the affair with, Tom says that he will sell Wilson his motorcar as he promised. As they drive off, Nick sees Myrtle in an upstairs window staring at Tom and Hashemite kingdom of jordan, whom she assumes to exist his married woman. (Information technology's critical to realize that Myrtle now besides associates Tom with this yellow car.)

Information technology'south still crazy hot when they get to Manhattan. Jordan suggests going to the movies, but they end upward getting a suite at the Plaza Hotel. The hotel room is stifling, and they can hear the sounds of a wedding going on downstairs.

The conversation is tense. Tom starts picking at Gatsby, but Daisy defends him. Tom accuses Gatsby of not actually being an Oxford human. Gatsby explains that he but went to Oxford for a short time because of a special program for officers after the war. This plausible-sounding explanation fills Nick with conviction about Gatsby.

Of a sudden Gatsby decides to tell Tom his version of the truth—that Daisy never loved Tom but has always simply loved Gatsby. Tom calls Gatsby crazy and says that of form Daisy loves him—and that he loves her also fifty-fifty if he does crook on her all the time.

Gatsby demands that Daisy tell Tom that she has never loved him. Daisy can't bring herself to do this, and instead said that she has loved them both. This crushes Gatsby.

Tom starts revealing what he knows near Gatsby from his investigation. It turns out that Gatsby's money comes from illegal sales of alcohol in drugstores, just every bit Tom had predicted when he first met him. Tom has a friend who tried to become into business with Gatsby and Wolfshiem. Through him, Tom knows that bootlegging is just role of the criminal action that Gatsby is involved in.

These revelations crusade Daisy to shut downwardly, and no affair how much Gatsby tries to defend himself, she is disillusioned. She asks Tom to take her home. Tom's last power play is to tell Gatsby to take Daisy home instead, knowing that leaving them lone together now does not pose any threat to him or his marriage.

Gatsby and Daisy drive dwelling in Gatsby's auto. Tom, Nick, and Jordan drive abode together in Tom's car.

The narration now switches to Nick repeating bear witness given at an inquest (a legal proceeding to gather facts surrounding a death) by Michaelis, who runs a coffee store adjacent to Wilson's garage.

That evening Wilson had explained to Michaelis that he had locked up Myrtle in order to keep an eye on her until they moved away in a couple of days. Michaelis was shocked to hear this, because usually Wilson was a meek man. When Michaelis left, he heard Myrtle and Wilson fighting. So Myrtle ran out into the street toward a car coming from New York. The automobile hit her and collection off, and by the fourth dimension Michaelis reached her on the footing, she was dead.

The narration switches dorsum to Nick's point of view, as Tom, Nick, and Jordan are driving dorsum from Manhattan. They pull up to the accident site. At outset, Tom jokes well-nigh Wilson getting some business at terminal, merely when he sees the state of affairs is serious, he stops the car and runs over to Myrtle's body.

Tom asks a policeman for details of the accident. When he realizes that witnesses can identify the yellow car that hit Myrtle, he worries that Wilson, who saw him in that auto earlier that afternoon, will finger him to the police. Tom grabs Wilson and tells him that the yellow car that hit Myrtle is not Tom'due south, and that he was only driving it before giving information technology back to its possessor.

As they drive away from the scene, Tom sobs in the car.

Back at his house, Tom invites Nick and Jordan within. Nick is sickened by the whole matter and turns to get. Hashemite kingdom of jordan besides asks Nick to come within. When he refuses again, she goes in.

As Nick is walking away, he sees Gatsby lurking in the bushes. Nick suddenly sees him equally a criminal. As they discuss what happened, Nick realizes that it was actually Daisy who was driving the car, significant that information technology was Daisy who killed Myrtle. Gatsby makes it sound like she had to choose betwixt getting into a head-on standoff with another car coming the other way on the road or hitting Myrtle, and at the concluding second chose to hitting Myrtle.

Gatsby seems to take no feelings at all about the dead woman, and instead only worries about what Daisy and how she will react. Gatsby says that he will have the blame for driving the car. Gatsby says that he is lurking in the dark to brand sure that Daisy is safe from Tom, who he worries might treat her badly when he finds out what happened.

Nick goes dorsum to the business firm to investigate, and sees Tom and Daisy having an intimate conspiratorial moment together in the kitchen. Information technology's clear that once over again Gatsby has fundamentally misunderstood Tom and Daisy's relationship. Nick leaves Gatsby alone.

