what happens to nick for the second time in his life why is this important

If The Bang-up Gatsby were college, Affiliate 2 would exist the drunk frat party that gets style out of command, with Tom Buchanan as that guy yelling at everyone to chug. That's because this chapter is all nigh Tom'south double life: Nick meets his mistress, gets wasted at her pocket-size apartment party in Manhattan, and gets an up close and personal view into Tom's violent tendencies.

Read on for a total The Great Gatsby Chapter 2 summary, plus explication of connections to the volume's main themes and assay of important passages!

Quick Note on Our Citations

Our citation format in this guide is (chapter.paragraph). We're using this system since there are many editions of Gatsby, so using folio numbers would only work for students with our copy of the volume.

To find a quotation we cite via chapter and paragraph in your book, you tin either eyeball it (Paragraph one-50: get-go of chapter; l-100: middle of chapter; 100-on: end of chapter), or use the search function if you lot're using an online or eReader version of the text.

The Swell Gatsby: Chapter two Summary

Nick describes the "valley of ashes" that is the area between the rich suburb of Due west Egg and Manhattan. This is the grayness and dingy part of the civic of Queens that you drive through to get from Long Island to NYC.

Above this bleak, smoky, unpleasant landscape is a giant billboard ad Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, an middle doc. The billboard is a set of giant eyes that seems to be surveying or judging everything below.

Tom's mistress lives in this "ash heaps" area.

One twenty-four hours, when Nick takes the train with Tom to Manhattan, Tom suddenly makes him get off at a random stop to encounter her.

They go to a garage owned by George Wilson, who seems to be in the middle of buying a machine from Tom. Myrtle Wilson, George's wife, comes downwardly to the garage. She isn't beautiful, but is attractive considering she is plump and lively. Tom quickly makes a plan to run across her in the city. He and Nick get out, and Tom explains that George has no idea that Myrtle is having an affair with Tom.

Tom insists Myrtle encounter him in Manhattan, so she boards the same train as Tom and Nick, but she sits in a different machine to be unimposing, and they so meet upwardly at the station.

Myrtle decides she would like a domestic dog, and Tom buys her a puppy from a cavalier passing salesman.

Nick tries to go out Tom and Myrtle, but they insist he come up to their apartment very far uptown. The apartment is minor, gaudily decorated, and uncomfortable. Tom brings out a canteen of whiskey.

For the second fourth dimension in his life (or then he claims), Nick gets drunk, so his memory of what happens side by side is somewhat hazy. Yet, we become the sense that Tom and Myrtle have sexual practice while Nick politely reads a book in the other room.

Then some guests come up over: Myrtle'southward sister Catherine, also as a photographer named McKee and his horrible wife. Myrtle lords information technology over her guests. The McKees fawn over her and Tom, complimenting her dress and devising means of photographing her artistically. Tom plies them with booze. Meanwhile, Catherine tells Nick that she'south been to a party at Gatsby's house. According to her, Gatsby is so rich considering he is Kaiser Wilhelm's cousin.

Catherine then tells Nick that both Tom and Myrtle hate the people they're married to; she wonders why they don't divorced and marry each other instead. When Myrtle overhears, she says something obscene about George Wilson. According to Catherine, these divorces don't happen because Daisy is Catholic. Nick, who knows that Daisy is not Catholic, is shocked by what has apparently been Tom's lie.

Nick then remembers Mrs. McKee using an anti-Semitic slur to talk about a failed suitor. Myrtle responds that her ain error had been to marry the suitor that she should have ignored.

Nick keeps trying and failing to leave the party.

Myrtle tells him the story of how she first met Tom on the train. He picked her up by pressing himself against her when they got out on the platform.

Later on that night, Myrtle and Tom have an argument about Daisy and Tom hits her and then hard that he breaks her nose.

Nick leaves the party and goes home with McKee, the photographer. The narrative gets harder and harder to follow as Nick's inebriation really catches upwards with him. Nick somehow ends up at the train station, waiting for the 4 am train to get back to West Egg.

