The Great Gatsby - Chapter 8

Gatsby clings to hope, waiting for Daisy. Meanwhile, George Wilson, devastated by Myrtle’s death, believes Gatsby killed her and shoots him before taking his own life. Gatsby dies alone, his dream unfulfilled. Summary by Dream AudioBooks

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter eight of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
I couldn't sleep all night. A foghorn was groaning incessantly
on the sound, and I tossed, half sick between grotesque
reality and savage, frightening dreams. Toward dawn, I heard a
taxi go up Gatsby's drive, and immediately I jumped out

(00:22):
of bed and began to dress. I felt that I
had something to tell him, something to warn him about,
and morning would be too late. Crossing his lawn, I
saw that his front door was still open, and he
was leaning against a table in the hall, heavy with
dejection or sleep. Nothing happened, he said, wanly. I waited,

(00:46):
and about four o'clock she came to the window and
stood there for a minute, and then turned out the light.
His house had never seemed so enormous to me as
it did that night. When we hunted through the great
rooms for cigarettes, we pushed aside curtains that were like pavilions,
and felt over innumerable feet of dark wall for electric

(01:07):
light switches. Once I tumbled with a sort of splash
upon the keys of a ghostly piano, there was an
inexplicable amount of dust everywhere, and the rooms were musty,
as though they hadn't been aired for many days. I
found the humidor on an unfamiliar table with two stale

(01:28):
dry cigarettes inside. Throwing open the French windows of the
drawing room, we sat smoking out into the darkness. You
ought to go away, I said, it's pretty certain they'll
trace your car. Go away now old Sport, Go to
Atlantic City for a week, or up to Montreal. He

(01:52):
wouldn't consider it. He couldn't possibly leave Daisy until he
knew what she was going to do. He was clutching
at some last home, and I couldn't bear to shake
him free. It was this night that he told me
the strange story of his youth with Dan Cody told
it to me because Jay Gatsby had broken up like

(02:13):
glass against Tom's hard malice, and the long secret extravaganza
was played out. I think that he would have acknowledged
anything now without reserve. But he wanted to talk about Daisy.
She was the first nice girl he had ever known.
In various unrevealed capacities, he had come in contact with

(02:35):
such people, but always with indiscernible barbed wire between He
found her excitingly desirable. He went to her house, at
first with other officers from Camp Taylor, then alone. It
amazed him he had never been in such a beautiful
house before. But what gave it an air of breathless

(02:56):
intensity was that Daisy lived there. It was as casual
a thing to her as his tent out at camp
was to him. There was a ripe mystery about it,
a hint of bedrooms upstairs, more beautiful and cool than
other bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through
its corridors, and of romances that were not musty and

(03:19):
laid away already in lavender, but fresh and breathing and redolent,
of this year's shining motor cars, and of dances whose
flowers were scarcely withered. It excited him too that many
men had already loved Daisy. It increased her value in
his eyes. He felt their presence all about the house,

(03:41):
pervading the air with the shades and echoes of still
vibrant emotions. But he knew that he was in Daisy's
house by a colossal accident. However glorious might be his
future as Jay Gatsby, he was at present a penniless
young man without a past, and at any moment the
invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders.

(04:06):
So he made the most of his time. He took
what he could get ravenously and unscrupulously. Eventually he took
Daisy one still October night. Took her because he had
no real right to touch her hand. He might have
despised himself, for he had certainly taken her under false pretenses.

(04:26):
I don't mean that he had traded on his phantom millions,
but he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security.
He had let her believe that he was a person
from much the same stratum as herself, that he was
fully able to take care of her. As a matter
of fact, he had no such facilities. He had no
comfortable family standing behind him, and he was liable, at

(04:49):
the whim of an impersonal government, to be blown anywhere
about the world. But he didn't despise himself, and it
didn't turn out as he had imagined. He had intended,
probably to take what he could and go, But now
he found that he had committed himself to the following
of a grail. He knew that Daisy was extraordinary, but

(05:12):
he didn't realize just how extraordinary a nice girl could be.
She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life,
leaving Gatsby nothing. He felt married to her, that was all.
When they met again two days later, it was Gatsby
who was breathless, who was somehow betrayed. Her porch was

(05:36):
bright with the bought luxury of starshine. The wicker of
the settees squeaked fashionably as she turned toward him, and
he kissed her curious and lovely mouth. She had caught
a cold, and it made her voice huskier and more
charming than ever, And Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the
youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the