It's astonishing how immediately suspect and creepy Gatsby becomes one time Nick turns on him. Has our narrator been spinning Gatsby's behavior from the get-go?

Key Affiliate 7 Quotes

So she remembered the heat and sat down guiltily on the burrow simply as a freshly laundered nurse leading a little girl came into the room.

"Bles-sed pre-cious," she crooned, holding out her arms. "Come to your ain mother that loves you."

The child, relinquished past the nurse, rushed across the room and rooted shyly into her mother'southward dress.

"The Bles-sed pre-cious! Did mother become powder on your old yellowy pilus? Stand up upwardly at present, and say How-de-do."

Gatsby and I in plough leaned downwards and took the small reluctant hand. Afterward he kept looking at the child with surprise. I don't recall he had e'er really believed in its beingness earlier. (7.48-52)

This is our first and just chance to encounter Daisy performing motherhood. And "performing" is the right word, since everything about Daisy's deportment here rings a little false and her cutesy sing vocal a fiddling bit similar an deed. The presence of the nurse makes it clear that, similar many upper-class women of the fourth dimension, Daisy does not really do any child rearing.

At the same time, this is the exact moment when Gatsby is delusional dreams start breaking downwardly. The shock and surprise that he experiences when he realizes that Daisy actually does have a daughter with Tom show how little he has idea virtually the fact the Daisy has had a life of her own exterior of him for the last five years. The beingness of the child is proof of Daisy'southward separate life, and Gatsby simply cannot handle then she is not exactly equally he has pictured her to exist.

Finally, hither we can see how Pammy is being bred for her life as a hereafter "cute little fool", as Daisy put it. Equally Daisy's makeup rubs onto Pammy'south pilus, Daisy prompts her reluctant daughter to be friendly to two foreign men.

"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon," cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next 30 years?"

"Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all once again when it gets well-baked in the fall."(7.74-75)

Comparing and contrasting Daisy and Hashemite kingdom of jordan) is one of the most common assignments that you lot will get when studying this novel. This very famous quotation is a great place to outset.

Daisy's effort at a joke reveals her cardinal colorlessness and restlessness. Despite the fact that she has social standing, wealth, and any material possessions she could want, she is not happy in her incessantly monotonous and repetitive life. This existential ennui goes a long manner to helping explain why she seizes on Gatsby as an escape from routine.

On the other hand, Jordan is a businesslike and realistic person, who grabs opportunities and who sees possibilities and even repetitive cyclical moments of modify. For case hither, although autumn and winter are most often linked to sleep and death, whereas it is bound that is ordinarily seen as the season of rebirth, for Jordan any modify brings with it the chance for reinvention and new beginnings.

"She's got an indiscreet vocalisation," I remarked. "It's full of——"

I hesitated.

"Her voice is full of money," he said suddenly.

That was it. I'd never understood before. It was total of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' vocal of it. . . . Loftier in a white palace the rex's daughter, the gilt girl. . . . (7.103-106)

Here we are getting to the root of what it is actually that attracts Gatsby so much to Daisy.

Nick notes that the way Daisy speaks to Gatsby is enough to reveal their relationship to Tom. Once again we see the powerful allure of Daisy's vocalization. For Nick, this voice is total of "indiscretion," an interesting word that at the aforementioned time brings to mind the revelation of secrets and the disclosure of illicit sex. Nick has used this word in this connotation before—when describing Myrtle in Chapter 2 he uses the discussion "unimposing" several times to explicate the precautions she takes to hide her affair with Tom.

Merely for Gatsby, Daisy's vocalism does non hold this sexy allure, as much as information technology does the promise of wealth, which has been his overriding ambition and goal for most of his life. To him, her vocalization marks her as a prize to be collected. This impression is further underscored by the fairy tale imagery that follows the connection of Daisy's vocalism to coin. Much like princesses who is the terminate of fairy tales are given as a reward to plucky heroes, and so as well Daisy is Gatsby'southward winnings, an indication that he has succeeded.

