Car Accident After Gatsby's Party

As the last guests drifted away from Gatsby's mansion in the early hours of the morning, the evening was not quite over. Fifty feet from the front door, a dozen headlights illuminated a bizarre and tumultuous scene: a new coupe that had left Gatsby's drive not two minutes before rested in the ditch beside the road, right side up but violently shorn of one wheel. The sharp jut of a wall had accounted for the detachment of the wheel, which was now receiving considerable attention from half a dozen curious chauffeurs. Their cars, left blocking the road, produced a harsh, discordant din from those in the rear, adding to the already violent confusion of the scene.

The Wreck and Its Driver

A man in a long duster had dismounted from the wreck and stood in the middle of the road, looking from the car to the tire and from the tire to the observers in a pleasant, puzzled way. "See!" he explained. "It went in the ditch." The fact was infinitely astonishing to him. Nick Carraway recognized him as the stout, middle-aged man with enormous owl-eyed spectacles who had been sitting drunk on the edge of a great table in Gatsby's high Gothic library, marvelling that the books were real. When asked how the accident happened, Owl Eyes shrugged his shoulders. "I know nothing whatever about mechanics," he said decisively. Pressed further, he explained indignantly, "I wasn't even trying." An awed hush fell upon the bystanders. "Do you want to commit suicide?" someone asked. "You're lucky it was just a wheel! A bad driver and not even TRYing!" Owl Eyes clarified that he wasn't driving; there was another man in the car.

The Second Passenger Emerges

The shock of this declaration found voice in a sustained "Ah-h-h!" as the door of the coupe swung slowly open. The crowd stepped back involuntarily, and after a ghostly pause, a pale, dangling individual stepped out of the wreck, pawing tentatively at the ground with a large uncertain dancing shoe. Blinded by the glare of the headlights and confused by the incessant groaning of the horns, the apparition stood swaying for a moment before he perceived the man in the duster. "Wha's matter?" he inquired calmly. "Did we run outa gas?" Half a dozen fingers pointed at the amputated wheel; he stared at it for a moment, then looked upward as though he suspected it had dropped from the sky. "It came off," someone explained. He nodded. "At first I din' notice we'd stopped." After a pause, taking a long breath and straightening his shoulders, he remarked in a determined voice, "Wonder'ff tell me where there's a gas'line station?" At least a dozen men explained to him that wheel and car were no longer joined by any physical bond. "Back out," he suggested after a moment. "Put her in reverse." "But the WHEEL'S off!" He hesitated. "No harm in trying," he said.

The Aftermath and Significance

The caterwauling horns had reached a crescendo, and Nick turned away and cut across the lawn toward home. He glanced back once: a wafer of a moon was shining over Gatsby's house, making the night fine as before, surviving the laughter and the sound of his still glowing garden. A sudden emptiness seemed to flow from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host, who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell. The accident, with its absurd, almost surreal quality, serves as a comic coda to the evening's excesses, a moment of pure, consequence-free chaos that underscores the carelessness and unreality of Gatsby's world. The participants, utterly detached from the mechanical reality of their situation, treat the wreck as a minor inconvenience or a curious puzzle, foreshadowing the more serious accidents and moral evasions to come. The image of Gatsby standing alone, isolated on his porch after the laughter and the lights have faded, prefigures the loneliness and tragedy that will eventually consume him.