The Great Gatsby
By F. Scott Fitzgerald
Chapter 3
P.42-43
Once Nick gets to the party, he looks for the host(Gatsby). No one seems to know Gatsby. He runs into Jordan. As he is speaking to Jordan, two young women approach them and say that they are sorry that she didn’t win. Jordan lost in the finals of the golf tournament.
“Do you come to these parties often?” inquired Jordan of one of the girls. Her name was Lucille. “I like to come,” Lucille said. “I never care what I do, so I always have a good time. When I was here last I tore my gown on a chair, and he(Gatsby) asked me my name and address-inside of a week I got a package from Croirier’s with a new evening gown in it.” The evening gown cost two hundred and sixty-five dollars. Lucille feels that Gatsby doesn’t trouble with anybody.
44-45
Then the rumors started. “Somebody told me that he killed a man once.” “It’s more that he is a German spy during the war.” “I heard that from a man who knew all about him grew up with him in Germany.”
Lucile said that that rumor could not be true because he was in the American Army in the war.
Jordan and Nick decided to look around the house for Gatsby; but they couldn’t find him. Jordan and Nick walked into a library. In the library was a stout, middle aged man with enormous owl-eyed spectacles. Owl eyes talks to Jordan and Nick about the books in the library. “They’re real,” he said. “Absolutely real—they have pages and everything. I thought they’d be durable card board.
47-48
Jordan and Nick return to the party. Nick and Jordan are sitting at table for dinner. Also at the table was a rowdy girl and a man about the same age as Nick. The man then says to Nick that he looks familiar. “Weren’t you in the Third Division during the war? Nick responds, “Yes, I was in “the Ninth Machine-Gun Battalion.” Nick and the man talked about the war. The man also explained that he bought a hydroplane.
“Want to go with me, old sport?
“What time?” Said Nick
“Any time that suits you best.”
Nick was about the ask his name when Jordan asked Nick if he was enjoying the party.
Nick said that he was having a good time, but he had not seen the host. Nick explained to the man that Gatsby had sent him an invitation. The man then said, “I’m Gatsby.”
After he identified himself, a butler came up to Gatsby and told him that Chicago was calling. Gatsby excused himself.
Nick asks Jordan what she knows about Gatsby. She said that he is just a man named Gatsby. She said that he told her that he went to Oxford , but she doesn’t believe him. When Nick asked why she didn’t believe him, she said, “I don’t know……..I just don’t think he went there.”
50
When Nick and Jordan decided to leave it was about 2 AM in the morning. A butler walks up to Jordan and tells her that Mr. Gatsby would like to speak to her in the study . Nick waited for Jordan.
When Gatsby and Jordan came out of the study, she said that had heard the most extraordinary thing from Gatsby. She promised Gatsby that he would not tell. She asked Nick to call hall.
When Nick left to go home, there was a car accident outside Gatsby’s house. The car was wrecked. The wheel came off. The man was so drunk, he didn’t understand that he would not be able to drive the car.
P. 57-58
Nick did not meet up with Jordan again until mid-summer. While spending time with her he noticed that, “she avoided shrewd men and was ‘incurably dishonest.’ He said that it did not make a difference because “Dishonesty in a woman is something that you never blame deeply.
Nick felt at one point that he actually loved Jordan but he realized that he had to ‘get out of that tangle back home.’ He had been sending letters once a week and signing them, “Love Nick.”
There was a vague understanding that had to be tactfully broken off before he was free.
“Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues , and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have every known.”