Chapter 5 & 6 Detailed Summary
Gatsby's extravagant parties and Nick's role
Nick returns home and observes Gatsby's house ablaze with lights.
Gatsby's house is described as resembling the world's fair due to the excessive lighting.
Gatsby suggests going to Coney Island or swimming, but Nick declines, citing the late hour.
Nick informs Gatsby about his conversation with Miss Baker and the plan to invite Daisy over for tea.
Gatsby initially feigns indifference but quickly becomes interested in the specific day for the tea party to cut the grass.
Gatsby hesitates and then offers Nick a business opportunity, hinting at a confidential sideline.
Nick declines Gatsby's offer because he feels it is inappropriate.
Gatsby expresses hope that Nick would initiate a conversation, but Nick is unresponsive, leading Gatsby to go home.
Nick invites Daisy for tea, warning her not to bring Tom.
A man arrives to cut Nick's grass, sent by Gatsby.
Gatsby sends a greenhouse filled with flowers to Nick's house.
Gatsby arrives, looking pale and sleepless, and anxiously asks if everything is all right.
Gatsby questions whether Nick has enough supplies for tea.
Gatsby stares blankly at a copy of Clay's 'Economics'.
Gatsby expresses his anxiety and considers leaving, fearing Daisy won't come.
Daisy arrives in a large open car, greeted by Nick.
Daisy asks Nick if he is in love with her.
Daisy instructs her chauffeur, Ferdie, to return in an hour.
Gatsby is found in the living room, looking pale and tragic.
Gatsby enters the living room and awkwardly greets Daisy.
Gatsby's nervousness is evident as he nearly knocks over a mantelpiece clock.
Gatsby apologizes for the clock incident.
Daisy and Gatsby reminisce about their last meeting, five years prior.
Nick suggests making tea to ease the tension.
Gatsby positions himself in the shadows while Daisy and Nick talk.
Gatsby follows Nick into the kitchen, expressing that the meeting is a mistake.
Nick reassures Gatsby, stating that Daisy is also embarrassed.
Nick urges Gatsby to be less rude and more considerate of Daisy.
Nick exits the house and observes Gatsby's mansion, reflecting on its history and the failed dreams of its original owner.
Nick notes the contrast between the grandeur of Gatsby's house and the mundane activities of the servants.
Nick returns to the house, sensing a change in the atmosphere.
Daisy's face is tear-streaked, but Gatsby is glowing with a newfound well-being.
Gatsby tells Daisy that it has stopped raining and invites Daisy and Nick to his house.
Gatsby boasts about how long it took him to earn the money to buy the house.
Gatsby initially claims he inherited his money but then corrects himself, saying he lost most of it in the war panic.
Gatsby mentions being in the drug and oil businesses.
Daisy admires Gatsby's mansion but wonders how he lives there alone.
Gatsby claims that it's always filled with interesting people.
Daisy admires Gatsby's gardens and the overall feudal silhouette of his estate.
Nick feels that there are guests concealed behind every piece of furniture.
They explore the mansion, including Marie Antoinette music rooms and Restoration salons.
They visit Gatsby's apartment, where they drink Chartreuse.
Gatsby is keen on Daisy's reactions to his possessions.
Gatsby nearly falls down a flight of stairs.
Daisy admires Gatsby's gold toilet set.
Gatsby is overwhelmed by Daisy's presence.
Gatsby shows Daisy his extensive collection of shirts, which moves her to tears.
Gatsby points out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock.
Gatsby realizes that the significance of the green light has diminished with Daisy's presence.
Nick notices a photograph of Dan Cody, Gatsby's former best friend.
Daisy admires a picture of Gatsby in yachting costume.
Gatsby shows Daisy clippings about her.
Gatsby receives a phone call and abruptly ends it.
Daisy admires the pink and golden clouds.
Gatsby suggests that Klipspringer play the piano.
Klipspringer is introduced, appearing embarrassed and disheveled.
Klipspringer insists that he is out of practice.
Gatsby insists that Klipspringer play the piano, creating a somber atmosphere.
Klipspringer plays 'The Love Nest'.
Gatsby commands Klipspringer to play, dismissing his protests.
The scene shifts to evening, with lights coming on and trains returning from New York.
Nick observes a change in Gatsby's expression, hinting at a doubt about his happiness.
Nick reflects on Gatsby's illusion of Daisy and how it may fall short of reality.
Nick notes that Gatsby adjusts himself and takes Daisy's hand with emotion.
