ess about the present and about how Daisy's attitude toward him may have changed causes him to knock over Nick's clock, symbolizing the clumsiness of his attempt to stop time and retrieve the past.Gatsby's character throughout his meeting with Daisy is at its purest and most revealing. The theatrical quality that he often projects falls away, and for once all of his responses seem genuine. He forgets to play the role of the Oxford-educated socialite and shows himself to be a love-struck, awkward young man. Daisy, too, is moved to sincerity when her emotions get the better of her. Before the meeting, Daisy displays her usual sardonic humor; when Nick invites her to tea and asks her not to bring Tom, she responds, "Who is 'Tom'?" Yet, seeing Gatsby strips her of her glib veneer. When she goes to Gatsby's house, she is overwhelmed by honest tears of joy at his success and sobs upon seeing his piles of expensive English shirts.One of the main qualities that Nick claims to possess, along with honesty, is tolerance. On one level, his arrangement of the meeting brings his practice of tolerance almost to the level of complicity—just as he tolerantly observes Tom's merrymaking with Myrtle, so he facilitates the commencement of an extramarital affair for Daisy, potentially helping to wreck her marriage. Ironically, all the while Nick is disgusted by the moral decay that he witnesses among the rich in New York. However, Nick's actions may be at least partially justified by the intense and sincere love that Gatsby and Daisy clearly feel for each other, a love that Nick perceives to be absent from Daisy's relationship with Tom.In this chapter, Gatsby's house is compared several times to that of a feudal lord, and his imported clothes, antiques, and luxuries all display a nostalgia for the lifestyle of a British aristocrat. Though Nick and Daisy are amazed and dazzled by Gatsby's splendid possessions, a number of things in Nick's narrative sugg...
