The Great Gatsby: Repeat the Past

Around this time I learned the truth about Gatsby’s past: his real name was James Gatz, and his parents were poor farm people in North Dakota.At seventeen he was fishing along the shore of Lake Superior when a millionaire’s yacht dropped anchor nearby.He rowed out to warn its owner, Dan Cody, about the wind, and in that moment James Gatz became Jay Gatsby, a young man he had invented for himself.

For five years he sailed around the world with Cody and learned how rich men talked and dressed, but when Cody died, Gatsby was left with nothing but what he had learned.One Sunday afternoon Tom Buchanan came riding past Gatsby’s house, and Gatsby, nervous and polite, invited him in for a drink.Tom was curious about this stranger who seemed to know his wife, and the next Saturday he came with Daisy to one of Gatsby’s parties.

That night the party seemed different to me — louder, colder, and full of people I no longer liked, because I was seeing it through Daisy’s eyes.Tom laughed at the guests, and Daisy was polite, but I could see that she was shocked by the noise and the crowds of West Egg.After they drove away, Gatsby came down to me with tired, bright eyes and said, “She didn’t like it. She didn’t have a good time.”

What he wanted was for Daisy to go to Tom and say, “I never loved you,” and then return with him to Louisville to be married, as if the last five years had never happened.“I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I said carefully. “You can’t repeat the past.”“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried, as if I had said something impossible. “Why of course you can!”

He looked around wildly, as if the past were hiding somewhere in the shadows of his house, just out of reach of his hand.“I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,” he said, nodding firmly. “She’ll see.”Then he told me about an autumn night five years before, when he and Daisy had stopped on a moonlit street in Louisville and he had kissed her for the first time.