The Great Gatsby - Chapter 9

Few attend Gatsby’s funeral. Nick realizes the emptiness of wealth and the corruption of the elite. Disillusioned, he leaves New York. The novel ends with Gatsby’s dream as a symbol of the unattainable American Dream. Summary by Dream AudioBooks

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter nine of the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
After two years, I remember the rest of that day,
and that night and the next day only as an
endless drill of police and photographers and newspaper men in
and out of Gatsby's front door. A rope stretched across

(00:21):
the main gate, and a policeman by it kept out
the curious. But little boys soon discovered that they could
enter through my yard, and there were always a few
of them clustered, open mouthed about the pool. Some one
with a positive manner. Perhaps a detective used the expression
madman as he bent over Wilson's body that afternoon, and

(00:42):
the adventitious authority of his voice set the key for
the newspaper reports next morning. Most of those reports were
a nightmare, grotesque, circumstantial, eager, and untrue. When Michaelis's testimony
at the inquest brought to light Wilson's suspicions of his wife,

(01:03):
I thought the whole tale would shortly be served up
in racy pasconade. But Catherine, who might have said anything,
didn't say a word. She showed a surprising amount of
character about it, too. Looked at the coroner with determined
eyes under that corrected brow of hers, and swore that
her sister had never seen Gatsby, that her sister was

(01:26):
completely happy with her husband, that her sister had been
into no mischief whatever. She convinced herself of it, and
cried into her handkerchief, as if the very suggestion was
more than she could endure. So Wilson was reduced to
a man deranged by grief in order that the case

(01:46):
might remain in its simplest form, and it rested there.
But all this part of it seemed remote and unessential.
I found myself on Gatsby's side and alone. From the
moment I telephoned news of the catastrophe to West Egg village.
Every surmise about him, and every practical question was referred

(02:09):
to me. At first I was surprised and confused. Then,
as he lay in his house and didn't move or
breathe or speak hour upon hour, it grew upon me
that I was responsible because no one else was interested. Interested,
I mean, with that intense personal interest to which every

(02:30):
one has some vague right. At the end, I called
up Daisy half an hour after we found him, called
her instinctively and without hesitation, but She and Tom had
gone away early that afternoon and taken baggage with them.
Left no address, no say when they'd be back, no

(02:56):
any idea where they are. How I could reach them,
I don't know, can't say. I wanted to get somebody
for him. I wanted to go into the room where
he lay and reassure him I'll get somebody for you. Gatsby,
don't worry. Just trust me, and I'll get somebody for you.
Meyer Wolsheim's name wasn't in the phone book. The butler

(03:20):
gave me his office address on Broadway, and I called Information,
But by the time I had the number, it was
long after five and no one answered the phone. Will
you ring it again, I've wrung them three times. It's
very important. Sorry, I'm afraid no one's there. I went

(03:41):
back to the drawing room and thought for an instant
that they were chance visitors, all these official people who
suddenly filled it. But as they drew back the sheet
and looked at Gatsby with unmoved eyes, his protest continued
in my brain. Look here, old Sport, You've to get
somebody for me. You've got to try hard. I can't

(04:03):
go through this alone. Some one started to ask me questions,
but I broke away, and, going upstairs, looked hastily through
the unlocked parts of his desk. He'd never told me
definitely that his parents were dead. But there was nothing,
only the picture of Dan Cody, a token of forgotten violence,

(04:25):
staring down from the wall. Next morning, I sent the
butler to New York with a letter to Wolfsheim, which
asked for information and urged him to come out on
the next train. That request seemed superfluous when I wrote it.
I was sure he'd start when he saw the newspapers,
just as I was sure there'd be a wire from

(04:45):
Daisy before noon. But neither a wire nor mister Wolfsheim arrived.
No one arrived except more police and photographers and newspaper men.
When the butler brought back Wolfsheim's answer, I began to
have a feeling of defiance, of scornful solidarity between Gatsby
and me against them all. Dear mister Carraway, this has

