But as I walked down the steps I saw that the evening was not quite over.  Fifty feet from the door a dozen headlights illuminated a bizarre and tumultuous scene.  In the ditch beside the road, right side up but violently shorn of one wheel, rested a new coupé which had left Gatsby's drive not two minutes before.  The sharp jut of a wall accounted for the detachment of the wheel which was now getting considerable attention from half a dozen curious chauffeurs.  However, as they had left their cars blocking the road a harsh discordant din from those in the rear had been audible for some time and added to the already violent confusion of the scene…

"You don't understand," explained the criminal.  "I wasn't driving.  There's another man in the car."

Car accidents are a common symbol within this story.  One interesting thing about these car accidents is that the people who caused them refused to acknowledge that they had caused them or that the accidents even occurred.  After the passage quoted above, the man who had been driving the car was so drunk that he didn't even realize that he had crashed.  Even after the accident was pointed out to him, he continued to refuse to acknowledge it in that he suggested putting the car in reverse.  Daisy didn't admit that she had anything to do with Myrtle's accident and allowed Gatsby to take the blame and die for her.  Afterwards, she and Tom continued living their lives together as if nothing had happened.  Even Jordan was of the opinion that if she was to be involved in a car accident, it wouldn't be the fault of her carelessness, but of the other driver's carelessness.  But according to her, this would never happen because other people were careful.  Therefore, whenever car accidents take place in the book, in the minds of those caused them, it was not their fault, and so was not even worth acknowledging.

There is another interesting connection between this accident and Myrtle's accident.  At first, everybody believed that Owl Eyes, the only one who was able to see the truth about Gatsby, was driving the car during the accident.  Likewise, Gatsby was the one everybody thought was the hit-and-run driver that caused Myrtle's death.  Unfortunately, in Gatsby's case, they weren't ever corrected and that cost him his life.

- Clare