What does Tom Buchanan do in Chapter 2?

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Soon Nick learns that Tom Buchanan is cheating on his wife, Daisy, with Myrtle Wilson. She is a vulgar woman that represents a lower social class and lives in the Valley of Ashes. Tom takes Nick on a trip to New York City. On their way there, Myrtle and Nick get acquainted.

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What does Nick learn about Tom at the end of Chapter 2? What conflict arises in this section of the novel? Welcome to The Great Gatsby Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis page prepared by our editorial team! Here, you will find out everything you need to know.

The Great Gatsby‘s Chapter 2 starts with Nick describing an area called “Valley of Ashes.” It’s the valley between West Egg and New York City where all the ashes from the city are dropped. Nick describes it as abandoned land, which was once advanced, totally buried under ashes to the point that everything seems ash-grey.

“This is a valley of ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.”

(The Great Gatsby, chapter 2)

Two eyes, “blue and gigantic — their retinas are one yard high,” stare down on the valley through glasses from the billboard. It is Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, eye practitioner, looking after the people covered in ashes.

One day Tom and Nick are on a train riding to the city. Tom suddenly wants to get off in the Valley of Ashes. He forces Nick to follow him. They walk to George Wilson’s garage, where Tom wants to speak to George about selling his car. Wilson is a handsome man but tired of this life and covered with ashes. His wife, Myrtle, on the other hand, makes an impression of being lively and seductive.

“Her laughter, her gestures, her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment and as she expanded the room grew smaller around her until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air.”

(The Great Gatsby, chapter 2)

When George walks out to get some chairs, Nick tells Myrtle he wants to see her. She should come to the train station and meet them there. Mrs. Wilson leaves the house, telling her husband she’s meeting up with her sister.

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Later, Nick, Tom, and Myrtle go to the apartment in New York, which Tom keeps just for his love affair issue. They decide to have a party, and Myrtle’s sister, Catherine, and another couple join them. Catherine is a redhead girl who overdoes it with makeup, and the couple, McKees, don’t make the best impression either. They all get drunk fast. Nick confesses that it is the second time in his life he is drunk.

While the party gets louder and wilder, they start gossiping about other people. Gatsby becomes the subject, and Catherine expresses her fears of Gatsby. She heard that he is a member of the German emperor’s family. They all decided on the fact that Gatsby’s money is dirty. Nick dislikes the energy of the party and wants to leave but finds himself amused by it at the same time. Catherine tells Nick that “neither of them can stand the person they’re married to,” talking about Tom and Myrtle.

“What I say is, why go on living with them if they can’t stand them? If I was them I’d get a divorce and get married to each other right away.”

(The Great Gatsby, chapter 2)

She doesn’t understand why they can’t get divorced and marry each other. She assumes it is because Daisy is religious and doesn’t “believe in divorce.” Nick is shocked because he knows it is a lie.

Myrtle starts talking about her life, how she and Tom met, and then about Tom’s family. He gives her a puppy as a gift. As it gets later in the night, Myrtle and Tom start arguing on whether she’s allowed to mention Daisy’s name. It only makes her start shouting: “Daisy!” over and over again. In one quick movement, Tom hits Myrtle and breaks her nose. It brings a loud party to an end. Nick leaves with Mr. McKee, walks him home, and takes an early morning train to Long Island.

🎭 Active Characters

Nick Carraway, Tom Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, George Wilson, Catherine, Mr. McKee, Mrs. McKee.

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🔥 Active Themes

🔬 The Great Gatsby: Analysis of Chapter 2

The description of the Valley of Ashes at the beginning of Chapter 2 strikes with the shocking contrast. It is a counterpart to the glamour of rich areas. This is where people with no money, no purpose in life, and no dreams live. In the novel, the Valley of Ashes symbolizes the rotten souls of the rich that are covered with dazzling clothes and mansions. Just like that, people in the valley are covered with ashes. It also may be a sign of the dull future of the Roaring Twenties.

The all-seeing eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg on the billboard carry little meaning in this chapter, but they are given more value later in the book. In Chapter 2, the eyes might represent the silent witness of the 1920s’ wildness.

