An American Tragedy Chapter Summaries
Chapter 7 marks the climax of The Great Gatsby. Twice as long as every other chapter, it first ratchets up the tension of the Gatsby-Daisy-Tom triangle to a breaking betoken in a claustrophobic scene at the Plaza Hotel, and then ends with the grizzly gut punch of Myrtle's decease. Read our full summary of The Groovy Gatsby Affiliate 7 to run across how all dreams dice, just to exist replaced with a grim and contemptuous reality. Prototype: Helmut Ellgaard/Wikipedia Our citation format in this guide is (chapter.paragraph). Nosotros're using this system since there are many editions of Gatsby, then using page numbers would just work for students with our copy of the volume. To find a quotation we cite via affiliate and paragraph in your book, you tin either eyeball it (Paragraph 1-50: beginning of affiliate; 50-100: eye of chapter; 100-on: end of affiliate), or use the search role if you're using an online or eReader version of the text. Suddenly ane Saturday, Gatsby doesn't throw a political party. When Nick comes over to see why, Gatsby has a new butler who rudely sends Nick away. It turns out that Gatsby has replaced all of his servants with ones sent over by Wolfshiem. Gatsby explains that this is because Daisy comes over every afternoon to keep their affair—he needs them to be discreet. Gatsby invites Nick to Daisy's firm for lunch. The plan is for Daisy and Gatsby to tell Tom nigh their relationship, and for Daisy to leave Tom. The next day it is extremely hot. Nick and Gatsby show upwards to accept tiffin with Daisy, Hashemite kingdom of jordan, and Tom. Tom is on the telephone, seemingly arguing with someone near the car. Daisy assumes that he is only pretending, and that he is actually talking to Myrtle. While Tom is out of the room, Daisy kisses Gatsby on the mouth. The nanny brings Tom and Daisy's girl into the room and Gatsby is shocked to realize that the child actually exists and is real. Tom and Gatsby go exterior, and Gatsby points out that information technology's his house is directly across the bay from theirs. Everyone is restless and nervous. From the way Daisy looks at and talks to Gatsby, Tom of a sudden figures out that she and Gatsby are having an affair. Daisy asks to go into Manhattan and Tom agrees, insisting that they go immediately. He gets a canteen of whiskey to bring with them. There is a curt, but crucial, argument nigh who volition take which car. In the end, Tom takes Nick and Jordan in Gatsby's car while Gatsby takes Daisy in Tom's car. On the bulldoze, Tom explains to Nick and Jordan that he'south been investigating Gatsby, which Jordan laughs off. They end for gas at Wilson's gas station. Tom shows off Gatsby's car, pretending it'southward his own. Wilson complains about beingness sick and again asks for Tom'southward car because he needs money fast (the supposition is that he will resell it at a profit). Wilson explains the he's figured out that Myrtle is adulterous on him, so he'south taking her the way from New York to a unlike state. Glad that Wilson hasn't figured out who Myrtle is having the affair with, Tom says that he will sell Wilson his car as he promised. As they drive off, Nick sees Myrtle in an upstairs window staring at Tom and Jordan, whom she assumes to exist his wife. (It's disquisitional to realize that Myrtle now besides associates Tom with this yellow car.) It's still crazy hot when they become to Manhattan. Jordan suggests going to the movies, only they end upwardly getting a suite at the Plaza Hotel. The hotel room is stifling, and they tin can hear the sounds of a wedding going on downstairs. The conversation is tense. Tom starts picking at Gatsby, simply Daisy defends him. Tom accuses Gatsby of non actually being an Oxford man. Gatsby explains that he only went to Oxford for a short time because of a special program for officers later the war. This plausible-sounding explanation fills Nick with conviction nearly Gatsby. Suddenly Gatsby decides to tell Tom his version of the truth—that Daisy never loved Tom but has e'er simply loved Gatsby. Tom calls Gatsby crazy and says that of form Daisy loves him—and that he loves her besides even if he does cheat on her all the time. Gatsby demands that Daisy tell Tom that she has never loved him. Daisy tin't bring herself to do this, and instead said that she has loved them both. This crushes Gatsby. Tom starts revealing what he knows about Gatsby from his investigation. Information technology turns out that Gatsby's money comes from illegal sales of alcohol in drugstores, just as Tom had predicted when he first met him. Tom has a friend who tried to get into business organisation with Gatsby and Wolfshiem. Through him, Tom knows that bootlegging is only office of the criminal activity that Gatsby is involved in. These revelations cause Daisy to shut down, and no matter how much Gatsby tries to defend himself, she is disillusioned. She asks Tom to take