The Great Gatsby Timeline

The Great Gatsby

Chapter 3

Chapter 1

Chapter 7

Chapter 5

• "So it came about in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician (Fitzgerald, 1)."

• "When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform...I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart (Fitzgerald, 2). "

• "The Carraways are something of a clan... [the] founder of my line was my grandfather's brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent [as] a substitute to the Civil War (Fitzgerald, 3)."

• The chapter begins with Gatsby visiting Nick during the night to attempt to arrange tea with Daisey
• The chapter then progresses to the arranged date for tea.
• Daisy and Gatsby arrive at Nicks for tea. The meating is awkard at first but becomes natural as they become comfortable.
• The reader learns that the last time Daisey and Gatsby met was "Five years [ago] next November."
• Daisey, Nick and Gatsby leave Nicks to go to Gatsby's house.
• Daisey and Gatsby rekindle their friendship/romance.

• "I just remembered that today's my birthday. I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade" (Fitzgerald, 135).
• --> Nick’s birthday is at the end of Summer

Summer

• "There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights." (Fitzgerald, 39)
• "A celebrated tenor had sung in Italian, and notorious contralto had sung in jazz, and between the numbers people were doing "stunts" all over the garden, while happy, vacous bursts of laughter rose toward the summer sky" (Fitzgerald, 47) - Everything is alive and vibrant like actual summer.
• These parties always seem to become joyful at night, signifying that perhaps since the day has ended business has ended and people can freely enjoy themselves as the night comes around.
• "Most of remaining women were now having fights with men said to be their husbands...the reluctance to go home was not confined to wayward men." (Fitzgerald, 51)
• It should also be taken note that around two in the morning husbands and wives begin to argue with one another. This could hint that the day is arriving and with it, it sheds light on problems you couldn't see in the "dark of night".
• Takes place in Gatsby's house.
• Nick goes to his first Gatsby party, meets up with Jordan and hears people opinions about Gatsby.
• Nick also meets Gatsby for the first.
• It's the summer, which is a time of new things, such as Nick experiencing numerous new things like his first Gastby party or his first time meeting Gatsby.
• List of Gatsby's party guest began on July 5, 1922.

• "I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in...the Great War...I came back restless...so I decided to go East and learn the bond business (Fitzgerald, 3)."
• "I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two (Fitzgerald 3)."
• "I was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road...I was lonely no longer. I was a guide a pathfinder, an original settler (Fitzgerald, 4)."
• "The history of summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans (Fitzgerald, 5)."
• "[Tom] had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven...but now he'd left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away (Fitzgerald, 6)."
• The rest of the chapter is spent unfolding the events that occurred on Nick's visit to the Buchanans, where he meets Jordan Baker and finds out more about Daisy's and Tom's relationship, in chronological order.

Beginning: Summer

• Story begins in late spring or early summer

Conclusion

"And so with the sunshine and great bursts of leaves growing on trees, just like in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with summer (Fitzgerald, 4)."

Chapter 2

Chapter 6

Chapter 4

• Nick meets Myrtle and George Wilson, along with her sister Catherine and the McKees.
• Between the time where Nick was at the Buchannans and was invited to Gatsby's party, Tom takes Nick to the Valley of Ashes.
• After Nick left city apartment:"I was lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the Pennsylvania Station, staring at the morning Tribune, and waiting for the four o'clock train."(Fitzgerald 38)
• Description of “Valley of Ashes” and its significance. Author really focuses on mood and color to emphasize and highlight the atmosphere
• Tom takes Nick and Myrtle to New York City, to the Morningside Heights apartment he keeps for his affair.
• Nick then leaves, annoyed with all the behavior at the apartment and the tension that arose.

• "It was a halt .....For several weeks I didn't see him or hear his voice or hear his voice on the phone--mostly I was in New York, trotting around with Jordan..."(Fitzgerald 101)
• "For on the following Saturday, her came with [Daisy] to Gatsby's party."(Fitzgerald 104)
• "One autumn night, five years before,they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight...."(Fitzgerald 110)
• "..an ambitious young reporter from New York arrived one morning [after Nick left Daisy's when he brought along Gatsby] at Gatsby's door and asked him if he had anything to say."(Fitzgerald 97)
• "This was his day off and with laudable initiative he had hurried out "to see.""(Fitzgerald 97)
• There is a period of unaccounted-for time between two of the scenes where Gatsby and Daisy meet up

• talks about all the types of people that attended Gatsby’s parties over the summer
• first major disruption in the chronology of the book, talks about the life of Gatsby; his family, education, time in the war, major achievements, many of which Nick is skeptical of
• the story returns to the present, where Nick, Gatsby, and Wolfsheim have lunch, more past stories are told
• soon after there is an abrupt shift in the setting and Nick goes back in time to discuss the relationship between Daisy and Gatsby
• "When I said you were a friend of Tom's, he started to abandon the whole idea. He doesn't know very much about Tom, though he says he's read a Chicago paper for years just on the chance of catching a glimpse of Daisy's name." (Fitzgerald 79)
• Jordan then reveals to Nick what the "big request" Gatsby was referring to earlier in the chapter was, he wants Nick to help reunite him and Daisy
• Well, about six weeks ago, she heard the name Gatsby for the first time in years. It was when I asked you – do you remember? – if you knew Gatsby in West Egg. After you had gone home she came into my room and woke me up, and said: "What Gatsby?" and when I described him – I was half asleep – she said in the strangest voice that it must be the man she used to know. It wasn't until then that I connected this Gatsby with the officer in her white car (Fitzgerald 77)

-The story closes with the ending of summer.

-This is a time when the fun (summer) is over.

-The leaves falling in autumn can represent dying such as Gatsby's love life, Myrtle, and the many relationships between characters.

-While much of the story is told in chronological order, there are many points in which the story is interrupted by a flashback

-Most of the flashbacks are clear and appropriate to whatever is happening in the story when they are told, so in many ways they help the story to flow smoother and more effectively

-These disruptions create tension and give out new information as Gatsby's plan emerges, but at the same time add mystery to Gatsby

-As new pieces of information are revealed about each of the characters, the reader's opinion/understanding can change dramatically

What might the summer represent?