Summary
We see Gatsby, Nick, and Jordan at the Buchanan estate for lunch. A butler comes to tell Tom that someone is calling him, and Tom excuses himself. When Tom is gone, Daisy kisses Gatsby passionately and tells him "You know I love you." All of a sudden, Daisy's daughter runs into the room, and they embrace. She introduces her daughter to Gatsby, who is silent for a moment before shaking the girl's hand. Daisy's daughter goes off with a caretaker and Gatsby and Daisy take their seats at the table.
Tom returns to the table, and Daisy becomes agitated, complaining about the heat and the fact that "everything's so confused." After proposing that they all go to town, Daisy looks at Gatsby and says, "You always look so cool." Tom notices Daisy's affection and looks perturbed, but agrees that they should go to town.
As the men wait outside, Tom says that he doesn't understand why Daisy wants to go to town, adding, "Women get these notions in their heads." Tom goes to get some whiskey to bring to town, and Gatsby tells Nick that he cannot say anything in Tom's house. When Nick notes that Daisy has an "indiscreet voice," Gatsby agrees that it's "full of money."
Tom wants to drive Gatsby's car and have Gatsby drive his. Daisy rides with Gatsby, while Nick and Jordan go with Tom. "I made a small investigation of this fellow," Tom says, miffed, "He wears a goddamn pink suit."
They drive towards town, and on the way Tom stops at Wilson's garage. Wilson looks heartbroken and tells them he's sick, that he has run into some financial difficulties. He implies to Tom that he recently learned that Myrtle is having an affair, and that they are going to move west. Tom is surprised to hear this, and tells Wilson he'll give him his car so he and Myrtle can make the move. Nick looks up and sees Myrtle tapping on the glass of her window until she breaks it.
As they drive towards Manhattan, Gatsby pulls up alongside Tom's car and Daisy asks where they should go. She wants to do separate things and meet up later, but Tom suggests they meet at the Plaza Hotel.
At the Plaza, the group sits in a hot room and Daisy complains about the heat. When Tom tells her to stop complaining, Gatsby stands up for her, telling Tom that it was his idea to come to the city in the first place. "All that 'old sport' business. Where did you pick it up?" Tom asks, before interrogating Gatsby about his past and credentials.
When he asks Gatsby if he's an Oxford man, Gatsby tells him he went there after the war, and asks Tom if he was in the war—he was not. "I'd like to know what kind of a row you're trying to cause in my house," Tom says. When Daisy tells Tom to exhibit more self control, he makes reference to the fact that he knows that Gatsby and Daisy are having an affair. He goes on a diatribe about the fact that the affair threatens traditional family values.
Tom sits down and invites Gatsby to tell him what's going on, when a hotel worker brings in some glasses of ice. Staring at him, Gatsby says, "Your wife doesn't love you. She's never loved you. She loves me...The only reason she married you was because I was poor...But in her heart she's never loved anyone except for me." Tom counters that Daisy loves him and that sometimes they both stray but they always come back. Daisy becomes angry with Tom about the fact that his unfaithfulness drove them out of Chicago and has ruined their lives. As a solution, Gatsby suggests she tell Tom that she never loved him. "I never loved him," she says.
"You want too much. I love you now, isn't that enough? I can't help what's past. I did love him once, but I loved you too," Daisy cries at Gatsby. "There are things between Daisy and me that you'll never know," Tom says, but Gatsby is determined to tell Tom that Daisy is planning to leave him. "I am, though," Daisy says, through tears. As the two men look like they're about to get in a physical fight, Daisy flees the room, and Gatsby follows her.
As Daisy and Gatsby run through a crowded lobby, Tom calls after them, revealing that Gatsby is a bootlegger. Tom goes back to the hotel room and asks Nick and Jordan if they want a drink. All of a sudden, Nick realizes it's his 30th birthday.
Wilson and Myrtle are fighting about the fact that Myrtle doesn't want to leave town. She yells at him about the fact that she thought he was wealthier when they got married, but he didn't even have his own suit for the wedding. "You can't fool God, God sees everything," Wilson says, staring at the billboard for the oculist. "That's an advertisement. You're so dumb, you don't know you're alive," Myrtle says. Suddenly, Myrtle runs down the stairs and falls at the bottom of it, resisting Wilson's help. She tries to run outside, but Wilson prevents her.
As they drive through the valley of ashes, Tom points out to Nick and Jordan that there's been an accident outside the garage. He pulls over and looks, and when the group walks over to the garage to see what's happened, they find that Myrtle has been hit by a car after running into the middle of the road. Wilson is sobbing, as Tom looks at Myrtle's lifeless body. A man at the scene tells the officer that Myrtle was hit by a big new yellow car, which matches the description of Gatsby's.