her home. Tom's final power play is to tell Gatsby to take Daisy habitation instead, knowing that leaving them lonely together now does not pose whatever threat to him or his marriage. Gatsby and Daisy drive dwelling house in Gatsby'southward car. Tom, Nick, and Jordan bulldoze habitation together in Tom's motorcar. The narration now switches to Nick repeating evidence given at an inquest (a legal proceeding to gather facts surrounding a death) by Michaelis, who runs a coffee shop next to Wilson's garage. That evening Wilson had explained to Michaelis that he had locked up Myrtle in society to keep an eye on her until they moved away in a couple of days. Michaelis was shocked to hear this, because usually Wilson was a meek man. When Michaelis left, he heard Myrtle and Wilson fighting. Then Myrtle ran out into the street toward a car coming from New York. The car striking her and drove off, and by the time Michaelis reached her on the ground, she was dead. The narration switches dorsum to Nick's point of view, as Tom, Nick, and Jordan are driving back from Manhattan. They pull up to the accident site. At first, Tom jokes about Wilson getting some business at final, but when he sees the state of affairs is serious, he stops the car and runs over to Myrtle'southward body. Tom asks a policeman for details of the accident. When he realizes that witnesses can identify the xanthous car that hit Myrtle, he worries that Wilson, who saw him in that car earlier that afternoon, will finger him to the police. Tom grabs Wilson and tells him that the yellow car that hit Myrtle is non Tom'due south, and that he was only driving it earlier giving it back to its possessor. As they drive abroad from the scene, Tom sobs in the car. Back at his house, Tom invites Nick and Jordan within. Nick is sickened by the whole thing and turns to get. Jordan also asks Nick to come within. When he refuses again, she goes in. Every bit Nick is walking abroad, he sees Gatsby lurking in the bushes. Nick suddenly sees him as a criminal. As they hash out what happened, Nick realizes that it was really Daisy who was driving the automobile, meaning that it was Daisy who killed Myrtle. Gatsby makes it audio like she had to cull between getting into a head-on collision with another car coming the other style on the route or hitting Myrtle, and at the concluding second chose to hit Myrtle. Gatsby seems to have no feelings at all virtually the dead adult female, and instead only worries nigh what Daisy and how she volition react. Gatsby says that he will take the blame for driving the car. Gatsby says that he is lurking in the dark to make sure that Daisy is safe from Tom, who he worries might care for her badly when he finds out what happened. Nick goes back to the house to investigate, and sees Tom and Daisy having an intimate conspiratorial moment together in the kitchen. It's clear that again Gatsby has fundamentally misunderstood Tom and Daisy's relationship. Nick leaves Gatsby alone. Then she remembered the oestrus and sat down guiltily on the couch just every bit a freshly laundered nurse leading a little girl came into the room. "Bles-sed pre-cious," she crooned, belongings out her arms. "Come to your ain mother that loves you." The child, relinquished past the nurse, rushed across the room and rooted shyly into her mother'due south apparel. "The Bles-sed pre-cious! Did mother get powder on your one-time yellowy hair? Stand up up now, and say How-de-do." Gatsby and I in plough leaned downward and took the pocket-size reluctant hand. Afterward he kept looking at the child with surprise. I don't recall he had ever really believed in its beingness earlier. (seven.48-52) This is our offset and merely chance to see Daisy performing motherhood. And "performing" is the right give-and-take, since everything about Daisy'south actions here rings a niggling false and her cutesy sing song a little chip like an act. The presence of the nurse makes it articulate that, like many upper-class women of the time, Daisy does not actually exercise any child rearing. At the same fourth dimension, this is the exact moment when Gatsby is delusional dreams start breaking downward. The daze and surprise that he experiences when he realizes that Daisy really does accept a girl with Tom testify how little he has thought about the fact the Daisy has had a life of her own outside of him for the concluding five years. The existence of the kid is proof of Daisy's separate life, and Gatsby just cannot handle so she is not exactly as he has pictured her to be. Finally, hither we can run across how Pammy is being bred for her life as a future "beautiful petty fool", as Daisy put it. As Daisy's makeup rubs onto Pammy's pilus, Daisy prompts her reluctant daughter to exist friendly to two strange men. "What'll nosotros exercise with ourselves this afternoon," cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the side by side thirty years?" "Don't exist morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."