Preview

I Am Always Watching Chapter 2 Summary

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
233 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
I Am Always Watching Chapter 2 Summary
Chapter 2 begins with Tom and Nick taking a trip on the commuter train that runs between West Egg and New York which passes through the “valley of ashes”, an industrial zone. While passing through, Nick notices a billboard of the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, which he describes as a figure who watches over the actions of everyone in the city. Suddenly, Tom forces Nick to get out at one of the stops in the valley and lead him to George Wilson’s garage, which sits on the edge of the valley of ashes. It is there that Tom meets Tom’s secret lover, George’s wife, Myrtle Wilson, a short robust redhead with a fiery attitude. Myrtle was unrefined and lacked the elegance of the wealthy aristocratic women of East Egg. Next, they travel to Myrtle and Tom’s secret ornate apartment in the city where they throw a small party with plentiful alcohol. The night ends with an argument between Myrtle and Tom in which Tom strikes her breaking her nose for exclaiming "Daisy! Daisy! Daisy! I'll say it whenever I want to!” …show more content…
The painting is a typical surrealist painting of a watching

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In chapter 2 Tom takes Nick to meet Myrtle, his lover, in the Valley of Ashes, where her home is. They all then go to New York, to the apartment bought by Tom for Myrtle, and Myrtle organises a ‘party’, during which she argues with Tom, which ends with him punching her.…

    • 1103 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout the book, Tom’s affair with Myrtle Wilson, leads to a destiny that affects Tom many ways, characterizing him as an arrogant man. To begin, Tom and Nick are at Mr. Wilson’s car shop, Tom wants Nick to meet his girl. Tom is insistently saying to Myrtle, “‘I want to see you ,’ said Tom intently. ‘Get on the next train.’ ‘All right.’ ‘I’ll meet you at the news-stand on the lower level’” (30). Tom wants to meet up with his mistress at the news-stand, away from Mr. Wilson's eyes. Tom is clearly showing his supercilious nature because he is…

    • 1041 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Tom being prosperous, Myrtle felt as if because she is with him that he elevates her to high class. She felt better with Tom because he was important, therefore, with George she felt miserable. Myrtle’s American dream was to become a wealthy man’s trophy wife. For this reason, she has a strong desire for a powerful man to take care of her. Having to allow her money hungry mind to take over, she allows Tom to beat her. Able to play a wealthy woman’s rule being involved with Tom, she began to act like a snob. Later in the novel, George finds out that she is in an affair, but not with whom. In effect, he gets angry and locks her in their apartment over the garage he owns. Working sickly, George tries to make enough money to move out west to get her away from the city. Not respecting her husband’s decision, she tells him “Beat me! Throw me down and beat me you dirty little coward!” (144). She wants him to be aggressive and powerful like Tom, but he refuses. After having a heated discussion with George, she breaks out the apartment and rushes outside. Having seen Tom driving Gatsby’s yellow car earlier, she sees it coming and dashes out on the road towards it. Not being her lover, Gatsby turns the wheel in Daisy’s hands, and tries to swerve out of the way. Tragically being foolish, Myrtle runs in front of the car and gets hit. The blow from the car to her body ended her life. Not only did her death upset both George and Tom, but it also ended Gatsby’s life. After mourning over his wife, George went to Gatsby’s mansion and shot him in his swimming pool, and then took his own life. In the final analysis, because of her selfishness and greedy needs, she not only caused her own death, but also causes the death of an innocent…

    • 516 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the following months, Gatsby puts an end to his profligate parties to please Daisy and decides to fire all of his servants to prevent the circulation of rumors. On the hottest day of the summer, all of the characters gather at the Buchanan’s estate. During this encounter, Gatsby is shocked to meet Daisy’s distant daughter Pammy, and Tom learns of his wife’s affair as she cannot keep her eye’s of Gatsby. Motivated by boredom, Daisy suggests that they should go to the city. The tension rises when Daisy and Gatsby take off in Tom’s car while Jordan, Nick, and Tom ride in Gatsby’s yellow Rolls Royce. Tom, Nick, and Jordan stop for gas at George Wilson’s garage where George informs Tom that he and Myrtle are moving out West. Nick explains that George “had discovered that Myrtle had some sort of life apart from him in another world, and the shock had made him physically sick.” On the way back from the city, Daisy accidently runs over and kills Myrtle. When Tom, Nick, and Jordan arrive on the scene, Mr. Wilson is in shock; Tom informs him that the yellow car who struck Myrtle belonged the Jay Gatsby. When Nick arrives at home, he finds Gatsby terrified hiding in the bushes. When Nick checks on Daisy, he finds that her and Tom had shockingly reconciled their marriage.…

