mahjae05’s Blog

“We slowed down. Taking a white card from his wallet, he waved it before the man’s eyes. ‘Right you are,’ agreed the policeman, tipping his cap. ‘Know you next time, Mr. Gatsby. Excuse me!’” pg 68

The white “get out of jail free” card that Gatsby shows the police officer seemed very interesting to me in a few senses. First, and most obvious, is that the card is white, a very prominent color throughout the story.  This white shows Gatsby’s power in this very powerful society.  What got him all this power though?  The reader knows very little about Gatsby’s past and his rise to West Egg power.  As people said at his party, he could possibly be a bootlegger, and our encounter with the ominous Meyer Wolfsheim seems to back that idea up pretty well.  This seems ironic by the end of the chapter though when the reader learns about his love and plan to “recapture” Daisy.  Gatsby believes that the thing of purity and beauty will somehow become attracted to a life created by insincere practices. The song at the end of the chapter seemed quite like foreshadowing but regardless, it seems quite hard for Gatsby to come out of this situation unscathed.