(7.74-75) Comparing and contrasting Daisy and Jordan) is one of the nigh common assignments that you will get when studying this novel. This very famous quotation is a slap-up identify to start. Daisy's attempt at a joke reveals her fundamental colorlessness and restlessness. Despite the fact that she has social standing, wealth, and whatever material possessions she could want, she is not happy in her endlessly monotonous and repetitive life. This existential ennui goes a long manner to helping explain why she seizes on Gatsby as an escape from routine. On the other hand, Jordan is a pragmatic and realistic person, who grabs opportunities and who sees possibilities and even repetitive cyclical moments of change. For example here, although fall and wintertime are well-nigh frequently linked to slumber and death, whereas it is spring that is commonly seen as the season of rebirth, for Jordan any change brings with it the take chances for reinvention and new beginnings. "She'south got an indiscreet vox," I remarked. "Information technology's full of——" I hesitated. "Her vox is full of coin," he said suddenly. That was information technology. I'd never understood before. Information technology was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and roughshod in information technology, the jingle of it, the cymbals' vocal of information technology. . . . Loftier in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl. . . . (7.103-106) Here nosotros are getting to the root of what information technology is actually that attracts Gatsby then much to Daisy. Nick notes that the style Daisy speaks to Gatsby is plenty to reveal their relationship to Tom. Over again we run into the powerful attraction of Daisy's vocalization. For Nick, this voice is full of "indiscretion," an interesting word that at the same time brings to listen the revelation of secrets and the disclosure of illicit sexual activity. Nick has used this word in this connotation before—when describing Myrtle in Chapter two he uses the word "discreet" several times to explicate the precautions she takes to hibernate her thing with Tom. Simply for Gatsby, Daisy's phonation does non agree this sexy attraction, equally much every bit it does the promise of wealth, which has been his overriding appetite and goal for virtually of his life. To him, her voice marks her as a prize to be collected. This impression is further underscored by the fairy tale imagery that follows the connection of Daisy's voice to money. Much like princesses who is the end of fairy tales are given as a reward to plucky heroes, then as well Daisy is Gatsby's winnings, an indication that he has succeeded. "You recollect I'g pretty dumb, don't y'all?" he suggested. "Perhaps I am, but I accept a—almost a 2d sight, sometimes, that tells me what to do. Maybe yous don't believe that, merely science——" (vii.123) Nick never sees Tom as annihilation other than a villain; even so, it is interesting that only Tom immediately sees Gatsby for the fraud that he turns out to exist. About from the showtime, Tom calls information technology that Gatsby's money comes from bootlegging or some other criminal action. It is nigh equally though Tom's life of lies gives him special insight into detecting the lies of others. The relentless beating oestrus was outset to misfile me and I had a bad moment in that location before I realized that and so far his suspicions hadn't alighted on Tom. He had discovered that Myrtle had some sort of life autonomously from him in another world and the shock had made him physically sick. I stared at him and and then at Tom, who had made a parallel discovery less than an 60 minutes before—and information technology occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, then profound every bit the departure betwixt the sick and the well. Wilson was then ill that he looked guilty, unforgivably guilty—as if he had just got some poor girl with child. (seven.160) Y'all will also often exist asked to compare Tom and Wilson, ii characters who share some plot details in common.This passage, which explicitly contrasts these ii men'southward reactions to finding out their wives are having affairs, is a cracking place to offset. "Self control!" repeated Tom incredulously. "I suppose the latest affair is to sit down back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make dear to your wife. Well, if that'due south the idea y'all can count me out. . . . Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions and side by side they'll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between blackness and white." Flushed with his impassioned gibberish he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization. "We're all white here," murmured Jordan. "I know I'm not very pop. I don't give big parties. I suppose you've got to make your house into a pigsty in order to have whatever friends—in the modern world." Angry as I was, every bit nosotros all were, I was tempted to express joy whenever he opened his mouth. The transition from libertine to prig was so complete. (seven.229-233) Nick is happy whenever he gets to demonstrate how undereducated and dumb Tom actually is. Hither, Tom's anger at Daisy and Gatsby is somehow transformed into a self-pitying and faux righteous bluster most miscegenation, loose morals, and the disuse of stalwart institutions. We see the connexion between Hashemite kingdom of jordan and Nick when both of them puncture Tom'due south pompous balloon: Jordan points out that race isn't actually at upshot at the moment, and Nick laughs at the hypocrisy of a womanizer like Tom suddenly lamenting his wife's lack of prim propriety. "She never loved you, do you hear?" he cried. "She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. It was a terrible fault, simply in her middle she never loved any 1 except me!" (seven.241) Gatsby throws caution to the wind and reveals the story that he has been telling himself about Daisy all this time. In his heed, Daisy has been pining for him every bit much equally he has been longing for her, and he has been able to explain her marriage to himself just past eliding any notion that she might have her ain hopes, dreams, ambitions, and motivations. Gatsby has been propelled for the last five years by the idea that he has access to what is in Daisy's heart. Yet, we can see that a dream congenital on this kind of shifting sand is at best wishful thinking and at worst willful self-delusion. "Daisy, that's all over now," he said earnestly. "It doesn't matter whatsoever more. Just tell him the truth—that you never loved him—and it'due south all wiped out forever." ... She hesitated. Her optics savage on Jordan and me with a sort of entreatment, every bit though she realized at last what she was doing—and as though she had never, all along, intended doing anything at all. But it was washed now. It was too late…. "Oh, you want as well much!" she cried to Gatsby. "I love you now—isn't that plenty? I can't help what'southward past." She began to sob helplessly. "I did love him one time—but I loved you too." Gatsby's optics opened and closed. "You loved me also?" he repeated. (7.254-266) Gatsby wants nothing less than that Daisy erase the last five years of her life. He is unwilling to accept the idea that Daisy has had feelings for someone other than him, that she has had a history that does not involve him, and that she has not spent every single second of every day wondering when he would come dorsum into her life. His absolutism is a class of emotional blackmail. For all Daisy'due south evident weaknesses, it is a testament to her psychological strength that she is simply unwilling to recreate herself, her memories, and her emotions in Gatsby's image. She could easily at this signal say that she has never loved Tom, just this would not exist true, and she does non want to give up her independence of mind. Unlike Gatsby, who against all evidence to the contrary believes that you tin can repeat the past, Daisy wants to know that there is a future. She wants Gatsby to be the solution to her worries about each successive time to come twenty-four hours, rather than an imprecation almost the choices she has made to get to this point. At the same fourth dimension, information technology'due south cardinal to notation Nick's realization that Daisy "had never intended on doing anything at all." Daisy has never planned to get out Tom. We've known this ever since the first time we saw them at the stop of Chapter i, when he realized that they were cemented together in their dysfunction. It passed, and he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything, defending his name against accusations that had not been fabricated. But with every word she was cartoon further and further into herself, so he gave that upwards and merely the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch on what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost vox across the room. (vii.292) The advent of Daisy's daughter and Daisy'south declaration that at some point in her life she loved Tom have both helped to vanquish Gatsby's obsession with his dream. In only the same way, Tom's explanations virtually who Gatsby really is and what is backside his facade have broken Daisy's infatuation. Take note of the language here—as Daisy is withdrawing from Gatsby, we come back to the image of Gatsby with his artillery outstretched, trying to grab something that is just out of attain. In this example it'southward not but Daisy herself, merely also his dream of existence with her inside his perfect memory. "Beat me!" he heard her weep. "Throw me downwardly and trounce me, you muddy little coward!" (7.314) Myrtle fights past provoking and taunting. Here, she is pointing out Wilson's weak and timid nature by egging him on to treat her the way that Tom did when he punched