The Great Gatsby
Scene #4 · Chapter 4
Jordan Baker tells Nick the story Gatsby shared with her: five years earlier in Louisville, young officer Jay Gatsby fell in love with eighteen-year-old Daisy Fay before shipping overseas. Daisy waited, then married Tom Buchanan in 1919, though she drunkenly tried to back out the night before the wedding, clutching a letter and crying "Tell 'em all Daisy's change' her mine!" Gatsby bought his West Egg mansion specifically to be across the bay from Daisy. Jordan reveals that Gatsby wants Nick to invite Daisy to tea so Gatsby can "accidentally" encounter her.
This revelation reframes everything Nick has observed—Gatsby's parties, his mansion, his reaching toward the green light—as elaborate preparation for reclaiming Daisy. The detail about Daisy's pre-wedding breakdown suggests she once genuinely loved Gatsby but chose wealth and security instead. Gatsby's request positions Nick as the essential link between his past and his dream, forcing Nick into complicity with Gatsby's obsession.
He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths—so that he could "come over" some afternoon to a stranger's garden.
Chapter 4 · Narrator
She wouldn't let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her and squeezed it up in a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the soap-dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow.
Chapter 4 · Jordan Baker
Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay.
Chapter 4 · Jordan Baker
Take 'em downstairs and give 'em back to whoever they belong to. Tell 'em all Daisy's change' her mine. Say: 'Daisy's change' her mine!'
Chapter 4 · Daisy Buchanan
The officer looked at Daisy while she was speaking, in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at sometime, and because it seemed romantic to me I have remembered the incident ever since.
Chapter 4 · Jordan Baker