Reading Journal - Chapter 2 - The Great Gatsby

Perspective/Voice

• The narrator is still Nick Carraway, however, we realise that Nick is quite the outsider. Could reflect the idea that he only just moved to town recently and makes him quite isolated from those who have already formed bonds and relationships.
• "I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."
• Fitzgerald introduces the new characters to us. Myrtle Wilson; Tom Buchanan's mistress. Catherine; Mrs Wilson's sister who like Nick is an outsider.
• Buchanan "insists" that Nick comes along with him on his adulterous adventure which is strange, however, it is obviously put in because if it didn't - Fitzgerald wouldn't have a story to tell.
• Nick tells us how he's only been "drunk just twice" in his life. This makes him seem like an unreliable narrator from then on until the very end of this chapter. This is also very faintly referencing the Prohibition within the 1920s. It is not explicitly referenced to because the novel was written and published within the time of the Prohibition.

Setting

• Nick and Tom go to "the edge of the waste land" to pick up Myrtle Wilson. It's interesting because Mrs Wilson's husband doesn't try and stop her going away with these men.  
• Mrs Wilson obviously come from a poor, industrial area as the interior of the garage is "unprosperous and bare". 
•  They travel into New York and end up in a rather cramped apartment that is in a rich estate because of the "tapestried furniture entirely too large for it". This could be a implication of the secrets that are becoming too large within the story and need to be let out.

Style

• Written in the form of biography again. 
• He's heavily descriptive especially when it comes to the apartment. "crowded to the doors"
• Again he's fixated on the physicality of people and objects - he spends a few lines describing Catherine's eyebrows. 

Structure

• Time passes quite quickly as Nick's perspective is altered by the alcohol he has consumed. "everything that happened has a dim, hazy cast over it"
•  Large amounts of description which changes to speech which then abruptly ends and goes back to description after "Tom Buchanan broke her (Myrtle's) nose"

Language

• His language indicates Nick's curiosity and amazement at his surroundings and the people within it. 'she came in with such a proprietary haste.' 

Themes

• Adultery - Myrtle Wilson and Tom Buchanan.

Characters

• Myrtle Wilson - Tom Buchanan's mistress.
• Catherine - Mrs Wilson's sister.
• Mrs McKee
• Mr McKee