Nick is forgotten as Gatsby and Daisy are engrossed in each other.
Nick leaves them together, descending the marble steps into the rain.
The reporter and Gatsby's past.
A reporter seeks a statement from Gatsby but is vague about the reason.
The reporter's instinct about Gatsby's notoriety is accurate.
Legends and rumors surround Gatsby, including the notion that he lives on a boat disguised as a house.
James Gatz changed his name to Jay Gatsby at age seventeen.
James Gatz was the son of shiftless, unsuccessful farm people.
Jay Gatsby sprang from his Platonic conception of himself, viewing himself as a son of God.
Gatsby worked various jobs along Lake Superior before meeting Dan Cody.
Gatsby knew women early but became contemptuous of them.
Gatsby's nights were filled with grotesque and fantastic conceits.
Gatsby briefly attended St. Olaf College but left due to its indifference to his dreams.
Gatsby met Dan Cody when Cody's yacht dropped anchor on Lake Superior.
Cody was a product of the Nevada silver fields and the Yukon, seeking metal since 1875.
Cody was a millionaire but vulnerable to manipulation by women like Ella Kaye.
Ella Kaye sent Cody to sea in a yacht.
Gatsby met Cody at Little Girl Bay.
Gatsby impressed Cody with his quickness and ambition.
Cody bought Gatsby clothes and employed him in various roles on his yacht.
The arrangement lasted five years until Ella Kaye came aboard and Cody died.
Gatsby inherited a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars from Cody, but he didn't get it due to legal manipulation by Ella Kaye.
Gatsby's education and the vague contour of Jay Gatsby filled out to the substantiality of a man.
Nick wants to clear this set of misconceptions away.
Nick didn't see him for several weeks.
Nick visited Gatsby's house one Sunday afternoon.
Tom Buchanan arrives; they were a party of three on horseback—Tom and a man named Sloane and a pretty woman in a brown riding habit.
Gatsby is profoundly affected by the fact that Tom was there, realizes that was all they came for.
Sloane wanted nothing.
Gatsby turned to Tom, 'I believe we’ve met somewhere before, Mr. Buchanan.'
Tom, gruffly polite but obviously not remembering; 'So we did. I remember very well.'
Gatsby knows Tom's wife.
Sloane didn’t enter into the conversation.
The woman became cordial after two highballs.
The woman invited Gatsby to the next party, But Sloane said, 'think ought to be starting home.'
Gatsby urged them to stay.
The lady enthusiastically invited them to have supper.
Sloane got to his feet directed at the woman only.
Gatsby wanted to go but didn’t see that Mr. Sloane had determined he shouldn’t.
She urged, concentrating on Gatsby.
They don’t want him to come.
Gatsby, with hat and overcoat in hand, came out the front door.
Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy’s running around alone, for on the following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby’s party.
There were the same people, but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn’t been there before.
It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment.
Daisy’s voice was playing murmurous tricks in her throat.
'These things excite me SO,' she whispered.
They don’t go around very much, Daisy wanted to see the faces of many people she’s heard about.
Daisy indicates a gorgeous, scarcely human orchid of a woman who sat in state under a white plum tree.
Tom and Daisy stared.
Gatsby identified a small producer (Man with the blue nose).
Gatsby danced with Daisy, and they sauntered over to my house and sat on the steps.
Tom appeared from his oblivion as we were sitting down to supper, 'A fellow’s getting off some funny stuff.'
Daisy said the girl Tom was with was ‘common but pretty.’
We were at a particularly tipsy table.
Gatsby had been called to the phone and I’d enjoyed these same people only two weeks before.
The massive and lethargic woman spoke to Miss Baedeker’s defence.
'Oh, she’s all right now. When she’s had five or six cocktails she always starts screaming like that. I tell her she ought to leave it alone.'
‘Anything I hate is to get my head stuck in a pool,’ mumbled Miss Baedeker.
the moving picture director and his Star were observed.
Daisy was appalled by West Egg.
Tom wondered if Gatsby was a bootlegger.
She was appalled by West Egg’s raw vigor.
Gatsby Asked Nick to see if she liked the party; she didn’t.
*The dance felt unimportant to Gatsby.Gatsby wanted Daisy to say she never loved Tom, and they would go back to Louisville and be married from her house—just as if it were five years ago.
You can’t repeat the past.
Gatsby cries, 'Why of course you can!'
I thought it was a dream as he wanted to fix everything just the way it was before and reclaim his past with Daisy.
Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalk actually formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees—he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.
At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the in- carnation was complete.