(05:10):
been one of the most terrible shocks of my life.
To me, I hardly can believe it that it is
true at all. Such a mad act as that man
did should make us all think I cannot come down now,
as I am tied up in some very important business
and cannot get mixed up in this thing now. If
there is anything I can do a little later, let
me know. In a letter by Edgar, I hardly know

(05:32):
where I am when I hear about a thing like this,
and am completely knocked down and out. Yours truly, Meyer
of Bolsheim, and then hasty adenda beneath, let me know
about the funeral, et cetera. Do not know his family
at all. When the phone rang that afternoon and long

(05:53):
distance said Chicago was calling, I thought this would be
Daisy at last. But the connection came through as a
man's voe, very thin and far away. This is Slaggle speaking. Yes,
the name was unfamiliar. Hell of a note, isn't it
get my wire? There haven't been any wires. Young Park's

(06:17):
in trouble, he said rapidly. They picked him up when
he handed the bonds over the counter. They got a
circular from New York giving him the numbers just five
minutes before. What do you know about that? Hey, you
never can tell in these hicktowns, Hello, I interrupted, breathlessly.
Look here, this isn't mister Gatsby, mister Gatsby's dead. There

(06:39):
was a long silence on the other end of the wire,
followed by an exclamation, then a quick squawk as the
connection was broken. I think it was on the third
day that a telegram signed Henry C. Gats arrived from
a town in Minnesota. It said only that the sen

(07:00):
was leaving immediately and to postpone the funeral until he came.
It was Gatsby's father, a solemn old man, very helpless
and dismayed, bundled up in a long, cheap ulster against
the warm September day. His eyes leaked continuously with excitement,

(07:20):
and when I took the bag and umbrella from his hands,
he began to pull so incessantly at his sparse gray
beard that I had difficulty in getting off his coat.
He was on the point of collapse. So I took
him into the music room and made him sit down
while I sent for something to eat. But he wouldn't eat,
and the glass of milk spilled from his trembling hand.

(07:44):
I saw it in the Chicago newspaper. He said, it
was all in the Chicago newspaper. I started right away.
I didn't know how to reach you. His eyes, seeing nothing,
moved ceaselessly about the room. It was a madman, he said,
he must have been mad. Wouldn't you like some coffee?

(08:07):
I urged him, I don't want anything. I'm all right now,
mister Carraway, well, I'm all right now. Where have they
got Jimmy? I took him into the drawing room where
his son lay, and left him there. Some little boys
had come up on the steps and were looking into
the hall. When I told them who had arrived, they

(08:29):
went reluctantly away. After a little while, mister Gatts opened
the door and came out his mouth ajar. His face
flushed slightly, his eyes leaking isolated and unpunctual tears. He
had reached an age where death no longer has the
quality of ghastly surprise. And when he looked around him

(08:51):
now for the first time, and saw the height and
splendor of the hall and the great rooms opening out
from it into other rooms, his grief began to be
mixed with an awed pride. I helped him to a
bedroom upstairs while he took off his coat and vest
I told him that all arrangements had been deferred until
he came. I didn't know what you'd want, mister Gatsby.

(09:16):
Gatt says my name, mister Gatts. I thought you might
want to take the body west. He shook his head.
Jimmy always liked it better down east. He rose up
to his position in the east. Were you a friend
of my boys? Mister? We were close friends. He had
a big future before him. You know, he was only

(09:38):
a young man, but he had a lot of brain power.
Here he touched his head impressively, and I nodded. If
he'd have lived, he'd have been a great man, a
man like James J. Hill. He'd have helped build up
the country. That's true, I said, uncomfortably. He full at

(10:00):
the embroidered coverlet trying to take it from the bed,
and lay down stiffly, and was instantly asleep. That night,
an obviously frightened person called up and demanded to know
who I was, before he would give his name. This
is mister Carroway, I said, Oh. He sounded relieved. This

(10:23):
is Clipspringer. I was relieved too, for that seemed to
promise another friend at Gatsby's grave. I didn't want it
to be in the papers and draw a sight seeing crowd,
so I'd been calling up a few people myself. They
were hard to find. The funerals tomorrow, I said, three
o'clock here at the house. I wish you'd tell anybody

