One

“He had passed visibly through two states and was entering upon a third. After his embarrassment and his unreasoning joy, he was consumed with wonder at her presence. He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an over-wound clock.”

– Most people do not react the way Gatsby did, it was over the top and unnecessary.

– Gatsby can not actually believe that Daisy is with him again, he has hoped and dreamed for them to be together for so long. Just from being in the same room as her he is so caught up in her presence he can not think about anything else.

– Gatsby’s dream is to be with Daisy for the rest of their lives, it is all he strives for and is why he completely recreated himself. 

– He has worked so hard and ruthlessly to change himself to be the perfect man for Daisy, nothing about him is real anymore, it is all an illusion built to appeal to her lifestyles standards.                                  

“As I went over to say good-by I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years! 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 or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”

– He is second guessing himself, he is not certain that all he has done was for something important.

– His happiness isn’t real happiness it is all been created in his mind, he doesn’t actually feel happy. 

– He has completely rid of anything that actually is true about himself, everything is reliant on his illusion. It has consumed him, nothing can ever fully satisfy him there will always be something else just out of reach.

– He is already dead.

“It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about – things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool – that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’

– Daisy has already begun to accept that this is how her life will be from now on and that if she ever wants to feel content in her own home she will have to ignore certain aspects of Tom’s life.  

– Tom often leaves without Daisy knowing where he is going, it has become normal for him to disappear even if his child is being born.  

– This is the first sign of Daisy cutting off her emotions, she doesn’t want to feel like that anymore so she decides to not feel anything at all. To save herself the pain.

– In the 1920’s women did not work, it was the man who brought in money for the family. Daisy knows and understands this and wants her daughter to just let it be and enjoy it.

Two

“It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night – and as obscurely as it had begun, his career as Trimalchio was over.” 

Trimalchio was a former slave who became wealthy trough ways that others would find disgraceful. He now holds lavish banquets for his guests, and his character is described as being ostentatious. The general meaning of ‘Trinalchio’ is The Greatest King. The illusion Jay Gatsby was designed to impress others to be ‘The Great Gatsby’, he came from a background that held him captive to a particular way of life. Through illegal businesses, Gatsby managed to climb his way to the top, and he celebrated it by hosting extravagant parties for all walks of life. From this, we can understand the links that Fitzgerald was trying to highlight between Trimalchio and Gatsby.