It begins with a sequence that sounds like the picture that we looked at--Gatsby's house on fire. Hmm... Coney Island--the World's Fair Interesting that these are places people go to have fun. Never mentions it being a home...
The plan has been set. Nick is inviting Daisy for tea!!
Notice here too that Gatsby offers Nick something, but Nick refuses (first couple of pages)--this transaction is important--and important that it was refused.
Lots of plans for tea--mowing the lawn in the rain--how does that work? The Finn--remember Nick has a housekeeper. That's who the Finn is.
Gatsby comes early, leaves early, that comes back to make an entrance. Gatsby says at 3:58 that no one is coming. Tea isn't until 4--we see something happen to Gatsby here if we pay really close attention. Something has changed.
Daisy has a chauffeur here named "Fertie." I bring that up only because "Fertie" is a nickname that we used to have for my goddaughter...
Daisy is in lavender. A flower in a flower.
Daisy and Gatsby seem to be "polite." What happens in this chapter is why I believe Jordan was telling the truth to Nick in chapter four.
Are the lemon cakes significant? I don't know--but they are a little bit of yellow are a really rainy day.
There is also the scene with the old clock that is stopped that Gatsby bumps off the mantle...As an English teacher, I think that it's symbolic...what could it mean? Time has stopped--why would that be important?
Gatsby knows to the month how long it has been since he has seen Daisy...Daisy says that it's been "many years."
There is lots of discomfort in this little room... So much so that Nick leaves his house to Gatsby and Daisy. Thirty minutes later, the rain has stopped outdoors, but Daisy has been crying indoors.
Then we take a trip to Gatsby's house. Flowers, shirts, Klingspriner, and the loss of the green light.
A couple of interesting quotations:
about seven pages in (page 89 in the white book): "A brewer had built it (Gatsby's house) early in the 'period' craze, a decade before, and there was a story that he'd agreed to pay five years' taxes on all the neighboring cottages if the owners would have their roofs thatched with straw. Perhaps their refusal took the heart out of his plan to Found a Family--he went into an immediate decline. His children sold his house with the black wreath still on the door. Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry."
Third to the last paragraph of chapter 5: "There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams--not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire of freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart."