    • 274 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Chapter 2 - What seemed interesting to me is how Fitzgerald paired Tom and Myrtle’s relationship with the settings…

    • 842 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Chapter Two: Fitzgerald begins this second chapter with the description of a road running between West Egg and New York City. A large, decaying billboard showing two eyes (advertising an optometrist's practice) overlooks the desolate area. It is here, at a gas station, where Tom Buchanan introduces Nick Carraway to Myrtle Wilson, the woman with whom he is having an affair. Myrtle herself is married to George B. Wilson, an auto mechanic. Tom has Myrtle meet them in the city, where Tom buys her a dog. They go to visit Myrtle's sister and also visit her neighbors, Catherine McKee and her husband, who is an artist. They gossip…

    • 1509 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    - Climax of Myrtles death Reflective dream’ ending 1st person retrospective voice Introducing Daisy’s daughter solidifies the relationship with Tom and Daisy. Gatsby can’t ‘repeat the past’ with such ease. Juxtaposing Wilson and Tom who have unfaithful wives but despite the social differences still treat women as possessions ‘shes going to West whether she wants to or not’ “I like big parties, they’re less intimate” – Plaza hotel, less people, more tension. Foreshadowing “so we drove on towards death through the cooling twilight’Death of Myrtle = end of affair for Tom = end of affair for daisy = death of Gatsby “came knocking down like cards” – “rich people are carless’ “Small rectangle of light” juxtaposed by ‘moonlight” – the rich peoples artificial light versus the ‘honest utopian figures’ natural light.…

    • 1174 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In chapter seven, there is a built up of tension and conflict between Gatsby and Tom as Tom slowly realises that there is something going on between Gatsby and Daisy. The building up of tension can also be related to the building up of heat, as the temperature becomes hotter in the afternoon. The whole build-up eventually culminates in a confrontation between Tom and Gatsby. Gatsby tells Tom that Daisy never loved him and she is going to leave him. On the other hand, Tom fights back by revealing that Gatsby is a bootlegger. At the end of the confrontation, Tom is victorious, as he knows that Daisy will never see a criminal. Meanwhile, in the Valley of Ashes, a similar situation takes place. George Wilson, who loves his wife deeply, finds out that she is having an affair behind his back. He locks her in the attic in order to prevent her from escaping. This shows readers that George is very angry because he used to listen to everything that Myrtle says and obeys all her orders. The dramatic change in George’s personality can also be related to the change in the weather; the transition from spring to summer. Myrtle, on the other hand, does not give in easily; she breaks down the attic door and runs out of the house while calling George a coward. This sudden burst of anger might also be due to the sweltering heat that must have built up in the attic. Therefore, Tom and Gatsby’s confrontations as well as George ad Myrtle’s argument show that the sweltering heat fuels the anger in all the…

    • 1020 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Myrtle is the wife of Gorge Wilson who is an auto mechanic. She represents the lower class in society and more than anything she wants to become part of the upper class. Myrtle is very unsatisfied with her husband everything in her life is dull and gray. Even her husband is always covered in dull brown colour of dirt and he does not wear the kind of vibrant clothes that Tom Buchanan wears, the person with whom she is having an affair with. The apartment she shares with Tom in New York, is the complete opposite of the house she lives in. The Wilson's home is in "a valley of ashes... where ashes take to form of houses and chimneys... a line of gray cars crawls along... the ash-gray men..." (Fitzgerald, 23) The author describes the part of the region in which Myrtle lives, as well as the other people of the lower class as this very hideous place full of pollution. Her life with Wilson is very colourless, she does not attended any parties with him like the rich people do. Myrtle wants colour and joy in her life and that is why she has a romance with Tom who is part of the upper class. Once she is with Tom she begins to act and dress differently. The clothes she wears are glamorous. The first time Nick meets Myrtle in the garage he describes her wearing "dress of dark blue... containing no facet or gleam of beauty..." (Fitzgerald, 25) When she is with her…

