The Great Gatsby - Chapter 9 Summary and Analysis
Here's a summary and analysis of The Great Gatsby, Chapter 9.
Hello old sport. There’s something both beautiful and tragic about the ending of The Great Gatsby. Most of the chapter focuses on Nick trying to get someone – anyone – to come to Gatsby’s funeral. Although James Gatz’s father and Owl Eyes show up, no one else does, and it’s just outright pathetic.
But before we talk about that, we want to consider a few of the early statements Nick makes about Gatsby and see what sense they make now, knowing what we know about Gatsby’s life, aspirations, and death. First of all, the book is entitled The GREAT Gatsby, and we have to ask: “What is GREAT about Gatsby in the first place?” The other thing to consider is what Nick tells us in Chapter 1: “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.”
Gatsby turned out all right in the end? He’s dead! But it’s important to note the distinction Nick draws for us regarding Gatsby – Gatsby’s ability to dream and love and aspire are pure, but the way these things are manifested – through greed, corruption, wealth, crime, betrayal, conspiracy – these are the fruits of Gatsby’s ill-begotten labors. And this, according to Nick, lays out the real tragedy not just of Gatsby, but of the whole American culture.
And remember that this is not just a story about Gatsby, but really about Nick. In the beginning Nick reveals a mystery: that he goes out East full of aspirations of his own, but returns to the Midwest completely disillusioned. Chapter 9 gives us the details of his ultimate disillusionment and his return back to the Midwest.
Before we get into the details of Chapter 9’s events, I want you to again note the weather in this chapter. Winter is coming. So we endured the bright hopes of summer, the disillusionment of autumn, and now the dead days of winter. What’s also interesting is that no one is left in New York by the end of the story: Myrtle and George are dead, Gatsby is dead, Nick and Tom and Daisy all move away, and Jordan too. In Nick’s reflective monologue he considers that “this has been a story of the West, after all – Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.” And if we really want to think about east and west, it’s the WEST in American lore that has always served the function of starting new promising adventure, but this novel shows what happens when this is inverted, when the alluring riches of the east call us to a siren’s promise that fails to fulfill.
At any rate, this is a chapter about wrapping things up. Nick realizes he’s the only one who cares – actually cares – about Gatsby, and therefore takes responsibility for contacting friends and making funeral arrangements. Unfortunately, besides Gatsby’s father – who features a cute and unappreciable admiration for his dead son – no one cares about Gatsby. Nick spends a lot of time pursuing Meyer Wolfsheim, who blatantly dismisses Gatsby even after telling Nick they were close partners.
But to me the more interesting dismissal comes from Tom and Daisy. Remember how much Gatsby pursued Daisy, how she returned his affections, how she let him take the wrap for killing Myrtle, and how Wilson mistakenly killed Gatsby? Remember how Tom stole Wilson’s wife and then Daisy killed her? Tom and Daisy are completely unaffected by the whole chain of events, even though everyone around them suffers. At the moment they’re burying Gatsby, Nick recalls that Daisy never sent a message or a flower. The Buchanans are completely off the map, fulfilling what Nick had predicted earlier on in the summer that they would wander about restlessly forever “wherever people played polo and were rich together.”
It’s this series of interactions and consequences that lead Nick to ultimately learn what he learns about human nature and the American dream - and he’s horrified and disgusted...
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