My Pleasure Reading. Summary (pages 179 - 210)

  Organizing Gatsby's funerals, Nick tries to get in touch with Daisy. He finds that the Buchanas have gone and left no forwarding address. After a while Nick discovers that as well as the Buchanas Jay's enormous circle of acquaintances has suddenly vanished. Many of them have left the city while others, including Meyer Wolfsheim and Kilpspringer, refuse to attend the funeral.The only attendances on Gatsby's funerals are Henry C. Gatz (Gatsby's father) and Owl Eyes (the drunk who was so astonished by Gatsby's library).

   Then Nick meets with Jordan Baker and ends their affair, because Jordan suddenly claims to be engaged to another man.

   Several month later, Nick runs across Tom Buchanan on New York's Fifth Avenue. Tom admits that it was he who sent Wilson to Gatsby's and says that Jay Gatsby deserved to die. Nick reflects that Tom and Daisy are capable only of cruelty and destruction; they are kept safe from the consequences of their actions by wealth and privilege.

  Nick determines to return to the Midwest. He reflects that he, the Buchanas, Gatsby, and Jordan are all Westeners who came east; perhaps they all possess some deficiency which makes them unsuitable to Eastern life. After Gatsby's death, the East seems to nick haunted and grotesque; the Midwest, by contrast, as idyllic as on Christmas.

   Staring at the moon on his last night in West Egg, Nick compares the green light at the end of Daisy's dock with the green continent of America, beckoning its dreamers. Gatsby failed to realize that his dream was already dead when he began to dream it: his goals, the pursuit of wealth and status were empty and meaningless. Nick thinks that contemporary Americans are "boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past"; any attempt to progress, to move forward, is futile.