Gatsby’s Parties

Daisy’s friend who Nick dates for a while

wife of Tom Wilson; she is Tom’s (Daisy’s husband) mistress

Myrtle Wilson’s husband;

he owns a gas station

the social events of New York

Physical Descriptions

“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” (15)

“…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 continuously smoldering” (29)

“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” (29)

[his mansion]: “…a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel 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” (9)

“’Your place looks like the world’s fair’” (86)

Outlook/

Attitude

“an urban distaste for the concrete” (54)

“And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any room for privacy” (54)

“Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs. Wilson gathered up her dog and her other purchases and went haughtily in” (33)

“He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive” (30)

“He had discovered that Myrtle had some sort of life apart from him in another world and the shock had made him physically sick” (130)

 “He was his wife’s man and not his own” (144)

“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars” (43)

Effects

on Others

“the bored haughty face that she turned to the world concealed something… she was incurably dishonest” (62)

--“People were not invited—they went there… 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” (45)