The careful analysis of The Great Gatsby‘s Chapter 2 can bring up many fascinating details, including the reason why Tom Buchanan prefers to have an affair with someone from a lower social class. George Wilson and his wife, Myrtle, seem to be showing completely different characters. While George looks like a lifeless body, Myrtle appears as full of ambition and hope to get out of that swamp they call life. She is not that delicate and elegant girl, like Daisy. Instead, Myrtle is very simple, bulky, but sensual at the same time. Her great desire to be one of the rich brings liveliness to her personality. Daisy, on the other hand, has already got the wealth and lost all the interest in it. It may be one of the reasons why Tom has Myrtle as a mistress – he’s trying to replace the emptiness in his family with the lively energy of his lover.

In The Great Gatsby‘s Chapter 2 summary, an intense discussion between Tom and Myrtle is briefly mentioned. However, this scene opens up Tom’s character a bit more. Being in the company of Tom makes Myrtle feel more powerful as it brings her confidence in her bright future with a wealthy lover. She is probably trying to provoke Tom and starts shouting out Daisy’s name. He breaks her nose. It is a reminder that she must not forget her place since Tom is the privileged one. But most importantly, it demonstrates Tom’s violent tendencies. Even though Nick has known that Tom is not a good guy, this incident leaves him wondering what other awful things Mr. Buchanan is capable of.

In fact, in the previous chapter, a few quotes are mentioning Tom’s hidden demons. Daisy was complaining that Tom bruised her by accident and called him “a brute of a man.” However, he neither denied it nor apologized to Daisy, so the apparent conclusion emerges – he DID mean to do it.

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Moreover, defending Daisy’s name while cheating on her, Tom gives away his hypocrisy. Out of many other themes in the novel, this one is minor but still relevant as it shows the helplessness and despair of women of those times.

There are some questions in The Great Gatsby‘s Chapter 2, which are left unsolved. For instance, the last phrases at the end of the chapter. Nick’s mysterious description of Mr. McKee in his bedroom implies that there might have been intercourse between two men. It may be an addition to the topic of wildness in the 1920s.

🎓 References

If The Great Gatsby were college, Chapter 2 would be the drunk frat party that gets way out of control, with Tom Buchanan as that guy yelling at everyone to chug. That's because this chapter is all about Tom's double life: Nick meets his mistress, gets wasted at her small apartment party in Manhattan, and gets an up close and personal view into Tom's violent tendencies.

Read on for a full The Great Gatsby Chapter 2 summary, plus explication of connections to the book's main themes and analysis of important passages!

Quick Note on Our Citations

Our citation format in this guide is (chapter.paragraph). We're using this system since there are many editions of Gatsby, so using page numbers would only work for students with our copy of the book.

To find a quotation we cite via chapter and paragraph in your book, you can either eyeball it (Paragraph 1-50: beginning of chapter; 50-100: middle of chapter; 100-on: end of chapter), or use the search function if you're using an online or eReader version of the text.

The Great Gatsby: Chapter 2 Summary

Nick describes the "valley of ashes" that is the area between the rich suburb of West Egg and Manhattan. This is the gray and dirty part of the borough of Queens that you drive through to get from Long Island to NYC.

Above this bleak, smoky, unpleasant landscape is a giant billboard advertising Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, an eye doctor. The billboard is a set of giant eyes that seems to be surveying or judging everything below.

Tom's mistress lives in this "ash heaps" area.

One day, when Nick takes the train with Tom to Manhattan, Tom suddenly makes him get off at a random stop to meet her.

They go to a garage owned by George Wilson, who seems to be in the middle of buying a car from Tom. Myrtle Wilson, George's wife, comes down to the garage. She isn't beautiful, but is attractive because she is plump and lively. Tom quickly makes a plan to meet her in the city. He and Nick leave, and Tom explains that George has no idea that Myrtle is having an affair with Tom.

Tom insists Myrtle meet him in Manhattan, so she boards the same train as Tom and Nick, but she sits in a different car to be discreet, and they then meet up at the station.

Myrtle decides she would like a dog, and Tom buys her a puppy from a condescending passing salesman.