I interpretation of Nick going home with the photographer is that Nick is actually gay. We delve into this theory on NIck's character page.

Key Chapter 2 Quotes

About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs abreast information technology for a quarter of a mile, so as to compress away from a sure desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes--a fantastic subcontract where ashes grow similar wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rise smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. (2.one)

Every fourth dimension anyone goes from Long Island to Manhattan or dorsum, they go through this depressing industrial surface area in the middle of Queens. The factories located here pollute the air and land around them—their detritus is what makes the "ash" dust that covers everything and everyone. This is the identify where those who cannot succeed in the rat race end upward, hopeless and lacking any way to escape. Check out our focused article for a much more in-depth analysis of what the crucial symbol of "the valley of ashes" stands for in this novel.

The optics of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are bluish and gigantic--their retinas are ane yard high. They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which laissez passer over a nonexistent olfactory organ. Obviously some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his do in the borough of Queens, and so sank downwards himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away. Simply his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground. (ii.2)

There is no God in the novel. None of the characters seems to exist religious, no i wonders virtually the moral or ethical implications of any actions, and in the end, there are no punishments doled out to the bad or rewards given to the good. This lack of religious feeling is partly what makes Tom'due south lie to Myrtle most Daisy being a Catholic peculiarly egregious. This lack of even a bones moral framework is underscored by the eyes of Physician T.J. Eckleburg, a behemothic billboard that is as close equally this globe gets to having a watchful authoritative presence.

Mrs. Wilson had inverse her costume some time before and was now attired in an elaborate afternoon apparel of cream colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room. With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a alter. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment and equally she expanded the room grew smaller around her until she seemed to exist revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air. (2.56)

This chapter is our chief exposure to Myrtle Wilson, Tom'south mistress. Here, nosotros come across the main points of her personality—or at least the mode that she comes across to Nick. Showtime, it'due south interesting to notation that aside from Tom, whose hulkish physique Nick really pays a lot of attention to, Myrtle is the only character whose physicality is dwelt on at length. We hear a lot nigh her body and the way she moves in space—here, we not merely go her "sweeping" beyond the room, "expanding," and "revolving," but likewise the sense that her "gestures" are somehow "violent." Information technology makes sense that for Nick, who is into the absurd and discrete Jordan, Myrtle'southward overenthusiastic touch on is a petty off-putting. But remember this focus on Myrtle's body when you read Chapter 7, where this body will be exposed in a shocking way.

Some time toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face discussing in impassioned voices whether Mrs. Wilson had any correct to mention Daisy's proper noun.

"Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!" shouted Mrs. Wilson. "I'll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai----"

Making a short deft movement Tom Buchanan broke her olfactory organ with his open paw. (2.124-126)

This bit of violence succinctly encapsulates Tom's brutality, how petty he thinks of Myrtle, and it too speaks volumes nigh their vastly unequal and disturbing relationship. Two things to call up near:

#1: Why doesn't Tom want Myrtle to mention Daisy? It could be a way of maintaining discretion—to continue secret her identity in gild to hide the matter. Simply, considering anybody in town manifestly knows about Myrtle, this doesn't seem to be the reason. More likely is the fact that Tom does actually hold Daisy in much higher regard than Myrtle, and he refuses to permit the lower class woman "degrade" his loftier-class wife by talking well-nigh her freely. This is withal once again an example of his farthermost snobbery.

#2: Tom is a person who uses his body to go what he wants. Sometimes this is within socially acceptable boundaries—for example, on the football game field at Yale—and sometimes it is to browbeat everyone around him into compliance. It's also interesting that both Tom and Myrtle are such physically present characters in the novel—in this moment, Myrtle is the only character that actually stands up to Tom. In a mode, they are a perfect match.

In my fanfic reworking of this scene, Myrtle would go to really go to boondocks on Tom, MMA-manner.

Chapter 2 Assay

Then how does this chapter contribute to our understanding of the novel's themes? And what are the nearly significant character beats to remember? I'll answer those questions in this section.