"You think I'k pretty dumb, don't you?" he suggested. "Perhaps I am, but I take a—almost a second sight, sometimes, that tells me what to do. Maybe yous don't believe that, simply science——" (7.123)

Nick never sees Tom every bit anything other than a villain; still, information technology is interesting that only Tom immediately sees Gatsby for the fraud that he turns out to be. Virtually from the get-go, Tom calls it that Gatsby'due south money comes from bootlegging or some other criminal activity. It is virtually as though Tom's life of lies gives him special insight into detecting the lies of others.

The relentless beating heat was beginning to misfile me and I had a bad moment there before I realized that so far his suspicions hadn't alighted on Tom. He had discovered that Myrtle had some sort of life apart from him in another earth and the shock had fabricated him physically ill. I stared at him and so at Tom, who had made a parallel discovery less than an hr earlier—and it occurred to me that there was no deviation between men, in intelligence or race, so profound every bit the departure between the sick and the well. Wilson was and so sick that he looked guilty, unforgivably guilty—as if he had simply got some poor girl with child. (vii.160)

You volition besides ofttimes be asked to compare Tom and Wilson, two characters who share some plot details in common.This passage, which explicitly contrasts these two men's reactions to finding out their wives are having affairs, is a great place to commencement.

• Tom's response to Daisy and Gatsby's relationship is to immediately do everything to display his power. He forces a trip to Manhattan, demands that Gatsby explicate himself, systematically dismantles the careful image and mythology that Gatsby has created, and finally makes Gatsby drive Daisy home to demonstrate how picayune he has to fearfulness from them being solitary together.

• Wilson also tries to display ability. Just he is so unused to wielding information technology that his all-time try is to lock Myrtle upwardly and then to listen to her emasculating insults and provocations. Moreover, rather than relaxing under this power trip, Wilson becomes physically ill, feeling guilty both about his function in driving his wife away and about manhandling her into submission.

• Finally, it is interesting that Nick renders these reactions every bit health-related. Whose response does Nick view equally "sick" and whose as "well"? It is tempting to connect Wilson'southward bodily response to the word "ill," just the ambiguity is purposeful. Is it sicker in this state of affairs to have a power-hungry delight in eviscerating a rival, Tom-fashion, or to exist overcome on a psychosomatic level, like Wilson?

"Self command!" repeated Tom incredulously. "I suppose the latest affair is to sit dorsum and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that'due south the thought you tin count me out. . . . Present people brainstorm by sneering at family life and family institutions and next they'll throw everything overboard and take intermarriage between blackness and white."

Flushed with his impassioned gibberish he saw himself standing lonely on the last bulwark of civilisation.

"We're all white here," murmured Jordan.

"I know I'thousand not very popular. I don't give big parties. I suppose you've got to brand your firm into a pigsty in guild to have whatever friends—in the mod world."

Angry equally I was, as nosotros all were, I was tempted to express mirth whenever he opened his mouth. The transition from libertine to prig was then complete. (7.229-233)

Nick is happy whenever he gets to demonstrate how undereducated and dumb Tom actually is. Here, Tom's anger at Daisy and Gatsby is somehow transformed into a cocky-pitying and faux righteous rant almost miscegenation, loose morals, and the decay of stalwart institutions. Nosotros come across the connection between Jordan and Nick when both of them puncture Tom'southward pompous balloon: Hashemite kingdom of jordan points out that race isn't actually at issue at the moment, and Nick laughs at the hypocrisy of a womanizer like Tom suddenly lamenting his wife'south lack of prim propriety.

"She never loved you, practise you hear?" he cried. "She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. Information technology was a terrible mistake, but in her eye she never loved any one except me!" (seven.241)

Gatsby throws caution to the air current and reveals the story that he has been telling himself about Daisy all this fourth dimension. In his mind, Daisy has been pining for him as much equally he has been longing for her, and he has been able to explain her marriage to himself just by eliding any notion that she might have her own hopes, dreams, ambitions, and motivations. Gatsby has been propelled for the last five years by the idea that he has access to what is in Daisy'southward heart. Withal, we tin encounter that a dream built on this kind of shifting sand is at best wishful thinking and at worst willful cocky-mirage.

"Daisy, that'south all over now," he said earnestly. "Information technology doesn't matter whatsoever more. Merely tell him the truth—that you never loved him—and it's all wiped out forever." ...

She hesitated. Her optics cruel on Jordan and me with a sort of appeal, as though she realized at last what she was doing—and as though she had never, all along, intended doing anything at all. But it was done now. Information technology was as well late….

