Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner bondsman, rents a cottage in West Egg next to the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby. Drawn into the world of his cousin Daisy and her brutish husband Tom, Nick becomes the confidant for Gatsby's singular, five-year obsession: to win back Daisy and recreate a perfect past, a dream that ultimately collides with reality and ends in violence.
Left with Jordan, Nick pressed her for details. She offered only fragments: Gatsby claimed an Oxford education, though she doubted it. Before she could elaborate, the orchestra leader announced a performance of “Vladmir Tostoff’s Jazz History of the World.” As the strange composition began, Nick spotted Gatsby standing alone on the marble steps, observing the festivities with approval but participating in none of it. He grew more composed as his guests grew wilder, and no one leaned against him or drew him into their circles.
A butler arrived to summon Jordan for a private word with Gatsby. She departed, and Nick drifted inside. The party had begun to curdle. A woman wept while singing at the piano, tears streaking her makeup, until she collapsed into a drunken sleep. Married couples argued openly. Wives accused husbands of selfishness; husbands pursued actresses while their spouses looked on in fury. The evening’s glamour had dissolved into squalor.
When Jordan emerged from her private meeting, she paused to whisper that she had learned something astonishing, but she had promised secrecy. Nick joined the dwindling cluster of guests around Gatsby, who reminded him about the hydroplane. Then he walked down the drive toward home.
The night offered one final spectacle. Headlights illuminated a coupé in the ditch, missing a wheel. The Owl-Eyed man from the library stood beside it, bewildered but unhurt. He insisted he had not been driving—another man climbed out of the wreck, dazed and swaying, asking whether they had run out of fuel. When bystanders pointed to the severed wheel, the passenger suggested putting the car in reverse. Nick turned away. Behind him, Gatsby stood on his porch, hand raised in formal farewell, isolated in the glow of his still-lit mansion.
These parties, Nick later reflected, were incidental to his summer. Most days he worked at the Probity Trust, eating lunch with fellow clerks and dining alone at the Yale Club. He grew fond of New York’s restless energy, though he often felt a sharp loneliness among the crowds. He imagined himself into the lives of women he passed on the street, inventing connections that never materialized.
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