(10:45):
who'd be interested. Oh I will, he broke out hastily.
Of course, I'm not likely to see anybody, but if
I do, his tone made me suspicious. Of course, you'll
be there yourself. Well, i'll certainly try. What I called
up about is wait a minute, I interrupted, How about

(11:07):
saying you'll come? Well, the fact is, the truth of
the matter is that I'm staying with some people up
here in Greenwich, and they rather expect me to be
with them tomorrow. In fact, there's a sort of picnic
or something. Of course, i'll do my very best to
get away. I ejaculated and unrestrained. Huh, And he must

(11:29):
have heard me, for he went on nervously. What I
called up about was a pair of shoes I left there.
I wonder if it'd be too much trouble to have
the butler send them on. You see their tennis shoes,
and I'm sort of helpless without them. My address is
care of b F. I didn't hear the rest of
the name because I hung up the receiver. After that,

(11:52):
I felt a certain shame for Gatsby. One gentleman to
whom I telephoned implied that he had got what he deserved. However,
that was my fault, for he was one of those
who used to sneer most bitterly at Gatsby on the
courage of Gatsby's liquor, and I should have known better
than to call him. The morning of the funeral, I

(12:14):
went up to New York to see Meyer Wolfsheim. I
couldn't seem to reach him any other way. The door
that I pushed open on the advice of an elevator
boy was marked the Swastika Holding Company, and at first
there didn't seem to be any one inside. But when
I had shouted hello several times in vain, an argument
broke out behind a partition, and presently a lovely jewess

(12:37):
appeared at an interior door and scrutinized me with black,
hostile eyes. Nobody's in, she said, mister Wolfsheim's gone to Chicago.
The first part of this was obviously untrue, for some
one had begun to whistle the rosary tunelessly inside. Please

(12:59):
say that, mister Paraway wants to see him. I can't
get him back from Chicago, can I. At this moment,
a voice, unmistakably Volzheim's called Stella from the other side
of the door. Leave your name on the desk, she
said quickly. I'll give it to him when he gets back.

(13:20):
But I know he's there. She took a step toward
me and began to slide her hands indignantly up and
down her hips. You young men think you can force
your way in here any time, she scolded. We're getting
sick and tired of it. When I say he's in Chicago,
he's in Chicago. I mentioned Gatsby. Oh, she looked at

(13:46):
me over again. Will you just what was your name?
She vanished. In a moment, Meyer Volzheim stood solemnly in
the doorway, holding out both hands. He drew me into
his office, remarked, barking in a reverent voice, that it
was a sad time for all of us, and offered
me a cigar. My memory goes back to when I

(14:09):
first met him, he said, A young major just out
of the army had covered over with medals he got
in the war. He was so hard up he had
to keep on wearing his uniform because he couldn't buy
some regular clothes. First time I saw him was when
he came into Winebrenner's pool room at forty third Street
and asked for a job. He hadn't eat anything for

(14:29):
a couple of days. Come on, have some lunch with me,
I said. He ate more than four dollars worth of
food in half an hour. Did you start him in business?
I inquired, start him? I made him. Oh. I raised
him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter.

(14:49):
I saw right away he was a fine appearing, gentlemanly
young man. And when he told me he was an Oxford,
I knew I could use him good. I got him
to join up in the American Legion, and he used
to stand high there. Right off. He did some work
for a client of mine up to Albany. We were
so thick like that in everything. He held up two

(15:10):
Balba's fingers, always together. I wondered if this partnership had
included the World's series transaction in nineteen nineteen. Now he's dead,
I said, after a moment. You were his closest friend,
so I know you'll want to come to his funeral
this afternoon. I'd like to come. Well, come. Then the

(15:36):
hair and his nostrils quivered slightly, and as he shook
his head, his eyes filled with tears. I can't do it.
I can't get mixed up in it, he said. There's
nothing to get mixed up in. It's all over now.
When a man gets killed. I never like to get
mixed up in it in any way, I keep out.