Tom wants to leave immediately, and gets in the car, saying tearfully, "That son of a bitch, he didn't even stop his car."
We see the green light at the Buchanan estate as Tom pulls up in front. Tom invites Nick in, but he doesn't want to come, and drives home instead. On his way out, he sees Gatsby standing in the driveway. Approaching the car, Gatsby asks him if Myrtle was killed, and informs him that Daisy was driving the car at the time. "I just want to wait here and make sure he doesn't try to bother her," Gatsby says, standing outside the Buchanan's. Nick tries to convince him to leave, but Gatsby is intent on staying all night if he has to.
Wilson sits in his garage with a friend who tells him he should go to church. Wilson tells the friend that he found a dog leash with diamonds on it, even though they don't have a dog. "He murdered her," Wilson says, suddenly intent on revenge on Gatsby, whom he believes to be the man with whom Myrtle was having an affair. As his friend tells him he'll look up names of churches, Wilson goes outside and apologizes to the billboard for the oculist, expressing his regret for what happened to Myrtle and walking out into the night.
The next day, Gatsby goes over to Nick's cottage to tell him that he waited outside Daisy's window until 4 AM, and Nick asks for a cigarette. Nick muses about how exciting Long Island must have seemed to early Dutch settlers as they stand on the porch and smoke.
Analysis
In this section of the film, slow zoom-in and other cinematographic techniques help to illustrate rising tensions in the lives of Gatsby and Daisy. As Nick, Jordan, Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom all sit at dinner, there is an awkward hush in the conversation, and we see Gatsby in close-up as he looks longingly at Daisy. The close-up on Gatsby's expression aligns the viewer with his plight and shows the way that he is isolated at the lunch, doomed to silence about his feelings. Then, when Daisy introduces him to her daughter, he is silent and hesitant, and the camera zooms in slowly on his concerned expression as he looks down at the little girl. As the shot narrows in on Gatsby's face, covered in sweat, we are shown the tension that he feels inside, his horror at realizing that Daisy has a life separate from their affair.
Also in this section, the connection between Gatsby and Daisy begins to expose itself to the group. This first occurs when she looks to him and says aloud, "You always look so cool." Though this statement is vague, it exposes Daisy's admiration and affection for Gatsby, the fact that he is refreshing in the midst of all of the chaos and heat surrounding them. Daisy is less than discreet about it, fawning over Gatsby, riding in his car, and suggesting they go on separate outings in the city.
Tom Buchanan is an intimidating figure for the protagonists of the film, not only because he threatens to tear them apart, but because of the way he exercises his own power, his hypocrisy covered by a public-facing conservatism. In previous sections, he endorses white supremacy. In this section, he denigrates women in blanket terms and talks about Gatsby and Daisy's affair as a threat to traditional family values, comparing their connection across classes to the threat of interracial marriage. His conservatism serves to cover his own missteps—his abusive tendencies and his philandering with Myrtle—in a way that renders him blameless and puts all blame on Gatsby and Daisy. Thus, his villainy is wrapped up in both his disrespectful behavior and the moral superiority he assumes.
Daisy reveals Gatsby's greatest flaw when she tells him, "You want too much." While he desperately wants her to tell him that she's never loved Tom, she cannot bury the fact that at one point she fell in love with her current husband. Caught between the constricting expectations of two jealous men, Daisy asks them why she cannot be free to have had her own past. Gatsby's intransigent need for Daisy never to have loved anyone before him tarnishes her view of him, because it asks her to obfuscate her past to accommodate him. Gatsby is placing a tall, impossible order when he asks Daisy to profess to only ever loving him.
The tension that builds in the room at the Plaza Hotel between Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom comes to a head on the way home, when Daisy kills Myrtle with Gatsby's car. This event changes the course of everything, further complicating the tense dynamics that have arisen between the two men competing for Daisy's affections. Now, not only is Daisy caught between her abusive and unfaithful husband and the dashing but bootlegging man of her dreams, but she has also accidentally killed her husband's lover. This chilling coincidence is a dramatic peak, forcing each character to confront the complexity of their own loyalties. While Tom is determined to win Daisy back, he is heartbroken over Myrtle's death. Gatsby wants to cover up Daisy's involvement in the manslaughter, and is determined to win her back as well. The only person who knows what truly happened and all of its complicated layers is Nick, our helpless protagonist.