"Oh, you want too much!" she cried to Gatsby. "I love you now—isn't that enough? I tin't help what'south past." She began to sob helplessly. "I did love him in one case—but I loved you as well."

Gatsby's eyes opened and closed.

"You loved me too?" he repeated. (7.254-266)

Gatsby wants naught less than that Daisy erase the last five years of her life. He is unwilling to have the idea that Daisy has had feelings for someone other than him, that she has had a history that does non involve him, and that she has not spent every single second of every day wondering when he would come back into her life. His absolutism is a course of emotional blackmail.

For all Daisy's axiomatic weaknesses, it is a testament to her psychological strength that she is but unwilling to recreate herself, her memories, and her emotions in Gatsby's image. She could easily at this point say that she has never loved Tom, just this would not be true, and she does not want to give up her independence of mind. Unlike Gatsby, who against all evidence to the opposite believes that you tin repeat the past, Daisy wants to know that there is a future. She wants Gatsby to exist the solution to her worries virtually each successive time to come day, rather than an imprecation about the choices she has made to get to this bespeak.

At the same fourth dimension, it'southward key to annotation Nick's realization that Daisy "had never intended on doing anything at all." Daisy has never planned to leave Tom. We've known this ever since the first fourth dimension we saw them at the end of Chapter 1, when he realized that they were cemented together in their dysfunction.

Information technology passed, and he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything, defending his proper noun against accusations that had not been fabricated. Only with every discussion she was cartoon farther and further into herself, so he gave that up and only the expressionless dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to bear upon what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost vox beyond the room. (seven.292)

The appearance of Daisy'southward girl and Daisy's declaration that at some indicate in her life she loved Tom accept both helped to crush Gatsby's obsession with his dream. In merely the aforementioned mode, Tom's explanations most who Gatsby really is and what is behind his facade accept broken Daisy's infatuation. Take note of the linguistic communication here—as Daisy is withdrawing from Gatsby, we come dorsum to the epitome of Gatsby with his arms outstretched, trying to grab something that is only out of reach. In this example information technology's not merely Daisy herself, merely also his dream of beingness with her within his perfect retentivity.

"Shell me!" he heard her cry. "Throw me down and beat me, you dirty little coward!" (vii.314)

Myrtle fights by provoking and taunting. Hither, she is pointing out Wilson'southward weak and timid nature by egging him on to treat her the way that Tom did when he punched her earlier in the novel.

However, before nosotros draw any conclusions we can nigh Myrtle from this assertion, it'southward worthwhile to call up about the context of this remark.

• First, nosotros are getting this speech tertiary-manus. This is Nick telling us what Michaelis described overhearing, so Myrtle's words take gone through a double male filter.

• Second, Myrtle'southward words stand in isolation. We take no idea what Wilson has been saying to her to provoke this assail. What we exercise know is that however "powerless" Wilson might be, he still has power plenty to imprison his married woman in their house and to unilaterally uproot and move her several states away confronting her will. Neither Nick nor Michaelis remarks on whether either of these exercises of unilateral power over Myrtle is advisable or fair—information technology is simply expected that this is what a married man can practice to a married woman.

So what do we brand of the fact that Myrtle was trying to verbally emasculate her husband? Maybe yelling at him is her only recourse in a life where she has no actual ability to command her life or actual integrity.

The "death car" as the newspapers chosen it, didn't stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment and so disappeared around the adjacent bend. Michaelis wasn't even sure of its colour—he told the first policeman that information technology was low-cal green. The other car, the one going toward New York, came to rest a hundred yards beyond, and its driver hurried back to where Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick, dark claret with the grit.

Michaelis and this man reached her commencement just when they had torn open her shirtwaist notwithstanding clammy with perspiration, they saw that her left breast was swinging loose like a flap and there was no need to listen for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide open and ripped at the corners equally though she had choked a little in giving upwardly the tremendous vitality she had stored so long. (7.316-317)

The stark contrast here between the oddly ghostly nature of the car that hits Myrtle and the visceral, gruesome, explicit imagery of what happens to her body after it is hit is very striking. The car almost doesn't seem real—it comes out of the darkness like an avenging spirit and disappears, Michaelis cannot tell what color it is. Meanwhile, Myrtle's corpse is described in item and is palpably physical and nowadays.

