The Great Gatsby Chapter 6

1. The Great Gatsby: Chapter 6(pg97-111)

2. Nick tells the real history of Jay Gatsby by revealing that his real, at least legal name, was James Gatz, born in North Dakota and dropped from high school after 2 weeks. On Lake Superior he meets Dan Cody who takes him in as a yacht assistant and to watch over Cody when he gets drunk making Gatsby realize the dangers of being an alcoholic and so decides to not become a drinker himself. Cody dies a week after meeting a women named Ella Kaye, Cody left Gatsby $25,000 as inheritance but somehow Ella took Gatsby's inheritance away. Nick visits Gatsby one afternoon to see Tom and Mr. and Mrs. Sloane. Tom and Daisy go to Gatsby's party, Daisy and Gatsby dance, and after the party Tom shows he already distrusts Gatsby and his time with Daisy by saying that he wants to learn who Gatsby is, what he does, and says that he might be a bootlegger. Gatsby tells Nick that he thought Daisy had a horrible time at the party, wants to make things the way they were back then and Nick tells Gatsby that the past cannot be redone but Gatsby does not believe this and says he will make everything the way they were in Louisville.

3. Dan Cody

"Cody was fifty years old then, a product of the Nevada silver fields, of the Yukon, of every rush for metal since seventy-five."(Gatsby 99)

Qualities:

" The transactions in Montana copper that made him many times a millionaire found him physically robust but on the verge of soft-mindedness, and, suspecting this, an infinite number of women tried to separate him from his money." (Gatsby 99)

" for Dan Cody sober knew what lavish doings Dan Cody drunk might soon be about, and he provided for such contingencies by reposing more and more trust in Gatsby." (Gatsby 100)

" I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsby's bedroom, a gray, florid man with a hard, empty face-the pioneer debauchee, who during one phase of American life brought back to the Eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon." (Gatsby 100)

Dan Cody was earlier seen in a picture with Gatsby when he was 18 in yachting uniforms. Dan Cody was the reason why Gatsby drank little and because of this he put a lot of trust into Gatsby which might have later led to him giving $25,000 to Gatsby as an inheritance which was unfortunately later taken legally by Ella Kaye, Cody's mistress. Cody played the role of showing Gatsby the wonders of the world when it says," that yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world." (Gatsby 100) I thought that Dan Cody might have represented a fatherly figure when it showed him with Gatsby in a picture in Chapter 5. Cody might have also been the cause to the creation of Jay Gatsby from James Gatz's imagination.

4. " It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon in a torn green jersey and a pair of canvas pants, but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a rowboat, pulled out to the Tuolomee, and informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour." (Gatsby 98)

When I read this quote it seemed like Gatsby was throwing his lower class identity of James Gatz and planned on assuming a new higher class identity as Jay Gatsby by joining with Dan Cody. Gatsby wanted to attain the wealth and glamour and showed he was ambitious when the novel mentions," At any rate Cody asked him a few questions (one of them elicited the brand new name) and found that he was quick and extravagantly ambitious."(Gatsby 100) This also seemed important because assuming the name of Jay Gatsby he was "faithful to the end" showing that Nick might outlive Gatsby who will continue to use Jay Gatsby, his higher class identity.