Gatsby's Memoir II

Chapter 8 Homework

Add another episode to Gatsby's memoir recalling how he fell in love with Daisy and how important she was to him and what she represented. This memoir was prompted by the melancholy and uncertainty he felt after his confrontal with Tom on a hot summer day in New York.

When I was an officer in a military, I met Daisy. She was the first nice girl I had ever known. I found her excitingly desirable. I went to her house, at first with other officers from Camp Taylor, then alone. It amazed me—I had never been in such a beautiful house before. But gave it an air of breathless intensity was that Daisy lived there—it was as casual a thing to her as my tent out at camp was to me. There was a gay and radiant activities taking place through a beautiful bedroom's corridors and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of that year's shinning motor cars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered. It excited me too that many men had loved Daisy—it increased her values in my eyes.

I knew that I was in Daisy's house by a colossal accident. I was a penniless young man without a past. I took what I could get. I took Daisy one still October night; I took her because I had no real right to touch her hand. I might have despised myself, for I had certainly taken her under false pretenses. But I had deliberately given her a sense of security; I let her believe that I was a person from much the same strata as myself—which I was fully able to take care of her. I didn't despise myself and it didn't turn out as I had imagined. I knew that Daisy was extraordinary but I didn't realize just how extraordinary a nice girl could be. She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving me nothing. I felt married to her.

When we met again two days later it was me who was breathless, who was somehow betrayed. Her porch was bright with the bought luxury of star-shine: the wicker of the settee squeaked fashionable as she turned toward me and I kissed her curious and lovely mouth.

On the last afternoon before I went abroad the sat with Daisy in my arms for a long, silent time. It was a cold fall day with fire in the room and her cheeks flushed. Now and then she moved and I changed my arm a little and once I kissed her dark shinning hair. The afternoon had made us tranquil for a while as if to give us a deep memory for the long parting the next day promised. We had never been closer in our month of love nor communicated more profoundly one with another, then when she brushed silent lips against my coat's shoulder or when I touched the end of her fingers, gently, as though she were asleep. There I was, way off my ambitions, getting deeper in love every minute, and all of a sudden I didn't care.

Later I went to war and after the war I tired to get home but some complication or misunderstanding sent me to Oxford instead. While I was in Oxford Daisy married Tom. I came back from France when Tom and Daisy were still on their wedding trip, and made a miserable but irresistible journey to Louisville on the last of my army pay. I stayed there a week, walking the streets where their footsteps had clicked together through the November night and revisiting the out-of-the-way places to which they had driven in her white car. I left feeling that if I had searched harder I might have found her- that I was leaving her behind.

My house even built just like the one she used to live in. I met Daisy after 6 years. I knew her voice was full of money, but I didn't care. I want her to left Tom and get back with me. Because of her I had an argument with Tom. I told Tom that Daisy loves me and she had never love him before. I even told him am going to take care of Daisy form now on. Daisy was unhappy about me telling Tom that she had never loved him. On our way home Daisy ran over Myrtle Wilson and I told Nick that it was the second my hand reached the wheel I felt the shock and it must killed her instantly. I was afraid that Tom would do something to Daisy about the unpleasantness that afternoon, so I hid between two bushes and eagerly to my scrutiny of the house. I wish to protect Daisy from Tom, but also hold onto the slim chance that Daisy may renounce her husband and come to me. I waited and about four o'clock she came to the window, stood there for a minute, and then turned out the light. I know she was all right, so I went home. I refused to leave town, for reasons simultaneously selfless and arrogant. I wouldn't leave town until I know what Daisy was going to do. Daisy means everything to me.