My Favorite Passage

       My favorite passage from the Great Gatsby is on page 125, paragraph 2. It starts with a rather passive aggressive statement. Fitzgerald writes, "There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind," (125). But he does not stop there. Fitzgerald goes on to explain how Tom's "simple mind" is becoming "confused". And this "confusion" is cause by, of course, two women: Daisy and Myrtle Wilson. He refers to them, not by name, but simple as "His wife and his mistress," (125). This, coupled with the exclamation that they were "slipping from his control," gives the impression that they belong to him.

       This paragraph also discusses the motif of speed. Fitzgerald writes, "Instinct made him step on the accelerator with the double purpose of overtaking Daisy and leaving Wilson behind," (125). This supports the claim that speeding makes people feel more in control of their lives. In this passage Tom is attempting to run away from the issues that he has created. He is simply trying to regain some of the control that he has lost. But of course you cannot simply run away from a difficult situation. This is shown by the last sentence of the paragraph, where "Form meets content," (Valentino). This sentence is clearly a run on and could have easily been broken up, but Fitzgerald keeps it as a run on because it symbolizes the fact that the struggle in Tom's mind is not over. This passage very clearly touches on multiple key points of the novel, and that is why I chose to blog about it.