    • 993 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Chapter 2 is the chapter in which Tom takes Nick to meet his lover Myrtle; they meet in the Valley of Ashes which is home to Myrtle and George. The Chapter then changes scene to New York where Nick attends a party; during this party Tom breaks Myrtle’s nose by punching her. The Chapter is used to portray the true colours of Tom Buchanan and to emphasis the mystery surrounding Gatsby.…

    • 633 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    One day, Nick is invited to accompany Tom to meet his mistress, Myrtle Wilson, a middle-class woman whose husband runs a modest garage and gas station in the valley of ashes. After the group meets and journeys into the city, Myrtle phones friends to come over and they all spend the afternoon drinking at Myrtle and Tom's apartment. The afternoon is filled with drunken and ends with Myrtle and Tom fighting over Daisy, his wife. Drunkenness turns to rage and Tom breaks Myrtle's nose.…

    • 1926 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The narrator of the story, Nick Carraway, has just returned from war and goes east to work. In flashbacks he reveals the story of Jay Gatsby, his next-door neighbor. The nine chapters develop around seven parties interspersed with flashbacks. Nick meets Jordan Baker, Daisy’s friend from Louisville, who reveals that Tom is having an affair with Myrtle Wilson, the wife of a garage owner in the Valley of Ashes. Nick is shocked at the lack of morality in every level. At the second party, Tom introduces Nick to Myrtle, who invites her sister Catherine and the McKees. At Gatsby’s first party in West Egg, Nick meets a myriad of high-profile guests, most of whom have not been invited, all of whom ignore the statute concerning prohibition. The atmosphere…

    • 332 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Chapter two we meet Tom’s lover Myrtle (a vital and sensuous “gold digger” but merely an object of desire for Tom) and her husband George Wilson a handsome ghost of a man. We start to see that the rich are merely interested in self-indulgence and don’t care whom it may affect or destroy in the process. The party which Nick, Tom and Myrtle attend emphasises the lack of morality and how a little money and a little taste of power can influence some people to behave stupidly. The valley of ashes is dirty, unpleasant, poor and lifeless and is the main idea of Chapter 2. It is a desolate place where the American Dream is dead and its ashes are scattered over the poor people living there, like George…

    • 715 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Valley of Ashes is a remote, barren wasteland located between the two Eggs and New York. The Valley is where George. B. Wilson works and lives with his wife, Myrtle. It is also where Myrtle is brutally killed in a hit and run accident towards the end of the novel. The Valley’s bleak and barren nature provides a contrast to the loudness and brightness of New York, which represents wild and selfish behaviour, and the pursuit of pleasure, illustrated by the fact that Tom and Myrtle’s affair occurs there. The drunken debauchery of Tom and Myrtle’s party demonstrates New York’s lack of moral depth, and the idea that people feel that they can act how they want without the fear of consequences, when, in fact, the selfishness and greed of New Yorkers is ultimately dealt with by the workers in the Valley of Ashes.…

    • 971 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In this chapter, Nick is reveals as the narrator of the story. Nick’s actions show that he is a non-judgmental and respectful person because other characters tend to tell him their life stories. Nick is a “Carraway,” a person in a family with wealth and class. Nick introduces the setting of New York City and the two “egg-like” islands called West Egg and East Egg in Long Island. Nick resides on the West Egg, which is not as rich and sophisticated as East Egg, along with Mr. Gatsby and the Gatsby’s mansion. Nick also reveals that he is a stockbroker and a business man. The reason why he is on the East Egg is to have dinner with Daisy, his cousin, and her husband Tom Buchanan. Tom is an aggressive and a former football player. There were two women in the house, one is Daisy and the other is Jordan Baker. Daisy shows her interests for Gatsby when her husband mentions him in a conversation. Later, Tom gets a phone call from a “woman” that is supposedly cheating with Tom, who irritates Daisy and she goes in to yell at him. Daisy returns later and confesses with Nick of her terrible life at home with Nick. Nick later finds out that Miss Baker is a professional golfer, but could not recall a story about her. Eventually Nick returns to the West Egg, and notices Mr. Gatsby chilling on the lawn. However, Mr. Gatsby is not chilling but rather is staring at a green light across the water.…

    • 513 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays