The second section of the novel The Great Gatsby was considerably more crucial than the first section was. In the first section, characters and their relationships to one another are established, which ended up being a vital contributor to the story line that developed in the second section. In the second section, we realized the motives behind Gatsby’s wanting to get to know Nick so well; it is almost as if he sees his five-years of loneliness slipping away when he realizes Nick’s connection to his long-lost and now married love, Daisy.
The ridiculousness of the roaring twenties is still capitalized on in this part of the novel, but I think the way Fitzgerald writes the parties as increasingly boring, unable to interest Daisy, helps our attention shift almost as if we are seeing him and his priorities in a different light. I thought it was interesting how, in the last part of the section, Gatsby reveals that he fires all of his servants because Daisy comes over “quite often”, and he wants to keep the gossip to a minimum. Fitzgerald was very clever in writing this: he showed the old lovers as re-connecting at his party, and then hinted to a new affair but never actually came out with it. And even though I have seen the movie, I closed this section of the book thinking: “Okay, are they having a full-blown affair now, or are they still just friends?”
I am very interested to see how Fitzgerald writes the last section of this novel. Right now, it seems like an impossible situation: Daisy, rich, privileged Daisy, starts enchanting Gatsby once she sees his lavish lifestyle, but her motives seem to revolve more around romance, almost as if she married for money. Now she realizes she doesn’t have to choose between the lifestyle she wants, and the love she wants.
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