The Great Gatsby question

And he wanted to befriend potential wealthy people to whom he could sell fenced goods. Most often people do things for a multiplicity of reasons, a fact unknown by simpler folk.

Chris wrote: "He loves Daisy and he believes that Daisy was attrated by Tom's wealth, so he spent large amount money to hold amazing parties to get her attraction. There is another reason that he wants to get in..."

The idea that Gatsby had lavish parties every weekend "solely to attract Daisy" (per Yale's Harold Bloom) is widely held, but it is not supported in the text. In fact, Fitzgerald provides evidence in the novel of a perfectly logical reason for his parties: so that his sales team could prospect among the partygoers to sell illicit bonds.

Though tantalizingly romantic, the notion that the parties were for Daisy's benefit is a grossly overstated interpretation of a off-hand speculation by Jordan, cited below. There's no evidence that Gatsby said anything to such effect. It is Jordan's uncorroborated (and unsubstantiated) speculation, not an established fact.

This romantic notion was glommed onto by Hollywood to sell movie tickets and by at least one prominent literature professor, Yale's Harold Bloom--perhaps his way of pandering to Yale's capitalist benefactors. The result is the perpetuation of a distorted view of what Fitzgerald's actually wrote.

See items #2 and #7 (in block quotes below) in my article on Proof of Gatsby's Criminality : https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

2--Ch. 3, p.42 (Nick notices the sales team at the party, strongly suggesting that purpose of the parties was to attract the affluent targets for fleecing) Nick, narrating:

I was immediately struck by the number of young Englishmen dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a little hungry and all talking in low, earnest voices to solid and prosperous Americans. I was sure that they were selling something, bonds or insurance or automobiles. They were at least agonizingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few words in the right key.

Gatsby isn't throwing a party for strangers in the middle of a wealthy neighborhood just for the fun of it; he wants their money, and that's his sales team, cruising the crowd for suckers to buy his worthless bonds.

7--Ch. IV, p.79 (The only reference in the entire book as to a purpose for the parties is an offhand speculation by Jordan on the last page of Chapter IV after her private conference with Gatsby.) Jordan:

"I think he half expected her to wander into one of his parties, some night," went on Jordan, "but she never did."

Jordan's "I think" is a surmise at best, and "half-expected" is anything but Harold Bloom's)"solely."

If the parties were not for Daisy, then what were they for? Taking into account the hints Fitzgerald went to the trouble to provide, illicit bond peddling is the most likely reason.