Themes and Symbols

Dear, Desire, and Relationships. At the party, the guests discuss love and marriage. Two divide threads in this conversation stand out:

#1: In Catherine's eyes, the situation betwixt Myrtle and Tom couldn't be clearer: both don't like their spouses, both are into each other, and then the obvious solution would be for the 2 of them to run off together. Of form, we see that Tom would never leave Daisy for Myrtle—she is just someone he tin feel complimentary to abuse, since he can always purchase her compliance with more cheap gifts.

#2: Myrtle describes her decision to ally Wilson as a case of mistaken identity. She thought he was a gentleman, only his veneer of course—exemplified by the fact that he "He borrowed somebody's best suit to become married in and never fifty-fifty told me" (2.116)—was almost immediately dispelled later on the wedding. This is very reminiscent of both what happens to Daisy, as Tom cheats on her during their honeymoon, revealing his MO; and what near happens to Daisy and Gatsby, who is yet some other homo who seems similar a gentleman but is actually living in a borrowed "arrange" and a borrowed identity.

Gild and Course. Afterwards seeing the heights of the upper classes on East Egg and the lows of the factory workers in the valley of ashes, this chapter shows us what life is like for a segment of the eye class. Myrtle is desperate to go as far abroad from her depressing life with Wilson at the gas station as she can, surrounding herself with the material trappings that Tom can provide: an apartment, apparel, and an accessory canis familiaris.

The American Dream. In a novel that is all well-nigh the American bulldoze to get ahead, Myrtle is one of the strivers, willing to put up with terrible treatment in substitution for a take chances to climb higher. So are the people hanging on her coattails, similar the McKees and Catherine. Seeing her with this shows the states but how striated (separated into layers) society is, as Myrtle grabs every tiny opportunity to demonstrate her slightly college status to her entourage.

The Eyes of Doc T. J. Eckleburg. This world is defined by its lawless amorality, and there is no voice of moral authority to pass judgment on the bad beliefs of the characters. All we get is an inanimate object that hints at the possibility of a divine watcher. Simply, fifty-fifty though these disembodied eyes do brand wrong-doers feel uncomfortable under their gaze, they can't actually foreclose anything. For example, Tom is entirely comfortable lying. He maintains a mistress, lying to Daisy about his phone calls. And information technology turns out that he is lying to Myrtle every bit well, telling her that the reason he can't divorce his married woman is that Daisy is a Catholic. He winces under the eyes of the billboard, simply it doesn't deter him in any way.

The Valley of Ashes. There are those who live in palaces in West and Due east Egg. There are those who party in apartments in Manhattan. Only this chapter shows united states what happens to the people who become left backside, and who tin can't muster upwards the luck and energy needed to "win." They finish upwards in the grayness wasteland of industrial Queens, enabling the rich to become richer through their depressing, polluted, and monotonous labor.

Are at that place any happy marriages in this book? Like, how are Nick's parents doing? Or that random horseback riding couple we'll see later? Everyone?

Crucial Grapheme Beats

• Tom drags Nick to see Myrtle at Wilson's gas station, in the middle of the "valley of ashes" that is industrial Queens.

• They arrange to meet in Manhattan, where Myrtle hosts a trivial party in her apartment.

• Myrtle lords it over her guests and reveals how miserable she is in her spousal relationship.

• Information technology's also clear that Tom has been lying to Myrtle well-nigh his own marriage in order to string her along.

• The political party breaks up afterwards Tom punches Myrtle in the confront and breaks her nose. He does it because she mentions Daisy's proper noun.

What's Next?

Get deeper into the characters of Tom and Myrtle to actually dig into what role they play in the novel.

Draw comparisons between Myrtle and Daisy to see how these ii almost diametrically opposed women actually have some of import things in common. Likewise, explore how each perceives her relationships with men.

Movement on to the summary of Chapter 3, or revisit the summary of Chapter i.

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About the Author

Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English language at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving pupil access to higher education.

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