(06:00):
freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy gleaming like silver,
safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.
I can't ascribe to you how surprised I was to
find out I loved her old sport. I even hoped
for a while that she'd throw me over, but she didn't,
because she was in love with me too. She'd thought

(06:22):
I knew a lot because I knew different things from her. Well, there,
I was way off my ambitions. Getting deeper in love
every minute, and all of a sudden I didn't care.
What was the use of doing great things if I
could have a better time telling her what I was
going to do. On the last afternoon before he went abroad,

(06:43):
he sat with Daisy in his arms for a long,
silent time. It was a cold fall day with fire
in the room, and her cheeks flushed. Now and then
she moved, and he changed his arm a little, and
once he kissed her dark shining hair. The afternoon had
made them tranquil for a while, as if to give
them a deep memory for the long parting the next

(07:06):
day promised. They had never been closer in their month
of love, nor communicated more profoundly one with another, than
when she brushed silent lips against his coat's shoulder, or
when he touched the end of her fingers gently, as
though she were asleep. He did extraordinarily well in the war.

(07:27):
He was a captain before he went to the front,
and following the Argonne battles he got his majority and
the command of the divisional machine guns. After the armistice,
he tried frantically to get home, but some complication or
misunderstanding sent him to Oxford instead. He was worried. Now
there was a quality of nervous despair in Daisy's letters.

(07:50):
She didn't see why he couldn't come. She was feeling
the pressure of the world outside, and she wanted to
see him and feel his presence beside her, and be
reassured that she was doing the right thing after all.
For Daisy was young, and her artificial world was redolent
of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras, which set

(08:12):
the rhythm of the year, summing up the sadness and
suggestiveness of life in new tunes. All night, the saxophones
wailed the hopeless comment of the Beale Street Blues, while
a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the
shining dust at the gray tea hour. There were always

(08:33):
rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet fever, while
fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown
by the sad horns around the floor. Through this twilight universe,
Daisy began to move again with the season. Suddenly she
was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with
half a dozen men, and drowsing asleep at dawn, with

(08:56):
the beads and chiffon of an evening dress tangled among
dying orchids on the floor beside her bed, And all
the time something within her was crying for a decision.
She wanted her life shaped now, immediately, and the decision
must be made by some force of love, of money,
of unquestionable practicality that was close at hand. That force

(09:22):
took shape in the middle of spring with the arrival
of Tom Buchanan. There was a wholesome bulkiness about his
person and his position, and Daisy was flattered. Doubtless there
was a certain struggle and a certain relief. The letter
reached Gatsby while he was still at Oxford. It was

(09:43):
dawned now on Long Island, and we went about opening
the rest of the windows downstairs, filling the house with
gray turning gold turning light. The shadow of a tree
fell abruptly across the dew, and ghostly birds began to
sing among the blue leaves. There was a slow, pleasant
movement in the air, scarcely a wind, promising a cool,

(10:03):
lovely day. I don't think she ever loved him. Gatsby
turned around from a window and looked at me. Challengingly.
You must remember old sport. She was very excited this afternoon.
He told her those things in a way that frightened her,
that made it look as if I was some kind
of cheap sharper, And the result was she hardly knew

(10:26):
what she was saying. He sat down gloomily. Of course,
she might have loved him just for a minute when
they were first married, and loved me more even then,
do you see? Suddenly he came out with a curious remark.

(10:46):
In any case, he said, it was just personal. What
could you make of that except to suspect some intensity
in his conception of the affair that couldn't be measured.
He came back from France when Tom and Daisy were
still on their wedding trip, and made a miserable but

(11:06):
irresistible journey to Louisville on the last of his army pay.
He stayed there a week, walking the streets where their
footsteps had clicked together through the November night, and revisiting
the out of the way places to which they had
driven in her white car. Just as Daisy's house had
always seemed to him more mysterious and gay than other houses,

(11:28):
so his idea of the city itself, even though she
was gone from it, was pervaded with a melancholy beauty.
He left, feeling that if he had searched harder, he
might have found her. That he was leaving her behind
the day coach. He was penniless, now was hot. He