(15:57):
When I was a young man, it was different if
a friend of mine and died, no matter how I
stuck with them to the end. You may think that sentimental,
but I mean it to the bitter end. I saw that,
for some reason of his own, he was determined not
to come, so I stood up. Are you a college man,
he inquired suddenly. For a moment I thought he was

(16:21):
going to suggest a connection, but he only nodded and
shook my hand. Let us learn to show our friendship
for a man when he is alive, and not after
he is dead, he suggested. After that, My own rule
is to let everything alone. When I left his office,
the sky had turned dark, and I got back to

(16:43):
West Egg in a drizzle. After changing my clothes, I
went next door and found mister Gatts walking up and
down excitedly in the hall. His pride in his son
and in his son's possessions was continually increasing, and now
he had something to show me. Jimmy sent me this picture.

(17:03):
He took out his wallet with trembling fingers. Look there.
It was a photograph of the house, cracked in the
corners and dirty. With many hands, he pointed out every
detail to me eagerly look there, and then sought admiration
from my eyes. He had shown it so often that

(17:24):
I think it was more real to him now than
the house itself. Jimmy sent it to me. I think
it's a very pretty picture. It shows up well, very well.
Had you seen him lately. He come out to see
me two years ago and bought me the house I
live in now. Of course, we was broke up when
he run off from home, but I see now there

(17:46):
was a reason for it. He knew he had a
big future in front of him, and ever since he
made a success, he was very generous with me. He
seemed reluctant to put away the picture, held it for
another minute, lingering before my eyes. Then he returned the
wallet and pulled from his pocket a ragged old copy

(18:06):
of a book called hop along Cassidy. Look here, this
is a book he had when he was a boy.
It just shows you. He opened it at the back
cover and turned it around for me to see. On
the last fly leaf was printed the word schedule and
the date September twelve, nineteen o six, and underneath Rise

(18:31):
from Bed six a m. Dumbbell exercise and wall scaling
six fifteen to six thirty study electricity, et cetera. Seven
fifteen to eight fifteen work eight thirty to four thirty
p m. Baseball and Sports four thirty five Practice elocution,

(18:55):
poise and how to attain it five to six study
needed inventions seven to nine. General resolves. No wasting time
at shafters or a name indecipherable. No more smoking or
chewing bath every other day. Read one improving book or

(19:19):
magazine per week, save five dollars crossed out three dollars
per week. Be better to parents. I come across this
book by accident, said the old man. It just shows you,
don't it. It just shows you. Jimmy was bound to

(19:39):
get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something.
Do you notice what he's got about improving his mind?
He was always great for that he told me I
et like a hog once, and I beat him for it.
He was reluctant to close the book, reading each item aloud,
and then looking eagerly at me. I think he rather

(20:02):
expected me to copy down the list for my own use.
A little before three, the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing,
and I began to look involuntarily out the windows for
other cars. So did Gatsby's father, And as the time
passed and the servants came in and stood waiting in
the hall, his eyes began to blink anxiously, and he

(20:25):
spoke of the rain in a worried, uncertain way. The
Minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took
him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour.
But it wasn't any use. Nobody came. About five o'clock
our procession of three cars reached the cemetery and stopped

(20:47):
in a thick drizzle beside the gate. First a motor
hearse horribly black and wet. Then mister Gatts and the
Minister and I in the limousine, and a little later
four or five servants and the postman from West Egg
in Gatsby's station wagon, all wet to the skin. As
we started through the gate into the cemetery, I heard

(21:09):
a car stop, and then the sound of some one
splashing after us over the soggy ground. I looked around.
It was the man with owl eyed glasses, whom I
had found marveling over Gatsby's books in the library one night,
three months before. I'd never seen him since then. I
don't know how he knew about the funeral, or even

(21:32):
his name. The rain poured down his thick glasses, and
he took them off and wiped them to see the
protecting canvas unrolled from Gatsby's grave. I tried to think
about Gatsby then for a moment, but he was already
too far away, and I could only remember without resentment
that Daisy hadn't sent him message or a flower. Dimly,

(21:56):
I heard someone murmur, blessed are the dead that their
rain falls on, And then the owl eyed man said,
amen to that in a brave voice. We straggled down
quickly through the rain to the cars. Owl eyes spoke
to me by the gate. I couldn't get to the house,

(22:18):
he remarked, neither could anybody else. Go on, he started,
why my god, they used to go there by the hundreds.
He took off his glasses and wiped them again outside
and in the poor son of a bitch, he said.

