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Gatsby’s house. . . . A brewer had built it . . . and there was a story that he’d agreed to pay five years’ taxes on all the neighboring cottages if the owners would have their roofs thatched with straw. Perhaps their refusal took the heart out of this plan . . . he went into an immediate decline. His children sold his house with the black wreath still on the door. Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.
Early in Chapter 5, Nick makes broad statement about the American people while telling a story about Gatsby's house before Gatsby bought it. Read more about this passage (including the difference between serfs and peasants) in Quotes by Character: Nick Carraway (the Chapter 5 quote).
[Gatsby] hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real.
This is a passage about Gatsby proudly showing the expensive furnishings in his house to Gatsby and how Gatsby reacts to what he perceives as Daisy assessing the value of the items.
‘If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay,’ said Gatsby. ‘You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.’
In Chapter 5 we learn precisely why Gatsby was reaching out for the green light in Chapter 1. Read an interpretation of this passage in Quotes by Symbol: The Green Light (the first Chapter 5 quote) that suggests that Gatsby assumes that Daisy feels as strongly about her as he does about her.
Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.
In this passage, which comes shortly after the prior quote about the green light, Nick speculates that it is possible that being reunited with Daisy will be something of a letdown for Gatsby compared to the rich romanticism of his years of longing for her. This passage is further explained in Quotes by Symbol: The Green Light (the second Chapter 5 quote).
There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.
In this passage from near the end of Chapter 5, Nick once again raises the possibility that the romanticism of Gatsby’s pursuit of Daisy will overshadow anything that results from it. Read more about this passage in Quotes by Character: Jay Gatsby (the Chapter 5 quote).
