Reading Journal Gatsby Chapter 8-9

• 'Grotesque reality and savage, frightening dreams' - big difference from previous chapters - setting of West Egg has usually been dreamlike in the sense that it has been extravagant and elegant, beautiful colours and sounds of laughter and chatter, now it is much more sincere and dark
• Focus of narrative shifts - informs the reader about what happened at the garage after Myrtle died
• Wilson speaks of the eyes of T.J Eckleburg, eyes of God - relates back to previous chapters where they have been described - gives the idea that the eyes have seen everything and are all knowing
• Time: Gatsby cannot accept the fact that he cannot control time, cannot go back to how things used to be between him and Daisy
• Green light: green light on her dock a symbol of his destiny with her, his dream for a life with Daisy kept alive with symbolism
• Time: not linear, shifts between the past, Gatsby telling Nick of his and Daisy's past, again reinforcing how he just wants to keep his dream alive, and then bringing it back up to date
• 'There was a ripe mystery about it...bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool... of gay and radiant activities... laid away already in lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year's shining motor cars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered.' - these particular words having such a deep contrast with the rest of chapter 8 and with events that have already happened, relating back to Gatsby's parties
• chapter 9: time is not linear once again, Nick writes two years after Gatsby's death, and Gatsby's father telling Nick of his earlier life
• Nick decides to leave West Egg due to its empty values - shows how time has changed once again, at the start of the book West Egg is empty for Nick with nothing there for him, until he then meets Jordan and Gatsby, when he has more purpose, and then Gatsby dies and Jordan announces she is engaged, when West Egg becomes meaningless to him once more
• By now the story has obviously shifted from a love story to a tragedy
• 'I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.' - Nick commenting on their inability to shape themselves into characters of West Egg - almost summarizing, tying the story together