1917

1917 is the year that gives the novel its originating romantic wound. It is the year in which Jay Gatsby, then a penniless young officer, meets Daisy Fay in Louisville, Kentucky, and the year in which their brief, intense love affair begins. Everything that follows in the story—Gatsby's accumulation of wealth, his purchase of a mansion in West Egg, his lavish parties, and his ultimately fatal attempt to recapture the past—is a direct consequence of the events of this single year.

The Meeting and the Romance

In 1917, Daisy Fay was eighteen years old, two years older than Jordan Baker, and by far the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville. She dressed in white, drove a little white roadster, and all day long the telephone rang in her house as excited young officers from Camp Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that night. It was in this context that Jordan Baker, walking along the sidewalks and lawns one October day, came opposite Daisy's house and saw her sitting in her white roadster with a lieutenant she had never seen before. They were so engrossed in each other that Daisy did not see Jordan until she was five feet away. The officer looked at Daisy while she was speaking in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at sometime, and because it seemed romantic to Jordan, she remembered the incident ever after. His name was Jay Gatsby. For Gatsby, Daisy was the first "nice" girl he had ever known. He found her excitingly desirable. He went to her house, at first with other officers from Camp Taylor, then alone. It amazed him—he had never been in such a beautiful house before. What gave it an air of breathless intensity was that Daisy lived there; it was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at camp was to him. He knew that he was in Daisy's house by a colossal accident. However glorious might be his future as Jay Gatsby, he was at present a penniless young man without a past, and at any moment the invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders. So he made the most of his time. He took what he could get, ravenously and unscrupulously—eventually he took Daisy one still October night, took her because he had no real right to touch her hand. He had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he let her believe that he was a person from much the same stratum as herself—that he was fully able to take care of her. As a matter of fact, he had no such facilities. But he did not despise himself, and it did not turn out as he had imagined. He had intended, probably, to take what he could and go—but now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail. He knew that Daisy was extraordinary, but he did not realize just how extraordinary a "nice" girl could be. She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing. He felt married to her, that was all.

The Parting and Its Consequences

The romance of 1917 was cut short by the war. Gatsby served in World War I, and after the Armistice he tried frantically to get home, but some complication or misunderstanding sent him to Oxford instead. He was worried now—there was a quality of nervous despair in Daisy's letters. She did not see why he could not come. She was feeling the pressure of the world outside, and she wanted to see him and feel his presence beside her and be reassured that she was doing the right thing after all. For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of the year. Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the season; suddenly she was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with half a dozen men. And all the time something within her was crying for a decision. She wanted her life shaped now, immediately—and the decision must be made by some force—of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality—that was close at hand. That force took shape in the middle of spring with the arrival of Tom Buchanan. Daisy was flattered. The letter from Daisy, telling Gatsby of her engagement to Tom, reached him while he was still at Oxford. Wild rumors had circulated about Daisy that winter—how her mother had found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say good-by to a soldier who was going overseas. She was effectually prevented, but she was not on speaking terms with her family for several weeks. After that she did not play around with the soldiers any more, but only with a few flat-footed, short-sighted young men in town who could not get into the army at all. By the next autumn she was gay again, gay as ever. She had a debut after the Armistice, and in February she was presumably engaged to a man from New Orleans. In June she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago, with more pomp and circumstance than Louisville ever knew before. The day before the wedding, Tom gave her a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. On the night before the bridal dinner, Jordan Baker found Daisy lying on her bed as lovely as the June night in her flowered dress—and as drunk as a monkey. She had a bottle of Sauterne in one hand and a letter in the other. She muttered, "'Gratulate me. Never had a drink before, but oh how I do enjoy it." She groped around in a waste-basket and pulled out the string of pearls. "Take 'em down-stairs and give 'em back to whoever they belong to. Tell 'em all Daisy's change' her mine. Say: 'Daisy's change' her mine!'" She began to cry—she cried and cried. Jordan rushed out and found her mother's maid, and they locked the door and got her into a cold bath. Daisy would not let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her and squeezed it up into a wet ball, and only let Jordan leave it in the soap-dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow. But she did not say another word. They gave her spirits of ammonia and put ice on her forehead and hooked her back into her dress, and half an hour later, when they walked out of the room, the pearls were around her neck and the incident was over. Next day at five o'clock she married Tom Buchanan without so much as a shiver, and started off on a three months' trip to the South Seas.

The Enduring Legacy

The events of 1917 created a template of desire that Gatsby spent the rest of his life trying to replicate. He bought his mansion in West Egg specifically so that Daisy would be just across the bay. He threw his extravagant parties in the hope that she might wander in. When Nick Carraway arranged their reunion, Gatsby's entire performance—the white flannel suit, the tour of the house, the cascading shirts—was an attempt to reenact and perfect the romance of 1917. He wanted nothing less than that Daisy should go to Tom and say, "I never loved you." After she had obliterated four years with that sentence, they could decide upon the more practical measures to be taken. One of them was that, after she was free, they were to go back to Louisville and be married from her house—just as if it were five years ago. "Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!" But the past could not be repeated. The green light at the end of Daisy's dock, which Gatsby had stretched out his arms toward on that first night Nick saw him, had seemed as close as a star to the moon. After the reunion, it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one. The year 1917, with its promise of a love that could transcend class and circumstance, remained the fixed point around which Gatsby's entire life revolved—and the source of the tragic gap between his dream and reality.