Gatsby's First Party
Gatsby's First Party is the spectacular summer gathering at Jay Gatsby's West Egg mansion that introduces Nick Carraway to his enigmatic neighbor and sets the stage for the novel's central romance. The event, described in Chapter 3, is the first of Gatsby's legendary parties that Nick attends, and it is here that he finally meets the host whose name has been whispered about with wild speculation. The party serves as a dazzling display of Gatsby's wealth and social ambition, but it also reveals the loneliness and mystery at the heart of his character, as well as the romantic purpose behind his extravagant lifestyle.
The Setting and Atmosphere
The party unfolds against the backdrop of Gatsby's colossal mansion, a factual imitation of a Normandy Hotel de Ville with a tower, marble swimming pool, and over forty acres of lawn and garden. Throughout the summer nights, music drifts from the house, and men and girls move through the blue gardens "like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars." The preparations are elaborate: every Friday, five crates of oranges and lemons arrive from a New York fruiterer, and by Monday they leave as a pyramid of pulpless halves. A machine in the kitchen can extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour. At least once a fortnight, caterers bring several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of the garden. The buffet tables groan with spiced baked hams, salads of harlequin designs, and pastry pigs and turkeys. In the main hall, a bar with a real brass rail is stocked with gins, liquors, and cordials so forgotten that most of the female guests are too young to know one from another. By seven o'clock, a full orchestra of oboes, trombones, saxophones, viols, cornets, piccolos, and drums has arrived, and the cars from New York park five deep in the drive.
The Guests and Their Behavior
Nick observes that he is one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited—they simply went there, getting into automobiles that bore them out to Long Island and somehow ending up at Gatsby's door. Once there, they conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with amusement parks, sometimes coming and going without ever meeting Gatsby at all. Nick himself received a surprisingly formal note from Gatsby's chauffeur in a robin's-egg blue uniform, signed "Jay Gatsby" in a majestic hand. The party is filled with young Englishmen, all well dressed and looking a little hungry, talking in low, earnest voices to solid and prosperous Americans, presumably selling bonds, insurance, or automobiles. Among the guests are the two girls in yellow dresses, one named Lucille, who tells Jordan Baker that when she tore her gown at a previous party, Gatsby sent her a new one from Croirier's worth two hundred and sixty-five dollars. The girls share rumors that Gatsby killed a man once or was a German spy during the war, testimony to the romantic speculation he inspires.
Nick's Encounter with Gatsby
Nick wanders the party feeling ill at ease until he spots Jordan Baker, who has come to Gatsby's party. Together they explore the house, entering a high Gothic library panelled with carved English oak, where they meet a stout, middle-aged man with enormous owl-eyed spectacles who is drunk and marveling at the books. He insists the books are real, with pages and everything, and shows them Volume One of the "Stoddard Lectures," declaring Gatsby a "regular Belasco" for his thoroughness and realism. Later, Nick sits with Jordan at a table where he meets a man who recognizes him from the Third Division during the war. They talk about wet, gray little villages in France, and the man invites Nick to go up in his hydroplane the next morning. When Nick mentions that he hasn't seen the host, the man smiles and says, "I'm Gatsby." Nick is astonished, having expected a florid and corpulent person in his middle years. Gatsby's smile is one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance, understanding the person just as far as they want to be understood. He is an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, with elaborate formality of speech that just misses being absurd.
The Party's Course and Gatsby's Isolation
As the evening progresses, the orchestra plays Vladimir Tostoff's "Jazz History of the World," which attracted much attention at Carnegie Hall. Gatsby stands alone on the marble steps, looking from one group to another with approving eyes, his tanned skin drawn attractively tight on his face. Nick notices that Gatsby does not drink, which seems to set him off from his guests, and that no one swoons backward on Gatsby, no French bob touches his shoulder, and no singing quartets are formed with his head for one link. Gatsby's butler summons Jordan Baker for a private conversation, and when she returns, she whispers to Nick that she has just heard the most amazing thing, but she swore she wouldn't tell. The party continues with a celebrated tenor singing in Italian and a notorious contralto singing in jazz, while people do stunts all over the garden. A pair of stage twins, who turn out to be the girls in yellow, do a baby act in costume, and champagne is served in glasses bigger than finger-bowls.
The Aftermath and Significance
As Nick prepares to leave, he witnesses a bizarre scene: a new coupe that left Gatsby's drive not two minutes before has crashed into a ditch, violently shorn of one wheel. The man in a long duster, the owl-eyed man from the library, explains that he wasn't even trying to drive—there's another man in the car. The other man, pale and dangling, steps out of the wreck, asking if they ran out of gas and wondering where there's a gasoline station. The caterwauling horns reach a crescendo as Nick turns away and cuts across the lawn toward home. He glances back once to see a wafer of a moon shining over Gatsby's house, and a sudden emptiness seems to flow from the windows and great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host, who stands on the porch with his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell. The party establishes Gatsby's reputation as a lavish host and introduces the central mystery of his identity, which Nick will spend the summer unraveling. It also foreshadows the emptiness beneath the splendor, as Gatsby remains isolated even in the midst of hundreds of guests, and the green light on Daisy's dock, which Nick glimpsed on the night he first saw Gatsby stretching out his arms toward the dark water, begins to take on its profound significance.
