The Great Gatsby CH 5-6

It is during chapters five and six in The Great Gatsby that Daisy and Jay finally meet and start to spend time together after five years of zero interaction. The first encounter is super awkward, but after Nick forces them to be alone together, their relationship slowly begins to regrow. After their first private conversation, Nick returns to his living room and observes what is happening in his living room: “Daisy’s face was smeared with tears… But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room” (Fitzgerald 89). Obviously, Daisy and Gatsby had rehashed some long underground emotions, and this marks the beginning of their newly kindled relationship. A major theme that came up in these two chapters was the contrast between reality and illusion. First, when Gatsby shows his house to Daisy, Nick sees that all the expensive trinkets and souvenirs in his home lose their matter when Daisy is around. Nick says, “Sometimes, too, he stared at his possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real” (91). Daisy has this element to her which can make things around her become an illusion, which I think is very interesting. Gatsby can lie about his family and career, but he cannot deny his love for Daisy--she is one of the only real things he can hold onto from his adolescence. However, even though Daisy and his love for her are real, Gatsby’s elaborate plan to win her back is unrealistic. He claims that the past can be repeated, but he seems to have forgotten that people can change a lot over the course of five years and that the Daisy he used to know is not the same Daisy that lives across the bay. After the tea, Nick sees a bewilderment on Gatsby’s face and thinks, “There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams--not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion” (95). Although it is romantic how much Gatsby loves and is willing to sacrifice for Daisy, he has unfeasible expectations which I predict will backfire on him.