The Great Gatsby
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When Wilson Pointed The Gun, He Had To Be Sure
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And yet there was no ruling on Gatsby being the driver upon the request. All Wilson would have done is ask Jay if he was the owner of the car. Or he could have asked the servants to direct him to its owner. You're supposing too much Monty.
Geoffrey wrote: "And yet there was no ruling on Gatsby being the driver upon the request. "We've already been over this.
"All Wilson would have done is ask Jay if he was the owner of the car. Or he could have asked the servants to direct him to its owner."
Why bother asking a question when your eyes are what you rely on? And why bother with servants, who would be obstacles? He was looking for the killer, not a name. And he already knew what the killer looked like.
Only your supposition.
Geoffrey wrote: "Only your supposition."Okay, let's break it down. I'll be Wilson.
Last evening I saw some guy in a cream colored roadster with a green interior run over my wife. I've seen one just like it earlier in the day, driven by one of my regular customers, Tom Buchanan, but Buchanan said the car wasn't his. After grieving through the night, I head out to Buchanan's house with a gun in my pocket to find out who owns the god-damn car. After forcing my way past the butler, Buchanan spills. It's Jay Gatsby's car.
I know Gatsby is the guy that's been throwing big parties all summer in West Egg. I know because the partygoers stop at my place all the time to get gas and ask directions. I know right where his house is. I head there in my jalopy. He's gonna pay for what he did.
I park my jalopy in the driveway to block him in case he tries to escape. I walk around, looking in windows. I pull out my gun ready to shoot as soon as I see the bastard. I go around back where I see somebody in the pool that looks like him, floating on a air mattress. I don't see anyone else, so I move in, slowly, hiding behind hedges and statues. I gotta make sure it's him.
Finally I'm about twenty feet away, and I watch him, floating there without a care in the world as the air mattress slowly turns. It's HIM! For sure. The tanned face, the hair color, the profile. I stand up and take aim.
"Mr. Gatsby," I say, softly. "What do you want," he says without looking up.
"It's me, Wilson." I want him to know who's gonna kill him.
Gatsby turns, looks.
Bang! I watch him jerk and squirm in pain. I enjoy the look of surprise and horror on his face. I step closer. Bang-Bang!
...Ba---
As a former trial attorney, I can testify to you what all of my peers know: eyewitness testimony, despite the canard "I saw it with my own eyes", is notoriously unreliable. If you doubt this, read Into Thin Air, based on eyewitness accounts of that tragedy on Everest. At least five, and it may be been more, eyewitnesses gave their accounts to the author. They were utterly inconsistent.
Harry wrote: "As a former trial attorney, I can testify to you what all of my peers know: eyewitness testimony, despite the canard "I saw it with my own eyes", is notoriously unreliable. If you doubt this, read ..."This is true, and a prime weakness in American jurisprudence.
However, this is a novel, not real life. If the author wanted us to doubt Wilson or Michaelis he would have supplied reasons to do so. But he did just the opposite. He gave us not one but two eyewitnesses who back each other up, both of whom are credible. No history of lying. No criminal record. No consorting with criminals. Hardworking, successful businessmen. Neither has a motive for lying.
One must also add take into account the literary convention of Michaelis's name connecting him with Saint Michael, the angel of virtue and death and the very definition of God. Fitzgerald is practically screaming, "You must believe Michaelis!"
Whereas Nick's bias is well established. Love is blind. He will say practically anything to protect his adored Gatsby, a proven liar and criminal.
A reader is going to have to have a very good reason to believe Gatsby over Michaelis and Wilson. Why would they? How can anyone take the word of a criminal with a history of lying about anything? The only person backing up Gatsby's absurd claim that Daisy was driving is Nick, whose Gatsby worship is documented from page one and whose homosexuality is also clearly drawn at the end of Chapter II and alluded to in other places.
Why do so many people believe Donald Trump? What magical power do such people hold over so many people that they can say anything and people will accept it as truth?
People apparently have some inner need that is satisfied through identification with wealthy figures. Maybe the answer is that in America, wealth itself contains charisma. After all, the allure of wealth is what drove thousands west during the mid-nineteenth century. "Gold fever" caused the suspension of reason.
In terms of authorial technique, Nick skews the reader toward his biased view of Gatsby. It takes effort to resist that pull and take into account that Nick is just another character in the story, a character with flaws who cannot see the truth staring him in the face. By looking at Gatsby through Nick's rose-colored glasses, we are led along and given a string hints about Gatsby's corruption, culminating with the intercepted incriminating phone call from Slagel. At this stage, the reader is supposed to wake up from the trance Nick has been in and take a sober step back.
But I think Fitzgerald overestimated critics and the reading public, because he said,
"...of all the reviews, even the most enthusiastic, not one had the slightest idea what the book was about.In order to get the book as intended, a reader/critic would have to discuss the tabu subject of homosexuality, and society wasn't ready for that.
To turn your argument against itself, Tom is the superwealthy one here not Jay who is but the leading henchman for Wolfie.
As for DT, he's a scumbag and many of his followers are the same.
Geoffrey wrote: "To turn your argument against itself, Tom is the superwealthy one here not Jay who is but the leading henchman for Wolfie."Tom has no charisma, whereas Gatsby does, along with the appearance of wealth.
