The Great Gatsby

ouldn't sleep all night; a fog-horn was groaning incessantly on the Sound, and I tossed half-sick between grotesque reality and savage, frightening dreams. Toward dawn I heard a taxi go up Gatsby's drive, and immediately I jumped out of bed and began to dress—I felt that I had something to tell him, something to warn him about, and morning would be too late. Crossing his lawn, I saw that his front door was still open and he was leaning against a table in the hall, heavy with dejection or sleep. 'Nothing happened,' he said wanly. 'I waited, and about four o'clock she came to the window and stood there for a minute and then turned out the light.' His house had never seemed so enormous to me as it did that night when we hunted through the great rooms for cigarettes. We pushed aside curtains that were like pavilions, and felt over innumerable feet of dark wall for electric light switches—once I tumbled with a sort of splash upon the keys of a ghostly piano. There was an inexplicable amount of dust everywhere, and the rooms were musty, as though they hadn't been aired for many days. I found the humidor on an unfamiliar table with two stale, dry cigarettes inside. Throwing open the French windows of the drawing-room, we sat smoking out into the darkness.

The morning after the accident, Nick finds Gatsby still waiting, still hoping. Gatsby tells Nick the full story of his past with Daisy—how they met, how he lost her, how he's been trying to recapture that moment for five years. The story reveals both Gatsby's romantic nature and his tragic flaw—his inability to let go of the past, to accept that the moment is gone forever. Gatsby is still waiting for Daisy, still hoping, but the dream is dead. Later that day, George Wilson, believing Gatsby killed Myrtle, shoots and kills Gatsby, then kills himself. Gatsby dies still reaching for the green light, still hoping, still believing in a dream that can never be caught. His death is both tragic and inevitable—he died chasing a dream that was always impossible, a past that could never be recaptured. The chapter ends with Nick reflecting on Gatsby's death and the emptiness of his life.