her before in the novel. Nevertheless, before nosotros draw any conclusions we can about Myrtle from this assertion, it's worthwhile to call up almost the context of this remark. So what do we brand of the fact that Myrtle was trying to verbally emasculate her husband? Maybe yelling at him is her merely recourse in a life where she has no actual ability to control her life or bodily integrity. The "expiry car" as the newspapers called it, didn't stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment and then disappeared around the side by side bend. Michaelis wasn't even certain of its colour—he told the first policeman that it was low-cal light-green. The other car, the one going toward New York, came to remainder a hundred yards across, and its driver hurried back to where Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick, night blood with the grit. Michaelis and this man reached her first but when they had torn open her shirtwaist nonetheless damp with perspiration, they saw that her left breast was swinging loose like a flap and there was no need to listen for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide open up and ripped at the corners as though she had choked a fiddling in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long. (7.316-317) The stark dissimilarity hither between the oddly ghostly nature of the motorcar that hits Myrtle and the visceral, gruesome, explicit imagery of what happens to her body after information technology is striking is very hit. The car almost doesn't seem real—it comes out of the darkness like an avenging spirit and disappears, Michaelis cannot tell what color it is. Meanwhile, Myrtle's corpse is described in detail and is palpably concrete and nowadays. This treatment of Myrtle'due south trunk might be one place to go when yous are asked to compare Daisy and Myrtle in form. Daisy'southward body is never fifty-fifty described, beyond a gentle indication that she prefers white dresses that are flouncy and loose. On the other hand, every time that we see Myrtle in the novel, her body is physically assaulted or appropriated. Tom initially picks her upwards past pressing his torso inappropriately into hers on the railroad train station platform. Before her political party, Tom has sexual activity with her while Nick (a human being who is a stranger to Myrtle) waits in the adjacent room, and then Tom ends the nighttime by punching her in the face. Finally, she is restrained by her husband inside her house and then run over. Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen tabular array with a plate of cold fried chicken betwixt them and two bottles of ale. He was talking attentively beyond the table at her and in his earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her ain. Once in a while she looked upward at him and nodded in agreement. They weren't happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale—and yet they weren't unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the motion picture and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together. (7.409-410) And so, the promise that Daisy and Tom are a dysfunctional couple that somehow makes information technology work (Nick saw this at the end of Affiliate 1) is fulfilled. For careful readers of the novel, this conclusion should accept been clear from the outset. Daisy complains about Tom, and Tom serially cheats on Daisy, but at the cease of the day, they are unwilling to forgo the privileges their life entitles them to. This moment of truth has stripped Daisy and Tom down to the basics. They are in the least showy room of their mansion, sitting with uncomplicated and unpretentious food, and they accept been stripped of their veneer. Their honesty makes what they are doing—conspiring to get abroad with murder, basically—completely transparent. And it is the fact that they can tolerate this level of honesty in each other too each being kind of a terrible person that keeps them together. Compare their readiness to forgive each other anything—fifty-fifty murder!—with Gatsby'due south insistence that information technology's his way or no style. It's no surprise that this very long, emotional, and shocking chapter is laced through with the themes of The Cracking Gatsby. Let's accept a wait. Morality and Ethics. In this chapter, suspicion of offense is everywhere: This air of the illegal heightens the actual crimes that take place or are revealed in the chapter: This descent into the nighttime side of the Wild E (contrasted with Nick's version of the calm and strictly above-board Middle Due west) reveals the novel's perspective on the excesses of the time period. It is interesting that the vast majority of the law-breaking or nearly criminal offence that is described is theft—the taking of someone else's property. The same desires that spur the ambitious to come up to Manhattan to endeavor to make something of themselves likewise incite those who are