(11:49):
went out to the open vestibule and sat down on
a folding chair, and the stations slid away, and the
backs of unfamiliar buildings moved by, then out in to
the spring fields, where a yellow trolley raced them for
a minute, with people in it who might once have
seen the pale magic of her face. Along the casual street,

(12:11):
the track curved, and now it was going away from
the sun, which, as it sank lower, seemed to spread
itself in benediction over the vanishing city where she had
drawn her breath. He stretched out his hand desperately, as
if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save
a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely
for him. But it was all going by too fast

(12:33):
now for his blurred eyes, and he knew that he
had lost that part of it, the freshest and the
best forever. It was nine o'clock when We finished breakfast
and went out on the porch. The night had made
a sharp difference in the weather, and there was an
autumn flavor in the air. The gardener, the last one
of Gatsby's former servants, came to the foot of the steps.

(12:58):
I'm going to drain the pool to day, mister Gatsby.
Leaves will start falling pretty soon, and then there's always
trouble with the pipes. Don't do it today, Gatsby answered.
He turned to me apologetically. You know, old Sport, I've
never used that pool all summer. I looked at my

(13:19):
watch and stood up. Twelve minutes to my train. I
didn't want to go to the city. I wasn't worth
a decent stroke of work. But it was more than that.
I didn't want to leave Gatsby. I missed that train
and then another before I could get myself away. I'll

(13:40):
call you up, I said, finally, do old Sport, I'll
call you about noon. We walked slowly down the steps.
I suppose daisy'll call too. He looked at me anxiously,
as if he hoped I'd corroborate this. I suppose so well.

(14:04):
Good bye. We shook hands and I started away. Just
before I reached the hedge, I remembered something and turned round.
They're a rotten crowd, I shouted across the lawn. You're
worth the whole damn bunch put together. I've always been glad.

(14:24):
I said that it was the only compliment I ever
gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end.
First he nodded politely, and then his face broke into
that radiant and understanding smile, as if we'd been in
ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time. His gorgeous

(14:44):
pink rag of a suit made a bright spot of
color against the white steps, And I thought of the
night when I first came to his ancestral home three
months before. The lawn and drive had been crowded with
the faces of those who guessed at his corruption, and
he had stood on those steps, concealing his incorruptible dream
as he waved them good bye. I thanked him for

(15:09):
his hospitality. We were always thanking him for that. I
and the others goodbye, I called. I enjoyed breakfast Gatsby
up in the city. I tried for a while to
list the quotations on an interminable amount of stock. Then
I fell asleep in my swivel chair. Just before noon.

(15:31):
The phone woke me and I started up with sweat
breaking out on my forehead. It was Jordan Baker. She
often called me up at this hour because the uncertainty
of her own movements between hotels and clubs and private
houses made her hard to find in any other way.
Usually her voice came over the wire as something fresh

(15:52):
and cool, as if a divot from a green golf
links had come sailing in at the office window. But
this morning it seemed harsh and dry. I've left Daisy's house,
she said. I'm at Hempstead and I'm going down to
Southampton this afternoon. Probably it had been tactful to leave

(16:13):
Daisy's house, but the act annoyed me, and her next
remark made me rigid. You weren't so nice to me
last night. How could it have mattered? Then silence for
a moment. Then, however, I want to see you. I

(16:33):
want to see you too. Suppose I don't go to
Southampton and come into town this afternoon. No, I don't
think this afternoon very well, It's impossible this afternoon various
We talked like that for a while, and then abruptly

(16:57):
we weren't talking any longer. I don't know which of
us hung up with a sharp click, but I know
I didn't care. I couldn't have talked to her across
a tea table that day if I'd never talked to
her again in this world. I called Gatsby's house a
few minutes later, but the line was busy. I tried
four times. Finally, an exasperated central told me the wire

(17:21):
was being kept open for long distance from Detroit. Taking
out my timetable, I drew a small circle around the
three fifty train. Then I leaned back in my chair
and tried to think. It was just noon when I
passed the ash heaps on the train. That morning, I
had crossed deliberately to the other side of the car.