Jesus, Monty--my point is not that Wilson and Michaelis were, or were not, credible men. My point is that eyewitness testimony, regardless of its source, is famously flawed. Then add the fact that in the 1920's, the driver of a Rolls Royce would be assumed to be a man; we see what we expect. This doesn't mean, of course, that Gatsby wasn't driving the car. Perhaps he was. But the :"eyewitness" testimony for it is not convincing evidence of it.
Harry wrote: "my point is not that Wilson and Michaelis were, or were not, credible men. My point is that eyewitness testimony, regardless of its source, is famously flawed. Then add the fact that in the 1920's, the driver of a Rolls Royce would be assumed to be a man; we see what we expect."What's important is what the author intended for the reader to comprehend and conclude, not what is common knowledge within the legal system. If eyewitness testimony weren't reliable it wouldn't be allowed in court, where the witness is subjected to cross-examination, to test reliability. People are required to pay damages, incarcerated and electrocuted under such conditions. Michaelis was subjected to questioning at the inquest.
Yes, in a real-life situation he could be wrong, but Wilson backs him up. The question is whether Fitzgerald wanted us to believe he was right, and he went to a lot of trouble to make sure we do.
A novel is a forum for a meeting between writer and reader, where the author puts down on paper a set of facts and assertions that lead the reader to reach a desired set of conclusions.
In this novel, Fitzgerald made no attempt to impugn these two witnesses, which he could easily have done had he wanted us to doubt them. Instead, he went to great pains to present witnesses against Gatsby who where credible.
But the witnesses aren't who's on trial here. Fitzgerald builds a strong case to mistrust and disbelieve Gatsby. He's repeatedly shown to lie in order to impress Nick and others that he had come from a rich family who had a tradition of being educated at Oxford. Said he came from San Francisco. Said his family are all dead and left him a lot of money. He lied about his name. He has a close relationship with a gangster who tells Nick (IV, 76):
“I raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter. I saw right away he was a fine-appearing, gentlemanly young man, and when he told me he was at Oggsford I knew I could use him good. Right off he did some work for a client of mine up to Albany. We were so thick like that in everything.”—he held up two bulbous fingers——” always together.”Then, (IX, 179) [Wolfsheim]:
"My memory goes back to when I first met him. ...He hadn't eat anything for a couple of days. 'come have some lunch with me," I sid. He ate more than four dollars worth of food in half an hour."This from a well-known gangster, yet we're supposed to believe Gatsby over two upstanding successful businessmen who don't even wear glasses.
"Did you start him in business?" I inquired.
"Start him! I made him."
"Oh."
"I raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter. ...We were so thick like that in everything---" He held up two bulbous fingers "--always together."
As to the assumption of a male driver, this further undercuts Gatsby's story that Daisy was driving. Also, Fitzgerald could have made the death car a sedan or a coupe; instead, he made it an open roadster so that the gender of the driver could be easily ascertained. All the facts support that it was not a female behind the wheel. Daisy was not masculine looking like Jordan. Myrtle would have stopped if she saw a woman driving. If Fitzgerald wanted us to doubt the witnesses he would have provided clues to this effect.
From the preponderance of Fitzgerald's evidence, it should be clear that he wants us to believe Michaelis and doubt Gatsby.
One final point: late in the final chapter Nick runs into Tom several weeks after the accident, and Tom says, "He ran over Myrtle like you'd run over a dog and never even stopped his car." By this time, don't you think if Daisy were driving she'd have told her husband? But he certainly doesn't act as if she had, which supports the notion that Gatsby was driving. And Daisy didn't go the funeral or even send flowers, leading the reader to conclude that Gatsby had become repugnant to her. If she had been driving, don't you think she'd be grateful enough to at least send flowers if he was willing to take the rap for her?
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Other than Gatsby (and Daisy, who isn't talking), the only eyewitnesses of the accident were Wilson and Michaelis, both of whom said it was a man driving, with Michaelis even testifying so under oath at the inquest. Furthermore, Myrtle ran to the open roadster, suggesting it was driven by a male. If it was a man driving it could only be Gatsby, not Daisy.*
At gunpoint, Tom coughed up Gatsby's name as the car's owner, and Wilson went to Gatsby's house to shoot him for killing his wife. He couldn't just shoot the first man he saw at Gatsby's house; he had to be sure. And he certainly did not go looking for a woman! What could be more important than shooting the right guy? He had to be certain before pulling the trigger.
At the moment Wilson took aim, he had a moment to confirm that the man in his sights was the man he saw behind the wheel. THAT moment of confirmation is the final proof of who was driving the car!
Wilson would not have shot Gatsby if Gatsby were not Myrtle's killer. What would be the point? He had to be certain that the man in the pool was the man he saw behind the wheel. Same height, same build, same hair, nose. He didn't even have to ask him his name. He knew just by looking that this was him.
Wilson didn't shoot just because Tom said Gatsby was the owner of the car; he shot because he identified him as the driver!
In that confirming moment before shooting Gatsby, Wilson was eyewitness, judge, jury and executioner. There was no question who killed Myrtle.
Why then, have the vast majority of readers accepted Gatsby's lie about Daisy driving? (Which actually was Nick's lie that Gatsby adopted.) The answer is simple: readers accept Nick's point of view, failing to realize that Nick is not reliable concerning Gatsby, whom he adores, sees as gorgeous and...(II, 52) [Nick, narrating]:After that gushing assessment of Gatsby, it should be clear that Nick is enamored of him. If Gatsby were female, there would be no question. Clearly, this passage is meant to show Nick's judgement is impaired concerning all things Gatsby.
* Here's a link to the thread documenting Gatsby as the driver:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...