Nick tries to leave Tom and Myrtle, but they insist he come up to their apartment very far uptown. The apartment is small, gaudily decorated, and uncomfortable. Tom brings out a bottle of whiskey.

For the second time in his life (or so he claims), Nick gets drunk, so his memory of what happens next is somewhat hazy. Nevertheless, we get the sense that Tom and Myrtle have sex while Nick politely reads a book in the other room.

Then some guests come over: Myrtle's sister Catherine, as well as a photographer named McKee and his horrible wife. Myrtle lords it over her guests. The McKees fawn over her and Tom, complimenting her dress and devising ways of photographing her artistically. Tom plies them with alcohol. Meanwhile, Catherine tells Nick that she's been to a party at Gatsby's house. According to her, Gatsby is so rich because he is Kaiser Wilhelm's cousin.

Catherine then tells Nick that both Tom and Myrtle hate the people they're married to; she wonders why they don't divorced and marry each other instead. When Myrtle overhears, she says something obscene about George Wilson. According to Catherine, these divorces don't happen because Daisy is Catholic. Nick, who knows that Daisy is not Catholic, is shocked by what has obviously been Tom's lie.

Nick then remembers Mrs. McKee using an anti-Semitic slur to talk about a failed suitor. Myrtle responds that her own mistake had been to marry the suitor that she should have ignored.

Nick keeps trying and failing to leave the party.

Myrtle tells him the story of how she first met Tom on the train. He picked her up by pressing himself against her when they got out on the platform.

Later that night, Myrtle and Tom have an argument about Daisy and Tom hits her so hard that he breaks her nose.

Nick leaves the party and goes home with McKee, the photographer. The narrative gets harder and harder to follow as Nick's inebriation really catches up with him. Nick somehow ends up at the train station, waiting for the 4 am train to get back to West Egg.

Key Chapter 2 Quotes

About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes--a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. (2.1)

Every time anyone goes from Long Island to Manhattan or back, they go through this depressing industrial area in the middle of Queens. The factories located here pollute the air and land around them—their detritus is what makes the "ash" dust that covers everything and everyone. This is the place where those who cannot succeed in the rat race end up, hopeless and lacking any way to escape. Check out our focused article for a much more in-depth analysis of what the crucial symbol of "the valley of ashes" stands for in this novel.

The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic--their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground. (2.2)

There is no God in the novel. None of the characters seems to be religious, no one wonders about the moral or ethical implications of any actions, and in the end, there are no punishments doled out to the bad or rewards given to the good. This lack of religious feeling is partly what makes Tom's lie to Myrtle about Daisy being a Catholic particularly egregious. This lack of even a basic moral framework is underscored by the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, a giant billboard that is as close as this world gets to having a watchful authoritative presence.

Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time before and was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room. 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. Her laughter, her gestures, her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment and as she expanded the room grew smaller around her until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air. (2.56)

This chapter is our main exposure to Myrtle Wilson, Tom's mistress. Here, we see the main points of her personality—or at least the way that she comes across to Nick. First, it's interesting to note that aside from Tom, whose hulkish physique Nick really pays a lot of attention to, Myrtle is the only character whose physicality is dwelt on at length. We hear a lot about her body and the way she moves in space—here, we not only get her "sweeping" across the room, "expanding," and "revolving," but also the sense that her "gestures" are somehow "violent." It makes sense that for Nick, who is into the cool and detached Jordan, Myrtle's overenthusiastic affect is a little off-putting. But remember this focus on Myrtle's body when you read Chapter 7, where this body will be exposed in a shocking way.

Some time toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face discussing in impassioned voices whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy's name.

"Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!" shouted Mrs. Wilson. "I'll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai----"

Making a short deft movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand. (2.124-126)

This bit of violence succinctly encapsulates Tom's brutality, how little he thinks of Myrtle, and it also speaks volumes about their vastly unequal and disturbing relationship. Two things to think about:

#1: Why doesn't Tom want Myrtle to mention Daisy? It could be a way of maintaining discretion—to keep secret her identity in order to hide the affair. But, considering everyone in town apparently knows about Myrtle, this doesn't seem to be the reason. More likely is the fact that Tom does actually hold Daisy in much higher regard than Myrtle, and he refuses to let the lower class woman "degrade" his high-class wife by talking about her freely. This is yet again an example of his extreme snobbery.