(17:43):
I supposed there'd be a curious crowd around there all day,
with little boys searching for dark spots in the dust,
and some garrulous man telling over and over what had happened,
until it became less and less real even to him,
and he could tell it no longer, and Myrtle Wilson's
tragic achievement was forgotten. Now I want to go back

(18:04):
a little and tell what happened at the garage after
we left there the night before. They had difficulty in
locating the sister Catherine. She must have broken her rule
against drinking that night, for when she arrived she was
stupid with liquor and unable to understand that the ambulance
had already gone to Flushing. When they convinced her of this,

(18:26):
she immediately fainted, as if that was the intolerable part
of the affair. Someone kind or curious took her in
his car and drove her in the wake of her
sister's body until long after midnight. A changing crowd lapped
up against the front of the garage while George Wilson

(18:48):
rocked himself back and forth on the couch inside. For
a while, the door of the office was open, and
everyone who came into the garage glanced irresistibly through it. Finally,
someone said it was a shame and closed the door.
Michaelis and several other men were with him first, four
or five men later, two or three men still later.

(19:12):
Michaelis had to ask the last stranger to wait there
fifteen minutes longer while he went back to his own
place and made a pot of coffee. After that he
stayed there alone with Wilson until dawn. About three o'clock,
the quality of Wilson's incoherent muttering changed. He grew quieter

(19:32):
and began to talk about the yellow car. He announced
that he had a way of finding out whom the
yellow car belonged to, and then he blurted out that
a couple of months ago his wife had come from
the city with her face bruised and her nose swollen.
But when he heard himself say this, he flinched and
began to cry, Oh my God again in his groaning voice.

(19:58):
Michaelis made a clumsy attack empt to distract him. How
long have you been married, George? Come on there, try
and sit still a minute and answer my question. How
long have you been married? Twelve years? Ever had any children?
Come on, George, sit still. I asked you a question,
did you ever have any children? The hard brown beetles

(20:23):
kept thudding against the dull light, and whenever Michaelis heard
a cargo tearing along the road outside, it sounded to
him like the car that hadn't stopped a few hours before.
He didn't like to go into the garage because the
work bench was stained where the body had been lying,
so he moved uncomfortably around the office. He knew every

(20:44):
object in it before morning, and from time to time
sat down beside Wilson, trying to keep him more quiet.
Have you got a church you go to sometimes, George?
Maybe even if you haven't been there for a long time,
maybe I could call up the check church and get
a priest to come over and he could talk to you. See,

(21:04):
don't belong to any You ought to have a church, George,
for times like this. You must have gone to church once.
Didn't you get married in a church? Listen, George, listen
to me. Didn't you get married in a church? That
was a long time ago. The effort of answering broke
the rhythm of his rocking. For a moment he was silent.

(21:29):
Then the same half knowing, half bewildered look came back
into his faded eyes. Look in the drawer there, he said,
pointing at the desk. Which drawer, that drawer, that one?
Michaelis opened the drawer nearest his hand. There was nothing
in it but a small, expensive dog leash made of

(21:52):
leather and braided silver. It was apparently new, this, he inquired,
holding it up Wilson stared and nodded. I found it
yesterday afternoon. She tried to tell me about it, but
I knew it was something funny. You mean your wife
bought it. She had it wrapped in tissue paper on

(22:14):
her bureau. Michaelis didn't see anything odd in that, and
he gave Wilson a dozen reasons why his wife might
have bought the dog leash. But conceivably Wilson had heard
some of these same explanations before from Myrtle. Because he
began saying, oh my God again in a whisper. His

(22:37):
comforter left several explanations in the air. Then he killed her,
said Wilson. His mouth dropped open suddenly. Who did I
have a way of finding out? You're morbid? George said
his friend. This has been a strain to you, and

(22:57):
you don't know what you're saying. You'd better try and
sit quiet till morning. He murdered her. It was an accident.
George Wilson shook his head, his eyes narrowed, and his
mouth widened slightly with the ghost of a superior hum.

(23:19):
I know, he said, definitely, I'm one of these trusting fellas,
and I don't think any harm to nobody. But when
I get to know a thing, I know it. It
was the man in that car. She ran out to
speak to him, and he wouldn't stop. Michaelis had seen
this too, but it hadn't occurred to him that there
was any special significance in it. He believed that missus

(23:42):
Wilson had been running away from her husband rather than
trying to stop any particular car. How could she have
been like that? She's a deep one, said Wilson, as
if that answered the question. Ah ah. He began to
rock again, and Michaelis stood, twisting the leash in his hand.

(24:08):
Maybe you got some friend that I could telephone for George.
This was a forlorn hope. He was almost sure that
Wilson had no friend. There was not enough of him
for his wife. He was glad a little later when
he noticed a change in the room, a blue quickening
by the window, and realized that dawn wasn't far off.

