Chapter Nine

Question 1

When does the narrative continue in Chapter Nine?

Answer 1

Two years later as Nick recounts the days shortly after Gatsby’s death.

Question 2

Who prowled around the mansion looking for answers?

Answer 2

Reporters prowl the mansion looking for stories - rumours swirl about the relationship between Gatsby, Wilson and Myrtle.

Question 3

What was Gatsby in both life and death?

Answer 3

Nothing more than a rumour spread by ‘new money’ socialites.

Question 4

What does Nick find himself becoming?

Answer 4

The primary contact for all matters relating to Gatsby - no one else wanted to be.

Question 5

What happens to Daisy and Tom?

Answer 5

They disappear with no forwarding address.

Question 6

Why does Meyer Wolfsheim say he cannot help?

Answer 6

Because of pressing business matter.

Question 7

How does Gatsby’s Father react to his death?

Answer 7

Henry C. Gatz sent a telegram three days after his death and arrives at his mansion a few days later.

Question 8

What does Henry C. Gatz appear as?

Answer 8

Old, dressed in cheap clothing and devastated by his sons death.

Question 9

What did Gatsby give up in his search for money?

Answer 9

His humble past and a father who truly loves him.

Question 10

Who is Klipspringer?

Answer 10

A man who takes residence in Gatsby’s house without providing anything in return.

Question 11

Klipspringer calls Nick and tells him what?

Answer 11

Nick tells him about the funeral but Klipspringer says he is busy at a picnic in Greenwich, Connecticut.
He does ask Nick to send him a pair of tennis shoes he has left at the mansion.

Question 12

What does Nick do in an effort to assemble more people to attend Gatsby’s funeral?

Answer 12

He goes to New York to Wolfsheim’s sketchy office.

Question 13

What does Wolfsheim discuss with Nick?

Answer 13

His early days of friendship with Gatsby - whom he claimed to have raised up ‘out of nothing.

Question 14

Why does Wolfsheim refuse to attend the funeral after Nick tries to persuade him?

Answer 14

Wolfsheim has a policy of not getting mixed up with murdered men.

Question 15

What does the stipulation that he raised Gatsby from nothing signify?

Answer 15

That money is everything.

Question 16

When Nick returns to the mansion for the funeral, who is there?

Answer 16

Nick, Henry Gatz and to Nick’s surprise - Owl Eyes.

Question 17

Why did Owl Eyes show up?

Answer 17

He pitied him as a ‘poor son of a bitch’.

Question 18

What does Nick describe the story of The Great Gatsby as?

Answer 18

A story of the west as this is where Tom, Nick, Daisy, Gatsby and Jordan were not from the East.

Question 19

What did Nick say about the East after Gatsby’s death?

Answer 19

That the East became haunted for him.

Question 20

What has the American Dream changed into?

Answer 20

A search into the East instead of the West now.

Question 21

What does Nick see the search into the East as?

Answer 21

Corrupt and deadening - people return to their past only to find ghosts.

Question 22

Why does Nick go to Jordan’s house and what does he find out?

Answer 22

To set things straight with her - Jordan tells him she is engaged to another man although Nick does not believe this.

Question 23

What does Jordan call Nick?

Answer 23

Being dishonest - Nick feels leaving angry and sorry.

Question 24

To what extent was Nick corrupted by the East?

Answer 24

Nick saw his relationship with Jordan as superficial - however, she appears to have truly loved him.

Question 25

What happens later that October?

Answer 25

Nick runs into Tom on fifth avenue - he refuses to shake Tom’s hand as he is told Tom told Wilson that Gatsby ran over Myrtle.

Question 26

What does Tom say he cried over?

Answer 26

Giving up the apartment in which he conducted his affair with Myrtle.

Question 27

What does Nick label Tom and Daisy as?

Answer 27

Nick does not tell Tom Daisy was behind the wheel but does label them as careless people who destroy things and then retreat back into their money.

Question 28

Why is Tom’s corruption so evident here?

Answer 28

He sees himself as the victim for losing his mistress.

Question 29

On his last night in West Egg before moving back to Minnesota, what does Nick do?

Answer 29

He walks down to Gatsby’s beach and looks over Long Island sound.

Question 30

What does Nick wonder whilst he is on Gatsby’s beach?

Answer 30

How the first settlers to America must have felt staring out at the ‘green beast’ of the continent.

Question 31

What does he imagine Gatsby feeling about the green light?

Answer 31

The same feeling as the first settlers as he realised the light across the bay belonged to Daisy Buchanan.

Question 32

Why are both American Dream’s similar?

Answer 32

Both dreams were noble yet more complicated and dangerous than anyone could have ever predicted.

Question 33

What does Nick describe Gatsby as?

Answer 33

A believer of the future and a man of promise and faith.

Question 34

How does Nick compare everyone to Gatsby?

Answer 34

Moving forward with their arm outstretched like Gatsby on the shore - like boats beating upstream against the current, looking to the future but searching for the past.
Each American Dream is an effort to regain a past already lost.