This treatment of Myrtle'southward body might be one identify to go when you are asked to compare Daisy and Myrtle in class. Daisy's body is never fifty-fifty described, beyond a gentle indication that she prefers white dresses that are flouncy and loose. On the other mitt, every time that we encounter Myrtle in the novel, her body is physically assaulted or appropriated. Tom initially picks her upwardly by pressing his body inappropriately into hers on the railroad train station platform. Before her party, Tom has sex with her while Nick (a homo who is a stranger to Myrtle) waits in the next room, and then Tom ends the night by punching her in the face. Finally, she is restrained past her married man within her house and so run over.

Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen tabular array with a plate of common cold fried chicken betwixt them and two bottles of ale. He was talking intently across the table at her and in his earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her ain. Once in a while she looked upwards at him and nodded in agreement.

They weren't happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale—and nonetheless they weren't unhappy either. At that place was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together. (vii.409-410)

And so, the promise that Daisy and Tom are a dysfunctional couple that somehow makes it piece of work (Nick saw this at the cease of Chapter ane) is fulfilled. For careful readers of the novel, this decision should have been clear from the start. Daisy complains almost Tom, and Tom serially cheats on Daisy, but at the end of the day, they are unwilling to forgo the privileges their life entitles them to.

This moment of truth has stripped Daisy and Tom down to the nuts. They are in the least showy room of their mansion, sitting with elementary and unpretentious nutrient, and they accept been stripped of their veneer. Their honesty makes what they are doing—conspiring to get away with murder, basically—completely transparent. And information technology is the fact that they can tolerate this level of honesty in each other besides each being kind of a terrible person that keeps them together.

Compare their readiness to forgive each other annihilation—fifty-fifty murder!—with Gatsby'south insistence that it'southward his way or no way.

The image of Tom and Daisy property hands, while discussing how to flee after Daisy kills Myrtle, is the crux of their relationship. They are willing to forgive each other everything. Are they secretly the most romantic couple in the book?

The Keen Gatsby Chapter vii Assay

It's no surprise that this very long, emotional, and shocking affiliate is laced through with the themes of The Not bad Gatsby. Let's have a look.

Overarching Themes

Morality and Ethics. In this chapter, suspicion of crime is everywhere:

• Gatsby'southward new butler has a "villainous" (vii.2) face up
• a woman worries that Nick is out to steal her handbag on the train
• Gatsby lurks around outside the Buchanans' mansion similar "he was going to rob the house in a moment" (7.384)
• Daisy and Tom sit and conspire together at the kitchen tabular array

This air of the illegal heightens the bodily crimes that take identify or are revealed in the affiliate:

• Gatsby is a bootlegger (or worse)
• Daisy kills Myrtle
• Gatsby hides the car with its evidence of the accident
• Daisy and Tom decide to get away with murder

This descent into the dark side of the Wild E (contrasted with Nick'south version of the calm and strictly in a higher place-lath Middle West) reveals the novel'south perspective on the excesses of the time period. It is interesting that the vast majority of the offense or near crime that is described is theft—the taking of someone else's property. The same desires that spur the ambitious to come to Manhattan to endeavour to make something of themselves as well incite those who are willing to do the kind of corner-cutting that results in criminality. Just Daisy, who is already so established that theft is unnecessary to her, takes criminal offense to the next level.

Love, Desire, Relationships. Just every bit crime is everywhere, so besides is illicit sexuality. All the same, the oestrus and tension seem to reverse the behavioral tendencies of the characters nosotros have come to know over the course of six capacity.

• The commonly reserved Nick wonders most his train usher and "whose flushed lips he kissed, whose head fabricated damp the pajama pocket over his heart" (7.23). He as well makes a dirty joke about the Buchanans' butler having to yell over the phone that he just cannot send Tom's trunk to Myrtle in this heat.

• The ordinarily passive Daisy kisses Gatsby on the oral fissure in forepart of Nick and Jordan in a display of rebellion. Later she calls Tom out on his euphemistic clarification of the times he cheated on her right after their honeymoon equally a "spree" (vii.252), a word that simply ways "fun practiced time."

• On the other hand, the womanizing Tom primly and hypocritically rants near the downfall of morality and the possibility that people of different races volition exist allowed to intermarry.

