Chapter 3 is the first glimpse that the reader gets into the life of the mysterious and well-known baron: Jay Gatsby. During the first two chapters, the reader encounters many rumors about the namesake of the novel. Some say he is a bootlegger and others say he is a German spy, yet in chapter 3 we are actually introduced to the man. A big part of what makes up Gatsby seems to be his extravagant parties. To Nick Carraway it seemed that they dragged on for the entire summer: “There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights.” Although these sort of elaborate social events would be thought to be characteristic of a wild and pretentious man, Gatsby is quite the opposite. Gatsby attends extremely well to his guests: refreshing them, entertaining them, and even going to the extent of buying a woman a replacement dress because she had torn it at his party. He treats everyone with the utmost respect and always wears a guise of formality. It was even mentioned by one that Gatsby: “‘…doesn’t want any trouble with anybody.’” Yet even though Gatsby provides for the every need of his multitudes of guests, many have not even taken the time to meet him. When Carraway arrives at the party he seems to notice that no one at the party knows anything about the host: “As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host, but the two or three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such a amazed way, and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements, that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table…” The party-goers seem to show no interest at all in the man who is actually putting on the party, only in the gratification of the social congregation. In this way, the relationship between Gatsby’s party and the party-goers is analogous to the relationship between pornographic films and their observer. Pornography tends to dehumanize the act of sex into just the physical. Instead of viewing sex as an intimate experience between two human beings, it strips it down to the bare physical gratification of the act. The men and women who attend Gatsby’s parties are not interested in the slightest in getting to know the human being behind the experience. They are instead solely focused on the instant gratification that the party provides them.
My only question for this chapter of the novel has to do with the owl eyed man in the library. Why is this significant in any way? Why did Fitzgerald include this seemingly useless detail in this chapter?
My only question for this chapter of the novel has to do with the owl eyed man in the library. Why is this significant in any way? Why did Fitzgerald include this seemingly useless detail in this chapter?