Notes on chapter 4

At the begining of this chapter Nick tell us that 'the world and his mistress' turned up to gossip at Gatsby's house. This suggests that the visitors may not be particularly nice or sophisticated because Nick described them as 'Mistress' and not 'Wife'

Nick then goes on to write a list of everyone that came to Gatsby's house that summer. The reason why he does this is not very clear, however t may be to show that Gatsby has so many people at his house all of the time yet he is still lonely.

In this chapter Gatsby feels he needs to sort of 'big himself up' as it were because he decides to tell Nick the 'truth' about his past however he then make a mistake when he tells him he came from San Francisco in the mid west which is not where it is. This is the first time that previously non judgemental Nick first shows the reader some question as to Gatsby: 'i wondered if there wasn't something sinister about him, after all' This is significant because before this moment Nick had never portrayed to the reader that he questioned Gatsby even when other characters had.