Central Passage Chapters 5 & 6

"As I went over to say goodbye I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby's face...that voice was a deathless song" (Fitzgerald 101).

Gatsby's true character, the one that cannot be concealed with a simple "old sport", is finally revealed in this passage (100).  This man who had so long protrayed himself as a man of wealth and mystery with his lavish parties, is no higher a man than any other on Long Island, when he finally gets to share time with Daisy.  The fact that Daisy is married to Tom and he doesn't even spend a moment feeling guilty over sweeping this woman off her feet, shows so definitely that Gatsby is not really the perfect gentleman who would do anything for anyone.  When Gatsby's interests become entangled, he does not take into account the people he is hurting. 

Gatsby's heart in this passage was depicted as "ghostly".  He encompassed an emptiness, that could only be filled when this affair between himself and Daisy came about.  He lived a lifestyle where he could expend his energy on anything he chose and he chose to use all of his "creative passion(s)" on Daisy (101).  The tone in this passage depicts Gatsby's emptiness that Daisy was able to fulfill.

The most interesting part of this passage was the paralleled emptiness of both Gatsby and Daisy and how that seems to connect them together.  Fitzgerald depicted Gatsby's as having a "ghostly heart" and then proceeded to discuss Daisy as having a voice like a "deathless song" (101).  There is a suggestion that these two characters have sought one another because of the passion that they lack in everything else.  They share a common interest in desiring something more than what they already have to begin with.

Central Passage: The Great Gatsby

"I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair.  Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering.  I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life" (Fitzgerald 40). 

This passage most aptly describes the central passage for the first two chapters of The Great Gatsby because it depicts the chaotic nature of the novel.  There is a continual movement of characters, setting, and action in the novel that makes the form of the novel seem disjointed-chaotic like the characters themselves.  The "soft twilight" is a complete paradox to the insanity of Mrs. Wilson's nose being broken by Tom Buchanan.  The characters seemed very unsettled as they talk in fits of passion and anger. 

This page is also very central because it is one of the few times that we get a lengthy look into what the narrator is thinking amidst all of the chaos.  It is interesting how he feels he is somewhat apart of what is going on in this apartment and also how he is just like the silent onlooker on the street who wonders what is going on in the apartment above.  Nick has a way of being in the setting, but always distancing himself to some point that he is never completely there.