Buchanans'+home

__ The Buchanan’s home __

Tom and Daisy Buchanan live in an extravagant home, where the most significant scenes of the novel occur. In the first chapter, most of the characters are introduced to the narrator and the reader while at the Buchanan’s, thus providing the context for our **first impressions**. The next time Nick (the narrator) takes us back to the Buchanan’s home, which is the **turning point** of the novel, is in chapter 7. The last time we are brought to the house the reader becomes aware of the **evolution** of Nick as well as the characters. The Buchanan house is thus both the setting for and the embodiment of the superficial charm from which Nick ultimately turns away. It is the ideal backdrop for the coupling and uncoupling of such a group of materialistic and shallow people. **In the first chapter, when Nick comes to the Buchanan’s house for the first time, Fitzgerald introduces the reader to the characters through Nick’s first impressions of Jordan Baker, Tom Buchanan and his wife Daisy and of the lifestyle they live.**
 * “Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay.”(Page 6)
 * Nick already expects very lavish house because Buchanan’s are materialistic: display wealth through grand house with a magnificent view
 * “The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon…” (Page 7)
 * Tom Buchanan’s split lives—spacious, glamorous home with Daisy, compared to crammed and tasteless one room apartment with lover Myrtle
 * “The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon.” (page 8)
 * The house being rather empty and bare, symbolizes the marriage between Tom and Daisy, outwardly “perfect” but inside rather dull
 * Couch being the only furniture in the entire room, again, house just there to present stableness, high-class, “American Dream”
 * “They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house.” (page 8)
 * Nick describes Daisy and Jordan as light and breezy
 * Their white dresses symbolize innocence, purity

**The next time Nick takes us back to the Buchanan’s home is in chapter 7 when Gatsby, as well as Daisy, Tom and Jordan, is at their home. This chapter the turning point of the novel, where tension and anger fill the house as Daisy and Gatsby, and Tom and Myrtle’s respective affairs are revealed.**
 * "As he left the room again she got up and went over to Gatsby and pulled his face down, kissing him on the mouth” (Page 116)
 * Daisy kissing Gatsby in her own house, dramatizes her brazenness
 * Parallel to how Tom openly talks to Myrtle in the Wilson’s garage
 * “ ‘Ah,’ she cried, ‘you look so cool.’ Their eyes met, and they stared together at each other, alone in space”
 * “You always look so cool” She had told him that she loves him and Tom Buchanan saw.” (Page 119)
 * Tom finally finds out about his wife’s affair
 * “Daisy and Jordan lay upon an enormous couch, like silver idols weighing down their own white dresses against the singing breeze of the fans” (page 115)
 * Daisy and Jordan’s dress weighed down with secrets
 * Nick had originally described their dresses as light and breezy

**Within the same chapter, we are yet again brought back to the Buchanan’s but this time only outside the house. The house lends itself to illustrate the evolution of the characters**. **GATSBY:** **NICK:** **DAISY:** **TOM:**
 * “He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to his scrutiny of the house, as though my presence marred the sacredness of the vigil.” (Page 146)
 * Gatsby waiting outside of Daisy’s home, demonstrates his loyalty towards her
 * Gatsby is back at square one of the story; once again he is on the outside of Daisy’s, life like in the beginning of the story
 * “So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight—watching over nothing” (page 146)
 * Moonlight symbolizes “hope”
 * A moon disappears and reappears, just like hope
 * “For all I knew he [Gatsby] was going to rob the house in a moment, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see sinister faces, the faces of ‘Wolfsheim’s people,’ behind him in the dark shrubbery.” (Page 144)
 * House is the setting for Nick’s rush to judgment, despite his father’s admonition to at least appear non-judgmental
 * “I’d be damned if I’d go in; I’d had enough of all of them for one day, and suddenly that included Jordan too.” (Page 143)
 * Nick rejects both the house and its occupants
 * “They weren’t happy…and yet they weren’t unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together” (Page 146)
 * Although Tom does not make her happy, she feels need to stay in beautiful surroundings and play the flawless materialistic wife.
 * “Tom and Daisy were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table…He was talking intently across the table at her, and in his earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her own” (page 146)
 * Tom remains stagnant throughout the whole novel, not evolving or dramatically changing
 * Continues to take control of Daisy and “own” her