(24:31):
About five o'clock, it was blue enough outside to snap
off the light. Wilson's glazed eyes turned out to the
ash heaps, where small gray clouds took on fantastic shape
and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind.
I spoke to her, he muttered, after a long silence,

(24:53):
I told her she might fool me, but she couldn't
fool God. I took her to the window. With effort.
He got up and walked to the rear window and
leaned with his face pressed against it, and I said,
God knows what you've been doing, everything you've been doing.
You may fool me, but you can't fool God. Standing

(25:15):
behind him, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was
looking at the eyes of doctor t. J Eckelberg, which
had just emerged, pale and enormous from the dissolving night.
God sees everything, repeated Wilson. That's an advertisement, Michaelis assured him.

(25:37):
Something made him turn away from the window and look
back into the room, but Wilson stood there a long time,
his face close to the window pane, nodding into the twilight.
By six o'clock, Michaelis was worn out and grateful for
the sound of a car stopping outside. It was one
of the watchers of the night before who had promised

(25:58):
to come back. So he cooked breakfast for three, which
he and the other man ate together. Wilson was quieter now,
and Michaelis went home to sleep. When he awoke four
hours later and hurried back to the garage, Wilson was gone.
His movements he was on foot all the time, were

(26:19):
afterward traced to Port Roosevelt and then to Gad's Hill,
where he bought a sandwich that he didn't eat and
a cup of coffee. He must have been tired and
walking slowly, for he didn't reach Gad's Hill until noon.
Thus far there was no difficulty in accounting for his time.
There were boys who had seen a man acting sort

(26:39):
of crazy, and motorists at whom he stared oddly from
the side of the road. Then for three hours he
disappeared from view. The police, on the strength of what
he said to Michaelis that he had a way of
finding out, supposed that he spent that time going from
garage to garage thereabout inquiring for a yellow car. On

(27:02):
the other hand, no garage man who had seen him
ever came forward, and perhaps he had an easier, surer
way of finding out what he wanted to know. By
half past two he was in West Egg where he
asked someone the way to Gatsby's house. So by that
time he knew Gatsby's name. At two o'clock, Gatsby put

(27:25):
on his bathing suit and left word with the butler
that if anyone phoned, word was to be brought to
him at the pool. He stopped at the garage for
a pneumatic mattress that had amused his guests during the summer,
and the chauffeur helped him pump it up. Then he
gave instructions that the open car wasn't to be taken
out under any circumstances, and this was strange because the

(27:48):
front right fender needed repair. Gatsby shouldered the mattress and
started for the pool. Once he stopped and shifted it
a little, and the chauffeur asked him if he needed help,
but he shook his head and in a moment disappeared
among the yellowing trees. No telephone message arrived, but the

(28:10):
butler went without his sleep and waited for it until
four o'clock, until long after there was any one to
give it to if it came. I have an idea
that Gatsby himself didn't believe it would come, and perhaps
he no longer cared. If that was true, he must
have felt that he had lost the old warm world,

(28:31):
paid a high price for living too long with a
single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar
sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what
a grotesque thing arose is, and how raw the sunlight
was upon the scarcely created grass, a new world, material

(28:51):
without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air,
drifted fortuitously about like that ash fantastic figure gliding toward
him through the amorphous trees. The chauffeur, he was one
of Wolfsheim's proteges, heard the shots. Afterward, he could only

(29:14):
say that he hadn't thought anything much about them. I
drove from the station directly to Gatsby's house, and my
rushing anxiously up the front steps was the first thing
that alarmed anyone, But they knew then, I firmly believe,
With scarcely a word, said four of us, the chauffeur, butler, gardener,

(29:36):
and I hurried down to the pool. There was a faint,
barely perceptible movement of the water as the fresh flow
from one end urged its way toward the drain at
the other, with little ripples that were hardly the shadows
of waves. The laden mattress moved irregularly down the pool.

(29:56):
A small gust of wind that scarcely corrugated the surface
was enough to disturb its accidental course. With its accidental burden,
the touch of a cluster of leaves revolved it, slowly,
tracing like the leg of a compass, a thin red
circle in the water. It was after we started with

(30:21):
Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson's body
a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust
was complete. End of Chapter eight