There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and he champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his motor-boats slid the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains.

Basic Set Up

Sadsack Nick Carraway overhears the raging parties of his uber-rich neighbor, Jay "The Great" Gatsby. Soon enough Nick befriends Jay and realizes that Jay is an even sadder sack than he is. But dang if he doesn't throw some ragers.

You don't get much more Jazz Age than Jay Gatsby. He's a self-made man with a penchant for booze, good music, and parties that make Spring Break look like Veteran's Day. In fact, he's so Jazz Age that people throw Gatsby-themed parties even after seeing the 2013 film and realizing that Jay Gatsby is masking deep sadness with drunk orgiastic shindigs.

That's the thing about the Jazz Age. Its excess was, in part, a way of recovering from the unbelievable horror of WWI—there were as many shell-shocked soldiers hitting the bottle to rid themselves of demons as there were flappers with awesome dance moves. It's depressing, but it's true… and The Great Gatsby gets the Jazz Age's mix of merry hedonism and sorrows-drowning totally right.

So where can we see the sorrow and the joy of Gatsby (and Gatsby) at the close-reading level? Let's take a look-see.

The first bunch of lines are really pretty jolly. There's "music […] through the summer nights." That sounds awesome. "Men and girls c(o)me and (go) like moths among the whisperings and he champagne and the stars." Again: we want to go to there. The guests are "diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his motor-boats slid the waters of the Sound." Okay, at this point you're probably thinking, What exactly is the catch here?

The catch—that deep undercurrent of sorrow under all this fun—is subtle. Fitzgerald is a master of the English language, after all. Subtlety is kind of his thing.

First of all, the water of the Sound is described as becoming "cataracts of foam" after being disturbed by Gatsby's boats. Cataracts are, um, not good. They're a clouding of the eye that leads to blindness. Gatsby's excess (in this case, his boats) has a blinding, diseased effect.

We also see Gatsby's "station wagon scamper(ing) like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains." First of all: his car is a bug. Not a cute VW Beetle, either. It's a lowly, Kafkaesque insect. It's small, and it's pitifully scampering. Then we notice that this bug-car is meeting all the trains. Jay's not being selective with his invite list, and it's not because he's just generous. He's lonely—he's importing fun-seekers to his party willy-nilly. It's a desperate act.

We see more of this desperation later in the novel, but this is Fitzgerald at his genius-level foreshadowing best showing us that the worst is yet to come.