56 pages • 1 hour read
F. Scott FitzgeraldThe Great Gatsby
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1925A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary
After the night of the car accident, Nick cannot sleep. Upon hearing a taxi arrive in Gatsby’s driveway, Nick walks over to meet his neighbor. He advises Gatsby to leave town because the police will eventually identify his car.
Gatsby tells the story of his youthful love affair with Daisy and the power it held over him in the years that followed. When the story ends, one of Gatsby’s servants asks him if it’s okay to drain the pool. Gatsby tells him to wait and repeats to Nick something he has said twice already: that he has not used the pool all summer.
As Gatsby and Nick say goodbye, Nick tells him that he’s “worth more” than Tom, Daisy, or anyone else he’s associated with on West Egg. Despite his thorough disgust for Gatsby, Nick is happy to have said this.
Nick goes to the city to work for a while. Meanwhile, momentous events transpire in the wake of Myrtle’s death. Following the shock of the accident, George grows increasingly disturbed. Michaelis and others take turns watching him, but George slips away sometime in the morning. He tracks down Gatsby as the latter makes use of his pool for the first time this season. George fatally shoots Gatsby then dies by suicide.
Chapter 8 Analysis
Chapter 8 clarifies Gatsby’s relationship with Daisy. It also brings Nick’s relationship with Gatsby full circle: Nick, once impressed by Gatsby and the Buchanans, is disgusted with them all—with the former for his desperate striving, and with the latter for their decadent corruption.
The extensive flashback in this novel brings into focus the concepts of nostalgia and purity. For example, as seen in the hunt for cigarettes through empty rooms, it is impressed upon the reader that the enchantment over Gatsby’s home has dissipated. These nostalgic visions been in place from the start, but in the wake of the action of Chapter 7, Fitzgerald slows the pace of the novel and takes time to revisit major themes that have played a role in the preceding chapters.
Both Gatsby and Daisy are nostalgic for the purity of a past moment that may never have been exactly as they remember. This has already been brought to Daisy’s attention in the preceding chapter, when she realizes that the innocent young soldier whom she imagines when she sees Gatsby is in fact a criminal. In Chapter 8, Gatsby comes to realize that he is desirous of Daisy not because of something special about her personality but because of what she represents. What she represents is the attainment of social status. This presents a cyncical view of The Role of Love and Relationships in a Culture Defined by Wealth and Hedonism.
The tension between past and present is emphasized by Gatsby’s refusal to allow the pool to be drained just yet. Although Gatsby already mentioned multiple times that he has not used the pool all summer, previous instances indicated that the unused pool was a sign of his vast wealth. This last mention suggests a longing for the days before the tragic accident. Moreover, the pool symbolizes that Gatsby has not been living in the present moment, instead foregoing what was right before him in pursuit of a futile vision.
Another important theme is The Capacity to Reinvent One’s Identity during this period of economic boom. Because of mobilization for the war at first, and later because of his ability to rise in social station no matter the ethical implications, Gatsby rises to the highest circle of society. The result is both a surprising capacity for social intermixing and the possibility for violent collisions between people from different backgrounds, presented literally in the car crash and the shooting.
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By F. Scott Fitzgerald
