Modern Mind

gas station where he often refuels on his way to and from Manhattan. Daisy, the original ‘innocent,’ a 1920s bright young thing, is blissfully unaware of this. The book is barely 170 pages long, and nothing is laboured. There is an early mention of ‘
The Rise of the Colored Empires,
by this man Goddard,’ a reference to Lothrop Stoddard’s eugenic tract
The Rising Tide of Colour.
This provokes a discussion by Tom about race: ‘If we don’t look out the white race will be – will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved … it’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things…. The idea is that we’re Nordics … and we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilisation – oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?’ 46 The area where the fatal accident takes place, where Myrtle is killed, is known as the Valley of Ashes, based on Flushing Meallow, a swamp filled with garbage and ash. At other times, ‘breeding’ is a matter of exquisite fascination to the characters. But these points are lightly made, not forced on the reader.
    Permeating all is the doubt that surrounds Gatsby. Dark rumours abound about the way he made his fortune – liquor, drugs, gambling. It soon transpires that Gatsby wants an introduction to Daisy and asks Nick, her relative, to arrange a meeting. When he does so, it turns out that Gatsby and Daisy already know each other and were in love before she married Tom. (Fitzgerald was worried that this was the weak point of the book: he had not explained adequately Gatsby’s earlier relations with Daisy.) 47 They resume their affair. One afternoon a group of them go in two cars to Manhattan. In the city Tom accuses Gatsby and Daisy of being lovers. At Gatsby’s instigation, Daisy confesses she has never loved Tom. Angered, Tom reveals he has been checking up on Gatsby: he did go to Oxford, as he claimed; he was decorated in the war. Like Nick, the reader warms to Gatsby. We also know by now that his real name is James Gatz, that he comes from a poor background, and that fortune smiled on him as a young man when he was able to do a millionaire a favour. But Tom has amassed evidence that Gatsby is in fact now involved in a number of unwholesome, even illegal schemes: bootlegging and dealing in stolen securities. Before we can digest this, the confrontation breaks up, and the parties drive back to the island in two cars, Gatsby and Daisy in one, the rest in the other. We surmise that the confrontation will continue later. On the way, however, Gatsby’s car kills Myrtle Wilson, Tom’s lover, but doesn’t stop. Tom, Nick, and the others, travelling well behind, arrive to find the police at the scene and Mr Wilson distraught. Mr Wilson has begun to suspect that his wife is being unfaithful but doesn’t know who her lover is. He now suspects Gatsby, deciding his wife was killed to keep her quiet, so he goes to Gatsby’s house, finds him in the pool, shoots him, and then turns the gun on himself. What Wilson doesn’t know, and what Tom never finds out, is that Daisy was driving. This is kept from the police. Daisy, whose carelessness kills Myrtle, gets off scot-free. Tom’s affair, which triggers all this tragedy, is never disclosed. Tomand Daisy disappear, leaving Carraway to arrange Gatsby’s funeral. By now Gatsby’s shady business deals have been confirmed, and no one attends. 48
    The last scene in the book takes place in New York, when Nick sees Tom on Fifth Avenue and refuses to shake hands. It is clear from this meeting that Tom still has no idea that Daisy was driving the car, but for Nick this innocence is irrelevant, even dangerous. It is what enchants and disfigures America: Gatsby betrays and is betrayed. 49 He feels that even if Tom is unaware that Daisy was driving, their behaviour is so despicable it really makes no difference to his judgement of them. He also has some harsh words to say about Daisy, that she smashed up things, and then ‘retreated back’ into her money. In attacking her, Nick is forsaking the blood link, disallying himself from the ‘Nordics’ who have ‘produced civilisation.’ What Tom and Daisy have left behind, despite their breeding, is catastrophe. The Buchanans – and others like them – sail through life in a moral vacuum, incapable of distinguishing the significant from the trivial, obsessed with the trappings of luxury. Everywhere you turn