When Nick runs into Tom in late October after Gatsby's death, he asks Tom what Tom told Wilson about Myrtle's death. Tom says he told Wilson the "truth"--that Gatsby had run Myrtle over and kept on going:
He ran over Myrtle like you'd run over a dog and never even stopped his car.
Of course, that wasn't the truth: Daisy was driving the car, and Daisy killed Myrtle. But a deeper "truth" that Tom lies about is his own relationship with Myrtle. Wilson knew that Myrtle was having an affair, but he never knew it was with Tom. To save himself, Tom steers the half-crazed, armed Wilson to Gatsby. Tom tries to defend himself for doing that:
That fellow [Gatsby] had it coming to him. He threw dust into your eyes just like he did in Daisy's, but he was a tough one.
But Gatsby also contributes to his own downfall by deceiving himself. He can't give up the notion, even when it's clear that Daisy has chosen Tom, that somehow she'll come back to him. A quote that shows that Daisy is returning her loyalty to Tom in the Plaza hotel room is the following:
But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he [Gatsby] gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room.
Gatsby should have realized then that Daisy wasn't going to leave Tom, for she signaled it clearly, but instead, he was "undespairing." He kept up hope, the next day hanging around his home and floating in his pool, waiting for her call, which gave Wilson a chance to kill him.
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
What are some quotes that explain how deception is responsible for Gatsby's downfall?
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