The Great Gatsby Chapter 9: The Foibles of the East

“Even when the East excited me most…even then it had always for me a quality of distortion…I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a lusterless moon. In the foreground four solemn men in dress suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles over the side, sparkles cold with jewels. Gravely the men turn in at a house—the wrong house. But no one knows the woman’s name, and no one cares” (Fitzgerald 176).

At the end of the novel, Nick finally discloses that despite his excitement and desire to live in the East, he has always found the eastern environment to be very distorted. He depicts his perspective of the east as if it were a painting produced by El Greco, a Greek Renaissance artist who was well known for dramatizing his paintings by warping images. Nick emphasizes the distortion he discovers by “painting” the environment through El Greco’s eyes. Nick regards the houses in the east to be “conventional and grotesque.” Like eastern people, the “conventional” houses are created according to what is commonly accepted; furthermore, Nick’s use of grotesque reveals that he dislikes how easterners conform to conventionality. The houses are crouched under a “sullen, overhanging sky” and a “lusterless moon” because their lack of individuality does not grant them contentedness. Like the houses, the woman who lies drunk on the stretcher possesses a hand that “sparkles cold with jewels.” Describing the jewels to radiate coldness suggests that materials and wealth do not grant a person warmth or happiness. Like the woman, the four men who pass by reveal another foible of eastern society: that no one cares about anyone but himself or herself. Nick reveals this conviction by describing how effortlessly the four solemn men walk by the drunk women without knowing her name or caring about her well being.