Chapter 8 Pages 147-162

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Chapter 8 Pages 147-162

Chapter 8 starts that night and Gatsby and Nick are looking all around Gatsby's house for cigarettes. While they smoke and talk, Gatsby explains why he fell in love with Daisy and what happened when he went to the war. He still believes that he has a chance at getting Daisy. Nick leaves and Gatsby decides to go in his pool because he hasn't used it all summer. Nick then explains how Michaelis, Wilson's neighbor tried to calm Wilson throughout the night. Wilson thinks that Gatsby killer Myrtle and therefore goes to Gatsby's house where he kills Gatsby, then himself.

George Wilson

"He (Michaelis) was sure that Wilson had no friend: there was not enough of him for his wife." (P. 159)

He is poor, in love with Myrtle, vengeful and dark and ashen. 

He is Gatsby's opposite, yet he is very similar to Gatsby. Gatsby is described as rich and he has a lot of mystery about him, but Wilson is poor and doesn't even have enough substance to keep his wife. Similarly they are both truly lower class and they both love a woman who loves Tom and not them. He is in the novel to mirror Gatsby, but also bring him back to reality by eventually shattering Gatsby's imaginative dream.

"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, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream." (P. 161) This sums up the chapter and the book really as it explains that Gatsby with his one dream of living in the past. But now he realizes that he has lost Daisy and his dream is shattered.