(22:42):
One of my most vivid memories is of coming back
west from prep school and later from college at Christmas time.
Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the
old dim Union Station at six o'clock of a December
evening with a few Chicago friends already caught up into
their own holiday gaieties, to bid them a hasty goodbye.

(23:03):
I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from
miss this or that's, and the chatter of frozen breath,
and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of
old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations. Are you going to?
The ordways? The hersyes, the schultzes, and the long green
tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the

(23:28):
murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and Saint Paul Railroad,
looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.
When we pulled out into the winter night and the
real snow, our snow began to stretch out beside us,
and twinkle against the windows and the dim lights of
small Wisconsin stations, moved by a sharp, wild brace, came

(23:51):
suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of
it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules,
unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one
strange hour before we melted indistinguishably into it again. That's
my Middle West. Not the wheat or the prairies or

(24:12):
the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of
my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh bells in
the frosty dark, and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown
by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that,
a little solemn with the feel of those long winters,
a little complaisant from growing up in the carraway house,

(24:34):
in a city where dwellings are still called through decades
by a family's name. I see now that this has
been a story of the West. After all, Tom and Gatsby,
Daisy and Jordan and I were all Westerners, and perhaps
we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly
unadaptable to Eastern life, even when the East excited me most,

(24:58):
even when I was most keenly aware of its superiority
to the bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the Ohio, with
their interminable inquisitions, which spared only the children and the
very old. Even then, it had always for me a
quality of distortion. West Egg especially still figures in my

(25:19):
more fantastic dreams. I see it as a night scene
by el Greco. A hundred houses at once conventional and grotesque,
crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a lustreless moon
in the foreground. Four solemn men in dress suits are
walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies

(25:39):
a drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand,
which dangles over the side, sparkles cold with jewels. Gravely,
the men turn in at a house, the wrong house,
but no one knows the woman's name, and no one cares.
After Gatsby's death, the East was haunted for me like that,

(26:02):
distorted beyond my eye's power of correction. So when the
blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and
the wind blew the wet laundry, stiff on the line,
I decided to come back home. There was one thing
to be done before I left, an awkward, unpleasant thing
that perhaps had better have been let alone. But I

(26:25):
wanted to leave things in order, and not just trust
that obliging and indifferent sea to sweep my refuse away.
I saw Jordan Baker and talked over and around what
had happened to us together and what had happened afterward
to me. And she lay perfectly still, listening in a
big chair. She was dressed to play golf, and I

(26:47):
remember thinking she looked like a good illustration, her chin
raised a little jauntily, her hair the color of an
autumn leaf, her face the same brown tint as the
fingerless glove on her knee. When I had finished, she
told me, without comment that she was engaged to another man.
I doubted that, though there were several she could have

(27:09):
married at a nod of her head, But I pretended
to be surprised. For just a minute. I wondered if
I wasn't making a mistake. Then I thought it all
over again quickly and got up to say good bye. Nevertheless,
you did throw me over, said Jordan. Suddenly, you threw
me over on the telephone. I don't give a damn

(27:30):
about you now, but it was a new experience for me,
and I felt a little dizzy for a while. We
shook hands. Oh, and do you remember, she added a
conversation we once had about driving a car. Why not exactly?