willing to practise the kind of corner-cutting that results in criminality. Only Daisy, who is already so established that theft is unnecessary to her, takes crime to the adjacent level. Beloved, Want, Relationships. Merely as crime is everywhere, then besides is illicit sexuality. However, the heat and tension seem to reverse the behavioral tendencies of the characters we have come to know over the form of 6 chapters. Motifs: Conditions. The overwhelming heat of the 24-hour interval plays a vital role in creating an atmosphere of stifled, sweaty, uncomfortable breathlessness. Each scene'due south overwhelming tension and awkwardness are further heightened by the concrete discomfort that anybody is experiencing (it's also key to remember that being hot and slightly dehydrated elevates the level of intoxication that a person feels, these characters pour back whiskey afterwards whiskey). The hot mugginess ratchets upward anger and resentment, and likewise seems to drag the recklessness with which people are willing to expose and pursue their sexual desires. And then crucial is this atmospheric element, that every pic adaptation of this novel makes sure that the actors are covered in sweat during these scenes, making it almost as uncomfortable to lookout them as information technology is to imagine making it through that day. Here'southward a quick prune that shows you what I hateful. Mutability of Identity. Information technology is plumbing fixtures that just every bit lots of wool is removed from lots of optics, every bit Gatsby is source of wealth is revealed, and as Daisy is shown not to exist the fairytale figment of Gatsby'southward imagination, the thought of façades, false impressions, and mistaken identity is front and center. The Treatment of Women. Also primal this chapter are women characters. First, there is the pairing of Daisy and Hashemite kingdom of jordan, whose outlooks on life are confirmed to be diametrically opposed. Side by side, we have the comparison between Daisy and Myrtle, two women whose marriages dissatisfy them enough that they seek out other lovers. There are many means to compare them, but in this chapter in particular what seems important is whether each woman is able to maintain coherence and integrity. Death and Failure. Death comes in many forms, both metaphorical and horribly real. Of course, the primary expiry in this chapter is that of Myrtle, gruesomely killed by Daisy. But this is too the chapter where dreams come to dice. Gatsby'south fantasy of Daisy undergoes a tedious demise when he meets her girl, and when he learns that she is merely unwilling to renounce her entire history with Tom for Gatsby's sake. Similarly, whatsoever romantic ideas Daisy may have had about Gatsby vanish when she learns that he is a criminal. Compare the novel's four trips into Manhattan: Nick at Myrtle'southward party in Chapter ii, Nick'south description of what it's like to exist a single guy around boondocks at the end of Chapter 3, Nick at dejeuner with Gatsby in Chapter 4, and insanity at the Plaza in this chapter. Does Manhattan affect the way the characters behave? Does it make them more or less likely to human activity out to be at that place? Do they feel comfy there? Motion on to the summary of Chapter viii, or revisit the summary of Chapter six. What are some of the overall themes in Gatsby? Nosotros dig into money and materialism, the American Dream, and more in our article on the almost important Corking Gatsby themes. Want to improve your Sat score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points? We've written a guide for each examination nearly the meridian 5 strategies y'all must exist using to accept a shot at improving your score. Download it for free at present: 
Quick Note on Our Citations
The Great Gatsby: Chapter 7 Summary
It's astonishing how immediately suspect and creepy Gatsby becomes once Nick turns on him. Has our narrator been spinning Gatsby's beliefs from the get-become? Central Chapter 7 Quotes
The prototype of Tom and Daisy belongings hands, while discussing how to flee later on Daisy kills Myrtle, is the crux of their relationship. They are willing to forgive each other everything. Are they secretly the nigh romantic couple in the book? The Great Gatsby Chapter 7 Analysis
Overarching Themes
Finally, we tin expect at all three women in terms of whether and how they are controlled by the men in their lives, and whether and how they escape that control.
New York's Plaza Hotel, famous for beingness the place where Eloise lives in those kids books, and for being the setting for this novel'south scene of confrontation. Crucial Character Beats
What's Next?
Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in loftier schoolhouse, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate most improving student access to higher educational activity.
An American Tragedy Chapter Summaries,
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