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About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.
These are the opening words of Chapter 2, which describes the desolate and depressing “valley of ashes” that lies in between the luxurious East and West Egg communities and glimmering New York City. This passage is further explained in Quotes by Symbol: The Valley of Ashes (the first Chapter 2 quote).
But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.
The second paragraph of Chapter 2 describes an abandoned billboard in the valley of ashes—the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg—that serve a deeply symbolic function in the novel. This passage is further explained in Quotes by Symbol: The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg (the first Chapter 2 quote) and Quotes by Theme: The American Dream (the first Chapter 2 quote).
The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour. There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress.
Nick further describes the valley of ashes early in Chapter 2. This passage is further explained in Quotes by Symbol: The Valley of Ashes (the second Chapter 2 quote).
‘We're getting off!’ he insisted. ‘I want you to meet my girl.’
I think he'd tanked up a good deal at luncheon and his determination to have my company bordered on violence. The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to do.
I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare.
Nick describes the circumstances and the setting as Tom insists on introducing him to his mistress, Myrtle. This passage is further explained in Quotes by Symbol: The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg (the second Chapter 2 quote).
[Myrtle] was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crêpe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty, but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering.
A key word in this description of Myrtle in Chapter 2 is vitality. Her liveliness and energy are an important aspect of her personality. This passage is further explained in Quotes by Character: Myrtle Wilson (the first Chapter 2 quote).
I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon so everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it although until after eight o'clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun. Sitting on Tom's lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at the drug store on the corner. When I came back they had disappeared so I sat down discreetly in the living room and read a chapter of "Simon Called Peter"—either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things because it didn't make any sense to me.
Later in Chapter 2, Nick starts to recount an impromptu party that Tom takes him to at the New York City apartment Tom keeps for his mistress, Myrtle Wilson, Nick’s recollections of the event are clouded by the fact that he’s never experienced anything quite like it before and because he overdrinks.
Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time before and was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room. With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur.
Once she’s been transported from the valley of the ashes to Tom’s apartment in Manhattan and then changes into a fancy dress, Myrtle’s personality evolves from working-class vitality to higher-class “hauteur” (arrogance). This passage is further explained in Quotes by Character: Myrtle Wilson (the second Chapter 2 quote).
‘I told that boy about the ice.” Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. “These people! You have to keep after them all the time.’
Myrtle’s transformation in Chapter 2 from working-class wife to upper-class mistress is solidified when she complains about a servant. This passage is further explained in Quotes by Character: Myrtle Wilson (the third Chapter 2 quote).
‘I married him because I thought he was a gentleman,’ she said finally. ‘I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn't fit to lick my shoe.’
Myrtle describes her miserable marriage to George at the party in Chapter 2, implying that she was deceived by her husband. This passage is further explained in Quotes by Character: Myrtle Wilson (the fourth Chapter 2 quote) and Quotes by Theme: Love and Marriage (the second Chapter 2 quote).
Catherine leaned close to me and whispered in my ear: ‘Neither of them can stand the person they're married to.’
‘Can't they?’
‘Can't stand them.’ She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. ‘What I say is, why go on living with them if they can't stand them? If I was them I'd get a divorce and get married to each other right away.’
Later at the party, Nick finds himself in the uncomfortable situation of having a conversation with Myrtle’s sister, Catherine, about Myrtle and Tom’s affair.
‘It’s really his wife that’s keeping them apart. She’s a Catholic, and they don’t believe in divorce.’
Daisy was not a Catholic, and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie.
As Nick and Catherine’s awkward and mostly one-sided conversation about Tom and Myrtle’s affair continues, it becomes evident that Tom has lied to Myrtle about the reason he won’t divorce Daisy and marry her.
I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.
As the awkward conversations and excessive drinking at the party continue, Nick has what almost amounts to an out-of-body experience as he muses to himself about his inability to escape the party—and perhaps by extension, his inability to escape the world he has been thrust into since coming east. This passage is further explained in Quotes by Character: Nick Carraway (the Chapter 2 quote).
‘Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!" shouted Mrs. Wilson. ‘I'll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai—’
Making a short deft movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.
Then there were bloody towels upon the bathroom floor, and women’s voices scolding, and high over the confusion a long broken wail of pain.
Having already been shown to be a racist and an entitled bully, at the end of Chapter 2 we learn that Tom is also a person who is capable of violent acts towards women, as he breaks Myrtle’s nose during an argument. This passage is explained in greater depth in Quotes by Character: Tom Buchanan (the Chapter 2 quote).