(27:51):
You said a bad driver was only safe until she
met another bad driver. Well, I met another bad driver,
didn't I. I mean, it was careless of me to
make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather
an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.
I'm thirty, I said, I'm five years too old to

(28:12):
lie to myself and call it honor. She didn't answer.
Angry and half in love with her and tremendously sorry,
I turned away. One afternoon late in October, I saw
Tom Buchanan. He was walking ahead of me along Fifth
Avenue in his alert, aggressive way, his hands out a

(28:36):
little from his body as if to fight off interference,
his head moving sharply here and there, adapting itself to
his restless eyes. Just as I slowed up to avoid
overtaking him, he stopped and began frowning into the windows
of a jewelry store. Suddenly, he saw me and walked back,
holding out his hand. What's the matter, Nick, do youbjec

(29:00):
to shaking hands with me? Yes, you know what I
think of you. You're crazy, Nick, he said quickly, crazy
as hell. I don't know what's the matter with you, Tom?
I inquired, what did you say to Wilson that afternoon?
He stared at me without a word, and I knew

(29:22):
I had guessed right about those missing hours. I started
to turn away, but he took a step after me
and grabbed my arm. I told him the truth, he
said he came to the door while we were getting
ready to leave, and when I sent down word that
we weren't in, he tried to force his way upstairs.
He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadn't

(29:42):
told him who owned the car. His hand was on
a revolver in his pocket every minute he was in
the house. He broke off defiantly. What if I did
tell him that Fellow had it coming to him? He
threw dust into your eyes, just like he did in Daisies,
But he was a tough one. He ran over Murph
like you'd run over a dog and never even stopped

(30:03):
his car. There was nothing I could say except the
one unutterable fact that it wasn't true. And if you
think I didn't have my share of suffering, look here.
When I went to give up that flat and saw
that damn box of dog biscuits sitting there on the sideboard,

(30:23):
I sat down and cried like a baby. By God,
it was awful. I couldn't forgive him or like him,
but I saw that what he had done was to
him entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused.
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smashed up

(30:45):
things and creatures, and then retreated back into their money,
or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept
them together, and let other people clean up the mess
they had made. I shook hands with him. It seemed
silly not to, for I felt suddenly as though I
were talking to a child. Then he went into the

(31:08):
jewelry store to buy a pearl necklace, or perhaps only
a pair of cuff buttons. Rid of my provincial squeamishness. Forever,
Gatsby's house was still empty when I left. The grass
on his lawn had grown as long as mine. One
of the taxi drivers in the village never took a
fair past the entrance gate without stopping for a minute

(31:30):
and pointing inside. Perhaps it was he who drove Daisy
and Gatsby over to East Egg the night of the accident,
and perhaps he had made a story about it all
his own. I didn't want to hear it, and I
avoided him when I got off the train. I spent
my Saturday nights in New York because those gleaming, dazzling

(31:52):
parties of his were with me so vividly that I
could still hear the music and the laughter, faint and incessant,
from his garden, and the cars going up and down
his drive. One night, I did hear a material car
there and saw its lights stop at his front steps,
but I didn't investigate. Probably it was some final guest

(32:14):
who had been away at the ends of the earth
and didn't know that the party was over. On the
last night, with my trunk packed and my car sold
to the grocer, I went over and looked at that huge,
incoherent failure of a house once more. On the white steps.
An obscene word scrawled by some boy with a piece

(32:36):
of brick stood out clearly in the moonlight, and I
erased it, drawing my shoe raspingly along the stone. Then
I wandered down to the beach and sprawled out on
the sand. Most of the big shore places were closed now,
and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy moving
glow of a ferry boat across the sound. And as

(32:59):
the moon rose higher, the inessential houses began to melt away,
until gradually I became aware of the old island here
that flowered once for Dutch sailor's eyes, a fresh green
breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees
that had made way for Gatsby's house had once pondered

(33:19):
in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams.
For a transitory, enchanted moment. Man must have held his
breath in the presence of this continent, Compelled into an
esthetic contemplation. He neither understood nor desired, face to face
for the last time in history with something commensurate to

(33:41):
his capacity for wonder. And as I sat there, brooding
on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder
when he first picked out the green light at the
end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way
to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seen
so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.

(34:03):
He did not know that it was already behind him,
somewhere back in that vast obscurity, beyond the city, where
the dark fields of the Republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light the orgastic future that
year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then,

(34:26):
but that's no matter. Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch
out our arms farther, and one fine morning so we
beat on boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into
the past. End of chapter nine and the end