#2: Tom is a person who uses his body to get what he wants. Sometimes this is within socially acceptable boundaries—for example, on the football field at Yale—and sometimes it is to browbeat everyone around him into compliance. It's also interesting that both Tom and Myrtle are such physically present characters in the novel—in this moment, Myrtle is the only character that actually stands up to Tom. In a way, they are a perfect match.

Chapter 2 Analysis

So how does this chapter contribute to our understanding of the novel's themes? And what are the most significant character beats to remember? I'll answer those questions in this section.

Themes and Symbols

Love, Desire, and Relationships. At the party, the guests discuss love and marriage. Two separate threads in this conversation stand out:

#1: In Catherine's eyes, the situation between Myrtle and Tom couldn't be clearer: both don't like their spouses, both are into each other, so the obvious solution would be for the two of them to run off together. Of course, we see that Tom would never leave Daisy for Myrtle—she is just someone he can feel free to abuse, since he can always buy her compliance with more cheap gifts.

#2: Myrtle describes her decision to marry Wilson as a case of mistaken identity. She thought he was a gentleman, but his veneer of class—exemplified by the fact that he "He borrowed somebody's best suit to get married in and never even told me" (2.116)—was almost immediately dispelled after the wedding. This is very reminiscent of both what happens to Daisy, as Tom cheats on her during their honeymoon, revealing his MO; and what almost happens to Daisy and Gatsby, who is yet another man who seems like a gentleman but is actually living in a borrowed "suit" and a borrowed identity.

Society and Class. After seeing the heights of the upper classes on East Egg and the lows of the factory workers in the valley of ashes, this chapter shows us what life is like for a segment of the middle class. Myrtle is desperate to get as far away from her depressing life with Wilson at the gas station as she can, surrounding herself with the material trappings that Tom can provide: an apartment, clothes, and an accessory dog.

The American Dream. In a novel that is all about the American drive to get ahead, Myrtle is one of the strivers, willing to put up with terrible treatment in exchange for a chance to climb higher. So are the people hanging on her coattails, like the McKees and Catherine. Seeing her with this shows us just how striated (separated into layers) society is, as Myrtle grabs every tiny opportunity to demonstrate her slightly higher status to her entourage.

The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. This world is defined by its lawless amorality, and there is no voice of moral authority to pass judgment on the bad behavior of the characters. All we get is an inanimate object that hints at the possibility of a divine watcher. But, even though these disembodied eyes do make wrong-doers feel uncomfortable under their gaze, they can't actually prevent anything. For example, Tom is entirely comfortable lying. He maintains a mistress, lying to Daisy about his phone calls. And it turns out that he is lying to Myrtle as well, telling her that the reason he can't divorce his wife is that Daisy is a Catholic. He winces under the eyes of the billboard, but it doesn't deter him in any way.

The Valley of Ashes. There are those who live in palaces in West and East Egg. There are those who party in apartments in Manhattan. But this chapter shows us what happens to the people who get left behind, and who can't muster up the luck and energy needed to "win." They end up in the gray wasteland of industrial Queens, enabling the rich to get richer through their depressing, polluted, and monotonous labor.

Crucial Character Beats

• Tom drags Nick to meet Myrtle at Wilson's gas station, in the middle of the "valley of ashes" that is industrial Queens.

• They arrange to meet in Manhattan, where Myrtle hosts a little party in her apartment.

• Myrtle lords it over her guests and reveals how miserable she is in her marriage.

• It's also clear that Tom has been lying to Myrtle about his own marriage in order to string her along.

• The party breaks up after Tom punches Myrtle in the face and breaks her nose. He does it because she mentions Daisy's name.

What's Next?

Get deeper into the characters of Tom and Myrtle to really dig into what function they play in the novel.

Draw comparisons between Myrtle and Daisy to see how these two almost diametrically opposed women actually have some important things in common. Also, explore how each perceives her relationships with men.

Move on to the summary of Chapter 3, or revisit the summary of Chapter 1.

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