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But all this part of it seemed remote and unessential. I found myself on Gatsby's side, and alone. From the moment I telephoned news of the catastrophe to West Egg village, every surmise about him, and every practical question, was referred to me. At first I was surprised and confused; then, as he lay in his house and didn't move or breathe or speak hour upon hour it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no one else was interested—interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to which every one has some vague right at the end.
Early in Chapter 9, Nick describes how he found himself in the uncomfortable position of organizing Gatsby’s funeral and burial because he was the only one of Gatsby’s hundreds of acquaintances to accept the responsibility for doing so.
We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour before we melted indistinguishably into it again.
After describing Gatsby’s dismal funeral and burial, Nick dissects differences between people from the East and people from the Midwest and West. He points out that all the main characters in the story he has told were in the latter group and discusses how it difficult for people from the West to thrive in the East. This is discussed further in Quote by Theme: The American Dream (Chapter 9 quote).
That’s my middle west—not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns but the thrilling, returning trains of my youth and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family’s name. I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.
Nick continues to discuss what he sees as fundamental difference between the East and the West and Easterners and Westerners in this passage, which is discussed further in Famous Quotes Explained (Quote #4) and Quotes by Characters: Nick Carraway (the Chapter 9 quote).
After Gatsby’s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes’ power of correction. So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home.
In this passage, Nick tells us that after Gatsby’s death, he realized that he could no longer live in the East, so he moved back to the Midwest.
‘You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn’t I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.’
In Nick’s parting with Jordan after Gatsby’s death, she directs criticism of him at his most cherished belief about himself—that he is an honest person. This is further discussed in Quotes by Character: Jordan Baker (the Chapter 9 quote).
I couldn’t forgive [Tom] or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. . . .
In this passage, Nick passes his final judgement on wealthy and entitled Tom and Daisy with the simple but devasting remark, “They were careless people.” This passage is further explained in Quotes by Theme: Class (the Chapter 9 quote).
And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock.
Near the very end of the novel, Nick returns one last time to the symbolism of the green light. He explicitly extends the promise that it represents from just one man and one woman to America as a whole, as is further explained in Quotes by Symbol: The Green Light (the first Chapter 9 quote).
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Through his narrator, Nick, Fitzgerald close The Great Gatsby with one of the most famous passages in American literature. The quote is about how the past can serve as a powerful motivator, but also a deadly trap. It is further explained in Famous Quotes Explained (#5) and in Quotes by Symbol: The Green Light (the second Chapter 9 quote).
