The Sheik of Araby

The Sheik of Araby is a popular song from the early 1920s that appears in The Great Gatsby as a fragment of popular culture, sung by girls in Central Park during a pivotal moment of romantic and narrative tension between Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker. Its lyrics, which evoke a romanticized, exoticized fantasy of a desert lover who creeps into a beloved's tent at night, resonate with the novel's themes of longing, illusion, and the pursuit of an idealized other. The song's appearance marks a moment of transition in Nick's relationship with Jordan, as he draws her closer while the voices of unseen girls rise through the hot twilight, blending the promise of romance with the ephemeral quality of a summer night's entertainment.

Appearance and Context

The song is heard in Chapter 4, after Jordan Baker has finished telling Nick the story of Daisy Buchanan's past with Jay Gatsby. The two are driving in a victoria through Central Park as the sun goes down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in the West Fifties. The clear voices of girls, already gathered like crickets on the grass, rise through the hot twilight, singing "I'm the Sheik of Araby. / Your love belongs to me. / At night when you're are asleep / Into your tent I'll creep——" The fragment is cut off mid-line, as if the song itself is as fleeting and incomplete as the summer evening. The setting—a park at dusk, with the city's glamour and the heat of the day still lingering—creates a mood of suspended time, a moment of romantic possibility that is both immediate and already fading.

Thematic Resonance

The lyrics of The Sheik of Araby, with their image of a lover who claims ownership and invades the beloved's private space, echo the novel's central dynamics of pursuit and possession. Gatsby's entire quest is to reclaim Daisy, to creep back into her life and assert that her love belongs to him. The song's exoticism—its evocation of an Arabian sheik—also mirrors the way Gatsby himself is mythologized by his guests, who whisper that he is a German spy, a murderer, or a nephew of Kaiser Wilhelm. Just as the song packages a fantasy of the Orient for popular consumption, Gatsby's persona is a constructed fantasy, a self-invented figure who embodies the promise of the exotic and the forbidden. The girls singing in the park are part of the same cultural landscape that produces Gatsby's parties, where the orchestra plays "yellow cocktail music" and the Jazz History of the World is performed.

Narrative Function

The song appears at a crucial juncture in Nick's personal story. Immediately after hearing Jordan's revelation about Gatsby and Daisy, Nick puts his arm around Jordan's golden shoulder, draws her toward him, and asks her to dinner. The phrase "I'm the Sheik of Araby" beats in his ears with a sort of heady excitement, followed by the thought: "There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired." The song thus becomes a soundtrack for Nick's own romantic impulse, a moment when he is both the pursuer and the pursued. Yet the song's fragmentary nature—its abrupt cutoff—foreshadows the impermanence of his connection with Jordan. Later, in Chapter 9, their relationship ends, and Nick reflects on the carelessness of Tom and Daisy, the people who "smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money." The Sheik of Araby, with its promise of a love that is both possessive and theatrical, belongs to the same world of illusion that Gatsby inhabits—a world where desire is projected onto a distant, unattainable figure, and where the song itself is just another passing entertainment in a summer of parties and heartbreak.