Nick's record of the guests on a timetable that
disintegrates just as moral values disintegrate in the Jazz Age are testimony to the
sordid reality of Gatsby's quest for the grail. In sharp contrast to the guests of East
Egg who of are prestigious names, Gatsby's guests are engaged in illegal activity. In
fact, the timetable is little more than a tabulation of
criminality.
Among the guests are men who fight; another
man named Ripley Snells stays at Gatsby's for three days before being taken to the
penitentiary, so drunk in the driveway that Mrs. Ulysses Swett's automobile runs over
his right hand. A G. Earl Muldoon arrives; he is the brother to the Muldoon who
strangled his wife. Promoters and gamblers with epithets such as "Rot-gut" arrive at
Gatsby's. One man, named Klipspringer is there so much and so often that he becomes
known as "the boarder." People who later kill themselves by jumping in front of subway
trains, or suffer injury by having their noses shot off are also present. In short,
suspicious and corrupt people such as a senator who takes bribes are among the guests
recorded by Nick.
This tabulation of guests of questionable
morality points to the canard that Gatsby's mansion, background, and possessions
become. Fitzgerald's satire is clearly present in this chapter as the sharp contrast of
all that is Gatsby with what is real comes into focus. Like the disintegrating
timetable, Gatsby's American Dream will soon dissolve into what it has always been--an
illusion.
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