Be nice! :)

Imagine that you are Nick Carraway. Write your thoughts on the meal with Gatsby and Wolfshiem.

I had expected something lavish for lunch with Gatsby. Perhaps a luscious meal in some extravagant hotel restaurant filled with the rich, where the classy windows looked down upon the busy bustling street with workers scurrying here and there. Or even a private lunch, in a privately rented room where he wouldn’t have prying eyes looking at him and in which I could ask all I wanted about his life and the ‘matter’ Jordan was supposed to tell me. That Forty-second Street cellar was a surprise, but not at all unexpected, however, Meyer Wolfshiem was a different matter.

I didn’t think much of him at first, only that Gatsby actually knew a Jew, but I remained open minded. He looks like a typical Jew, flat-nosed and all and I looked forwards to the opportunity to ask him about Gatsby’s life. Although soon it became clear that Wolfshiem didn’t deal with normal business. What kind of man talks about a friend’s death and then a business connection with barely a pause? He’s very careful too, paranoid even, his eyes roved slowly around the room and he even inspected the people directly behind us. If it wasn’t for my presence, he would have surely taken a look under the table. My suspicions were proven right when Gatsby said that he was a gambler and the one who fixed the 1919 World Series, because he just ‘saw the opportunity’. It’s clear that Wolfshiem is a capable and dangerous Jewish man and Gatsby deals with him, and probably many others like him.

Perhaps Gatsby really isn’t an honest man, how could one be honest if they associated themselves with crooks such as Wolfshiem? Although Wolfshiem seems to have nothing but praise for Gatsby, I take it that he deems him reliable, trustworthy. He has confirmed that Gatsby went to Oxford, but is it the truth or did Gatsby lie to him too? My doubts are rising about this ‘matter’ Gatsby wants Jordan to discuss with me, why else would it need to come from another person if it wasn’t something underhanded? There’s no need to go through the trouble of getting someone else to tell me if the business was perfectly legal.

Maybe Gatsby really had killed a man, with the help of old Wolfshiem no doubt, and soon I would be pulled into this web of dark mysteries and underground activities. It seems Wolfshiem had tried to warn me with those molar cuff buttons of his; it did raise the question of whether he specifically ordered a set of molar cuff buttons or collected those teeth himself. Either way, life and death doesn’t seem so important to Wolfshiem, as if having dealt with it for so long, he no longer feels remorse from a death – even a friend’s death. Wolfshiem could have turned to this kind of business in search of a way to cheat and some easy money and, after some time, lured Gatsby in with him.

Gatsby did not seem very enthusiastic when asking Wolfshiem to stay longer; their relationship might possibly not be one of friends but merely one where business is made easier through. At least it may be so for Gatsby. If so, perhaps Gatsby only deals with Wolfshiem through a necessity for money. Why though, if he is supposedly the son of ‘some wealthy people in the Mid-West’?

Another one of those puzzles that seems to follow Gatsby wherever he goes is his sudden disappearance. Tom didn’t seem to know Gatsby so the reasons he would’ve left so hurriedly are hard to guess at. Chances could be that Gatsby had killed an acquaintance of Tom and is fearful of his wrath lest he found out. Or possibly, Gatsby just isn’t comfortable with meeting new people; after all, he himself has remained anonymous at his own parties every week.