The Great Gatsby - Chapter Two

In this chapter, the status hierarchy is established. This is introduced through the meeting with Tom and Mr Wilson. Tom greets Mr Wilson in a condescending manner by "slapping him jovially on the shoulder" while saying "Hello, Wilson, old man,". This type of behaviour normally occurs between friends, however Tom and Mr Wilson are none of the sort. Instead, Tom is invading Mr Wilson's personal space and not caring because to Tom, Mr Wilson is not important.

This is the chapter where Myrtle is also introduced. Though Myrtle married a handy man with little status and lives in a standard, run-of-the-mill house, she is a lover of beauty and a social climber and finds that her only escape from the Valley of Ashes is through an affair with a wealthy, high status man. Her attempts to climb in status is shown at the party she holds in her apartment. As the party begins Mrs Wilson changes her outfit and "with the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur." However, though she now appears to be a women of status, moments later when she is speaking to a guest, her heritage and true status shines through as she uses the term "fellas", language used by the lower class,also her voice is described as "mincing" which undermines the beauty of her appearance described earlier. This reinforces one of the ideas that Fitzgerald presents, that your heritage, family background and status matter and cannot be ignored.

Myrtle's apartment is also a projected symbol for the world Myrtle lives in as the apartment comes across distorted as "The living-room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it....The only picture was a over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock. Looked at from a distance, however, the hen resolved itself into a bonnet, and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room." - the idea of the furniture being too large for the apartment suggests that like the furniture, Myrtle, too, is out of place. "hard dog-biscuits - one of which decomposed apathetically in the saucer of milk" suggests decay and corruption and points to the affair between Myrtle and Tom.