CHAPTER SUMMARIES WITH NOTES

CHAPTER V

Summary (continued)

During the entire tour, Gatsby has not once stopped looking at Daisy, and he seems to revalue everything in his house according to Daisy's response to it. In Daisy's presence, he has passed through three states of mind -- from embarrassment, to joy, to a sense of wonder at her being in his house. He has dreamed about her for so long, and with such intensity, that he is almost dazed in her presence. He nearly falls down a flight of stairs, and he wildly shows off his rows of suits and piles of shirts, which he tosses before his guests in a heap. In reaction, Daisy bends her head into the shirts, cries stormily, and moans that she has never seen such beautiful shirts before. Like Gatsby, she is overcome with her own emotion.

The tour of the gardens, the pool, and the hydroplane is postponed due to the rain. Gatsby tells Daisy if it were not for the weather, she could see her own house across the bay with the green light burning at the end of her dock, the same green light that Gatsby stretched his hands toward at the end of Chapter I. Now the green light has changed forever. "Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy, it (the green light) had seemed very near to her, almost touching her...Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one."

Talk then turns to the photographs in Gatsby's room. He explains that the elderly gentleman is Mr. Dan Cody, who, before his death, used to be Gatsby's best friend. Daisy proclaims that she adores the picture of an eighteen-year-old Gatsby in a yachting outfit. He then shows her newspaper clippings that he has cut out about her; he is interrupted, however, by the ringing of the phone. Gatsby takes the call, explains he cannot talk, and quickly hangs up on the business connection. Daisy then calls him over to the window to look at the pink and golden clouds formed above the sea and tells him that she would like to put him in one of the clouds and push him around. With nothing left to explore, Gatsby calls Klipspringer to entertain them on the piano. The "boarder" protests that he is out of practice, but Gatsby commands him to play, so he taps out "The Love Nest" and "Ain't We Got Fun."

At dusk, Nick takes his leave from Daisy and Gatsby. Gatsby's performance is over, and it is "the hour of profound human change," when the world rushes home from work. As he bids farewell, Nick notices that Gatsby's face shows bewilderment, "as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness (after) almost five years." How could Daisy possibly live up to the illusion that he created about her? She was a dream into which he had thrown himself "with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way." But Daisy's voice would always be enchanting "with its fluctuating, feverish warmth, because it couln't be over-dreamed -- that voice was a deathless song."

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