End of Chapter 8

• Gatsby’s is the second violent death that Fitzgerald keeps out of the narrative; Wilson’s suicide is the third.
• As Chapter VIII ends with Nick’s poetic account of Gatsby’s death the effect Fitzgerald intends to create is clearly to concentrate attention on Nick’s sense of Gatsby’s despair at the deconstruction of his dream.
• Gatsby’s death is the novel is another moment filled with ambiguity. His body is not actually mentioned; there is a pattern of alternate stillness (shadows) and movement (ripples) which creates a strangely peaceful scene. Swimming pool is almost now a sanctified place and Fitzgerald depicts a scene where a soul/spirit lies in the place of where Gatsby’s body should be.
• Fallen leaves revolve the ‘laden mattress...tracing...a thin red circle in the water.’ Reference made to leaves, not directly to blood. They complete the suggestion of the cyclical passage of the season through the early summer of bloom and hope to the autumn of death. The fallen leaves ultimately highlight the mortal nature of man

Ultimately Gatsby is as distant and enigmatic in death as he has been in life as his death is presented in a figurative way that is absent of specific detail.

Fitzgerald on Gatsby:

·         In a letter to John Peale Bishop Fitzgerald admitted his own awareness of the uncertainties surrounding the character he has created:

·         “Also, you are right about Gatsby being blurred and patchy. I never at any one time saw him clear myself – for he started as one man I knew and then changed....the amalgam was never complete in my mind.”

·         -Ironically however, it is this indefinable quality that has defined the character of Gatsby and the novel as a whole.

·         Is this a positive or frustrating amalgam? Is it impossible to relate to Gatsby? Does this make the novel a failure or is it part of its unique intrigue?

End of Chapter VIII: Wilson’s suicide:

P154:

‘...the gardener saw Wilson’s body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete.’

• The word ‘holocaust’ here indicates the wholesale destruction that closes the chapter. Short concluding sentence emphasises the resounding sense of emptiness.
• Through the indirect presentation of both Gatsby and Wilson’s deaths, Fitzgerald language is consistent with the lonely lives the two men have led and thus the chapter ends with a special kind of sadness. There is pathos about Gatsby’s life – puerility (juvenile/childishness) as well in his almost childish insistence on clinging to his single-vision dream - yet ultimately he has paid the highest price for Daisy as he covers for her which costs him his life. In effect, the end of Chapter VIII reaffirms the novel’s complex form as both tragedy and crime drama.