After almost five years of being separated from his beloved Daisy, Jay finally has the opportunity to reconnect with her through Nick. As Nick has just returned home from a night on the town, he is greeted by a very anxious Gatsby as he enlists his help to set up a meeting between the two. After agreeing to do so, Jay then realizes that Nick does not have the same means of upkeep as he does at his house and immediately requests for his lawn to be cut and to decorate his house with dozens of flowers to impress Daisy. When the day finally comes, Gatsby is so nervous and jittery that as soon as Daisy arrives, he leaves Nick’s house only to walk around and ring the front doorbell so as to not make it seem like he had been waiting for her. Jay is so disgruntled that he is not as suave as he usually is, as he insists to Nick “this is a terrible mistake”, for he is unable to cover up his feelings for her through a lie as she is the only person who knew him before his wealth, implying that she is the only one who knows the true Jay Gatsby. Nick finds an excuse to leave the two alone to talk amongst themselves and to his surprise, when he returns, the two have transitioned from a mutual embarrassment to astounding joy: “They were sitting at either end if the couch, looking at each other as if some question had been asked, or was in the air, and every vestige of embarrassment was gone… but there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room” (p.89).
Jay then proposes that they transition to his house, and when Nick and Jay have a moment alone to discuss the splendidness of the Gatsby mansion, jay reveals that it took him three years to earn the money to perfect what he had built, not remembering that he told Nick he inherited his money, to which he had to cover up by saying he lost money in a business: “I think he hardly knew what he was saying, for when I asked him what business he was in he answered: ‘That’s my affair,’ before he realized that it wasn’t an appropriate reply” (p.90). Jay uses the grandiosity of his mansion to cover up the elaborate lie he is telling everyone of his life, as he is unable to keep his story straight about what he does reveal to people, Nick in particular, and never discusses his childhood, revealing that Jay has a dark past; literally because we know nothing about him, and also figuratively for only people who have something to hide do not reveal much about themselves, therefore Jay has a mysterious past that he does not wish to share with people and makes his life so interesting and elaborate, with his mansion and parties, so that people will be so distracted that they will not think to inquire of his background.
However, once they arrive at Jay’s mansion he is consumed with wonder as he watches Daisy’s each and every movement and gesture: “He hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real” (p.91). Daisy mentions that she loves his mansion but cannot picture him living there alone in it, which is ironic as he built the house to what it is all for her and to win her love back from the man she married, which should be him. His bedroom was the most simple room in the house to show how lonely he is and that he has been waiting for Daisy all this time to join him and decorate their bedroom, for that is the room a couple spends a lot of time in but it is also the most intimate room in the house and the only true room in which it would belong equally to both, which is why it was so bare because he was waiting for her so that they could divide it accordingly.
Jay then proposes that they transition to his house, and when Nick and Jay have a moment alone to discuss the splendidness of the Gatsby mansion, jay reveals that it took him three years to earn the money to perfect what he had built, not remembering that he told Nick he inherited his money, to which he had to cover up by saying he lost money in a business: “I think he hardly knew what he was saying, for when I asked him what business he was in he answered: ‘That’s my affair,’ before he realized that it wasn’t an appropriate reply” (p.90). Jay uses the grandiosity of his mansion to cover up the elaborate lie he is telling everyone of his life, as he is unable to keep his story straight about what he does reveal to people, Nick in particular, and never discusses his childhood, revealing that Jay has a dark past; literally because we know nothing about him, and also figuratively for only people who have something to hide do not reveal much about themselves, therefore Jay has a mysterious past that he does not wish to share with people and makes his life so interesting and elaborate, with his mansion and parties, so that people will be so distracted that they will not think to inquire of his background.
However, once they arrive at Jay’s mansion he is consumed with wonder as he watches Daisy’s each and every movement and gesture: “He hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real” (p.91). Daisy mentions that she loves his mansion but cannot picture him living there alone in it, which is ironic as he built the house to what it is all for her and to win her love back from the man she married, which should be him. His bedroom was the most simple room in the house to show how lonely he is and that he has been waiting for Daisy all this time to join him and decorate their bedroom, for that is the room a couple spends a lot of time in but it is also the most intimate room in the house and the only true room in which it would belong equally to both, which is why it was so bare because he was waiting for her so that they could divide it accordingly.