• Similarly, the normally weak and ineffectual Wilson overpowers his wife plenty to lock her up when he finds out about the affair she'south been having. He also feels as bad about the situation as if he had gotten a woman pregnant by blow.

• Everyone'southward desire for someone who is not their spouse is underscored by the way that an ongoing wedding is continuously described every bit deeply unappealing throughout the affiliate. Somewhen, the wedding music pops up in the heart of the climactic argument similar this: "From the ballroom beneath, muffled and suffocating chords were globe-trotting up on hot waves of air" (7.261). Married life is suffocating, and these characters spend significant energies trying to suspension costless.

Motifs: Weather condition. The overwhelming estrus of the day plays a vital role in creating an atmosphere of stifled, sweaty, uncomfortable breathlessness. Each scene's overwhelming tension and awkwardness are further heightened by the physical discomfort that everyone is experiencing (information technology's too key to remember that beingness hot and slightly dehydrated elevates the level of intoxication that a person feels, these characters pour back whiskey after whiskey). The hot mugginess ratchets up anger and resentment, and as well seems to elevate the recklessness with which people are willing to expose and pursue their sexual desires. And then crucial is this atmospheric chemical element, that every movie adaptation of this novel makes sure that the actors are covered in sweat during these scenes, making information technology almost as uncomfortable to watch them as information technology is to imagine making it through that day. Here's a quick clip that shows you what I mean.

Mutability of Identity. It is plumbing fixtures that just as lots of wool is removed from lots of eyes, as Gatsby is source of wealth is revealed, and as Daisy is shown not to be the fairytale figment of Gatsby's imagination, the thought of façades, false impressions, and mistaken identity is front and eye.

• Start, on this blisteringly hot day, Daisy is entranced by Gatsby's projecting an image of looking "so cool" and resembling "the advertisement of the man" (seven.81-83). Gatsby'south glossy appearance is perfect but also clearly shallow and simulated, similar an advertisement.

• Afterwards, Myrtle seethes with jealousy when she sees Tom driving next to Hashemite kingdom of jordan, and assumes that Jordan is Daisy. This instance of mistaken identity contributes to her decease, as she assumes that Tom would exist driving the aforementioned car dorsum from the city that he took there.

• Third, Daisy and Jordan recollect a human being named Biloxi who talked his mode into Daisy and Tom's wedding, and then talked his way into staying at Hashemite kingdom of jordan'southward house for 3 weeks every bit he recuperated from a fainting spell. Their memories make clear that his entire story about himself was a sham—a sham that worked, until it didn't, like the façades of the main characters in the story.

• Fourth, Wilson briefly assumes that Michaelis is Myrtle's lover. His failure to sympathize who information technology is that is a really having an affair with his wife leads to the novel's 2nd murder.

The Treatment of Women. Also fundamental this chapter are women characters.

First, at that place is the pairing of Daisy and Hashemite kingdom of jordan, whose outlooks on life are confirmed to be diametrically opposed.

• Daisy is rich, overindulged, and endlessly bored with her monotonously luxurious life. She grabs on to the romance with Gatsby is a possible escape, merely is before long confronted with the reality of the perfect, idealized beingness that he would like her to be. Daisy realizes that she prefers the rubber boredom and coincidental betrayal of Tom to the unrealistic expectations—and thus inevitable disappointment—of being with Gatsby. Her fundamental cowardice is a better fit for Tom, equally we observe out afterward the car blow when she kills Myrtle. Information technology's Tom who offers her complicity, understanding, and a render to stability.

• On the other hand, Jordan is a pragmatist who sees opportunity and possibility everywhere. This makes her attractive to Nick, who likes that she is self-contained, at-home, cynical, and unlikely to be overly emotional. However, this approach to life means that Jordan is basically amoral, as revealed in this affiliate past her nearly complete lack of reaction to Myrtle'due south death, and her assumption that life at the Buchanan house will proceed as normal. For Nick, who clings to his sense of himself as a securely decent human existence, this is a dealbreaker.

Next, we have the comparison between Daisy and Myrtle, two women whose marriages dissatisfy them enough that they seek out other lovers. In that location are many ways to compare them, just in this chapter in particular what seems important is whether each woman is able to maintain coherence and integrity.

