Finished Gatsby again today, first time I've read it in 8.5 years. Couple of points to discuss if anyone's interested. (Don't read this if you haven't read the book).
At first, it struck me as odd that Fitz began the book with the following line:
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
It's even stranger when you consider that of all the major characters, Gatsby is the only one who didn't grow up with those advantages, and he more than makes up for it by the time the novel begins. So I think that's a wink and a nod in Gatsby's favor, but after plunging further into the passage, I think the more important part is that this line sets up Nick's statement that he, as a result of this advice, tries not to judge people, and that "Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope."
And that, in a nutshell, sums up the secondary tragedy of the book. By the end, he is unreservedly judging Tom and Daisy as people who break up people's lives. That infinite hope has been lost to him, perhaps forever, which may be why he's still turning the advice over in his head two years after the incident, in a vain attempt to reclaim it.
The second thing that struck me was Jordan's quote in their last meeting. After breaking off the relationship with Nick, she tells him, "You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I? I mean it was careless of me to take such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride."
Obviously, the other bad driver was Nick, and she's accusing him of hurting her by being dishonest. Since I can't think of a single instance of him lying to her in the text (and please correct me if I'm wrong), I assume she means that he was faking his feelings towards her, that he was using her without ever loving or being in love with her.
I'll speak in defense of Nick. Throughout the book, his affection for her seems real and genuine; even at their last meeting he says he's half in love with her. Yet at the same time, most of his descriptions of her are negative; she's scornful, dishonest, always has her chin in the air, etc. But I think when he had his infinite hope, he could look past it all, refrain from judging, romanticize their present and future. Only when that's gone do his feelings for her fade. It's the night Myrtle is killed that he for the first time thinks "I'd had enough of them all for one day, and suddenly that included Jordan too." The only deception, if there was one, was him fooling himself into believing that their relationship could ever work.
I suspect no one will read this (maybe SCD), but you're cheating yourself if you don't read the book itself.