Chapter 2 Pages 23-38

Chapter 2 Pages 23-38
In Chapter 2 Tom and Nick are riding on the train and Tom forces Nick off so that they can meet Tom's mistress. The mistress is Myrtle Wilson and she is married to Mr. Wilson, a car repair shop owner.  Tom and Nick meet her later at a news-stand and they eventually arrive at an apartment that Tom probably owns for himself and Myrtle.  Myrtle invites over her sister and the McKees and they have a little party.  At the end of the chapter Mr. McKee and Nick leave the party and eventually Nick ends up beside Mr. McKee's bed looking at his photos.
Myrtle Wilson
-"The only crazy I was was when I married him.  I knew right away I made a mistake."
-confident, powerful, controlling, social
-Myrtle is in the novel as Tom's counter part.  She is very similar to him in that she dislikes her marriage, is dominant in her marriage and is cheating on her spouse.  She is in the book to make conflict between Tom and Daisy.
"I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon." (page 29)  This struck me as very odd, seeing as at the time, as at any time, young successful people like Nick regularly drink.  Also, since he was in the war one might think that he would use alcohol to cope with the mental problems he probably experiences. But, this further adds to his reliability as a narrator.

Chapter 1 Pages 1-21

As the story opens, Nick, the narrator, describes his self, his family and how he moved to West Egg. Then he visits his cousin Daisy and her husband Tom for dinner at their house in East Egg. At dinner Nick meets Baker, who he later recognizes from magazines as a famous athlete. At dinner Baker tells Nick that Tom has a girl back in New York, and Daisy either does not care enough to break up with Tom or she does not know. As Nick pulls up to his house after dinner, he sees Gatsby, but he does not say hi because Gatsby vanished.
Tom
"This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It's up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things."
-It appears that there are no good qualities about Tom except for his muscularity and skill in football. Other than that he is racist and unfaithful.
-His role in the novel is to represent the epitome of a rich man in those times. He is a cheater and a racist who inherited his wealth.  If Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby as an outlook on American society at the time, then men like Tom were the root problem.
-"One of those men who reach sun an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anticlimax." This quote reminded me of Vince Young, the NFL quarterback because at Texas in his senior year he was almost perfect, leading the Longhorns to the National Championship. As a UT fan I thought that he would make a great NFL quarterback, but unfortunately his career went downhill once he entered the draft.  This is probably similar to many retired NFL players because once they can no longer play, they all say that they miss the glory and the adrenaline from winning a game.