Chapters Four and Five of Gatsby: "My family all died..."

I really love that in Gatsby's telling of himself he kills off all his family. I suppose you could form a mythological allusion here -- scream -- Oedipus comes to mind, but I would rather include this in my overarching conclusion that American Literature often features the orphan. Only when people are orphans do we see them having wild adventures at sea (Ishmael has no one/nothing on land), or getting impregnated by a Puritan minister (daddy, where were you?), or controlling the your family from the grave (Addie, and her tale receives double points for both including an orphan hero/villan and also having that hero/villan creating orphans in the story, and I'm sure there are many more examples. I am also aware that there may not be anything highly significant in the American orphan character trend, for it seems that America is in turns an orphan and a parent society. We like to trim our roots and start over here, hopefully with the result being lots and lots of money. Still, I love that Gatsby's mask is first and foremost an orphan. Maybe there is a mask of origin to be analyzed here.

Remember when I discussed Nick's habit of leaving off relationships with women when he feels threatened by another man? Isn't it fascinating that when Gatsby merely mentions his awareness of Jordan and Nick's tea date, that Nick responds in the extreme?

Gatsby: You'll hear about it this afternoon.
Nick: At lunch?
Gatsby: No, this afternoon. I happened to find out that you're taking Miss Baker to tea.
Nick: Do you mean that you're in love with Miss Baker?

I mean, come on. It's almost as if Nick wants Gatsby to be interested in Jordan, so that he can dump her.

I also want to bring up the scene where Jordan narrates the times of Daisy's romantic youth. There are several things I'm interested in here.

"...she went with a slightly older crowd -- when she went with anyone at all."
"...her mother found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New York...she wasn't on speaking terms with her family for several weeks."
"Tell 'em all Daisy's change' her mine..."

Daisy is awfully mysterious, according to Jordan. Chapter four really drove home for me Nick's infatuation with Gatsby, even if it's just in his way of speaking about himself, and Daisy's role as the rich cheerleader outcast. She rejoins society, but only to become the outcast in her and Tom's marriage.

And what about when Gatsby almost makes a prostitute out of Nick?! The exact terms of Gatsby's "proposition" are not defined and the language used implies that Gatsby is trying to become Nick's pimp; my guess is that Gatsby wants more control over him, and that he is trying to be like his predecessor, Dan, and "adopt" a little poor scamp of his own. The job happens to be "a rather confidential sort of thing,"...hmmm, meaning illegal? Nick says, "...because the offer was obviously and tactlessly for a service to be rendered, I had no choice except to cut him off there." At first read this just seems like Nick defending his "white collar" status, but in the light of my focus on desire, I like to think of it as his stubborn refusal to be paid by Gatsby instead of loved and valued for other reasons and in other ways. It's like Myrtle saying, "Daisy!", instead of just keeping her mouth shut and buying a new dress. The thing is, Nick is having his relationship with Gatsby through Daisy, a much more fulfilling connection with Gatsby in terms of desire -- if Nick has a secular relationship with Gatsby there's no outlet for desire, but when Nick gets to watch Gatsby and Daisy interact there is a satifcation gained from getting to participate in the connection. It's amazing that when Nick is prompted to stay during Tom and Myrtles liason, he is moved to have his own tryst with McKee, and when Gatsby and Daisy have their first meeting he leaves alone. It's as if his desire for Gatsby is satisfied through Daisy -- but his desire for Tom, if it exists, is not satisfied through Myrtle, who he describes as corpulent in her femininity, and overly sexual (he describes seeing her pump gas when he's in Gatsby's car: "...I had a glimpse of Mrs. Wilson straining at the garage pump with panting vitality as we went by.") The figures of reproduction -- the bodacious female body -- not in fashion in the 20s anyway, although Tamara deLempicka painted some fantasically meaty nude females during this era -- is not exacly rejected entirely, not by Tom, anyway, but defintely seems replusive to Nick. He likes Jordan, this "clean, hard, limited person," who thinks he is an idiot.

Patterns are emerging.