• What Gatsby wants from Daisy is a complete erasure of her listen, history, and emotions, so that she will match his weirdly apartment and idealized notion of her. By demanding that she renounce ever having had feelings for Tom, Gatsby wants to deny her fundamental sense of self-cognition. Daisy refuses to compromise herself in this way and so is able to maintain psychological integrity.

• On the other hand, Myrtle, whose physicality has always been her most defining characteristic, ends upward losing even the most basic integrity—bodily integrity—as her body is not simply ripped open when she is striking by a car, but this mutilation is witnessed by many people then too graphically described.

Finally, we can expect at all three women in terms of whether and how they are controlled by the men in their lives, and whether and how they escape that control.

• Jordan's cool aloofness prevents her from beingness trapped in the aforementioned fashion that Myrtle and Daisy are. Despite even her access later that breaking upwardly with Nick injure her feelings, we certainly get the sense that Hashemite kingdom of jordan could take him or go out him. She retains a lot of power in their relationship. For instance, when Nick of a sudden freaks out about turning xxx, she shows him how to be "too wise always to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age" (7.308) and past putting her hand over his with "reassuring pressure" (7.308).

• Neither of the other 2 women is ever on top even in this very mild way. For instance, Tom, who is used to putting his hands on people as a way of showing his power over them (in this chapter he does it to the policeman, and and so to Wilson), puts his hand over Daisy'due south at the end of the affiliate to signal that she is back within his circumvolve of control. But at least Daisy'southward escape attempt led her to Gatsby'due south presumably gentlemanly treatment.

• The same tin can't be said for Myrtle, who goes from bad to worse, every bit she escapes her marriage to take an affair with Tom, who feels free to beat her, and then is forced to return to her married man, who feels free to imprison and forcibly remove her from her home.

Death and Failure. Death comes in many forms, both metaphorical and horribly real. Of course, the principal death in this affiliate is that of Myrtle, gruesomely killed by Daisy. But this is also the chapter where dreams come to dice. Gatsby's fantasy of Daisy undergoes a irksome demise when he meets her daughter, and when he learns that she is but unwilling to renounce her entire history with Tom for Gatsby's sake. Similarly, whatsoever romantic ideas Daisy may have had about Gatsby vanish when she learns that he is a criminal.

New York's Plaza Hotel, famous for being the place where Eloise lives in those kids books, and for beingness the setting for this novel'south scene of confrontation.

Crucial Character Beats

• Gatsby stops throwing parties at his house and instead carries on an affair with Daisy. Nick, Gatsby, Daisy, Jordan, and Tom have luncheon together and decide to become to Manhattan for the twenty-four hours to escape the heat.

• Both Tom and Wilson realize that their wives are having affairs; nonetheless, just Tom knows who Daisy's matter is with. Wilson decides to accept Myrtle to live somewhere else.

• Nick, Gatsby, Daisy, Jordan, and Tom end upwardly in a suite at the Plaza Hotel where everything comes tumbling into the open up. Gatsby and Daisy acknowledge that they've been having an affair, Gatsby demands that Daisy tell Tom that she has never loved him. Daisy cannot practice this, and Gatsby's dreams are dashed.

• Gatsby and Daisy drive dwelling house together. On the style, with Daisy driving the car, they hitting and kill Myrtle, who is trying to escape beingness imprisoned in her house by Wilson.

• Gatsby decides to have the blame for the accident, but doesn't quite realize that it is all over betwixt him and Daisy.

• Daisy and Tom have an intimate moment together as they figure out what they are going to practice next.

What's Adjacent?

Compare the novel's four trips into Manhattan: Nick at Myrtle's party in Chapter 2, Nick's description of what it's like to be a unmarried guy around town at the end of Chapter 3, Nick at dejeuner with Gatsby in Chapter 4, and insanity at the Plaza in this chapter. Does Manhattan affect the way the characters behave? Does it brand them more or less probable to deed out to be there? Practice they feel comfy there?

Move on to the summary of Chapter eight, or revisit the summary of Chapter vi.

What are some of the overall themes in Gatsby? Nosotros dig into money and materialism, the American Dream, and more in our article on the virtually important Groovy Gatsby themes.

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About the Author

Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in loftier school, and went on to major in English language at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate nigh improving student access to higher didactics.

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Source: https://blog.prepscholar.com/the-great-gatsby-chapter-7-summary

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