"I couldn't get to the house," he remarked. "Neither could anybody else." "Go on!" He started. "Why, my God! they used to go there by the hundreds." He took off his glasses and wiped them again, outside and in. "The poor son-of-a-bitch," he said.
Chapter 9 · Owl Eyes, Narrator
Context
At the cemetery after Gatsby's funeral, Owl Eyes—the man who marveled at Gatsby's real books in Chapter 3—is the only former partygoer to attend. He expresses shock at the absence of others, and his final comment serves as an epitaph delivered by the one guest who always saw through surfaces.
Analysis
The situational irony of hundreds attending parties but no one attending the funeral crystallizes the novel's indictment of a society that consumes spectacle without forming bonds—the juxtaposition between 'by the hundreds' and the empty funeral measures the exact distance between Gatsby's social performance and genuine human connection. Owl Eyes' crude epitaph ('the poor son-of-a-bitch') is paradoxically the most honest and compassionate response Gatsby receives: unlike the platitudes of others, it acknowledges both his suffering and his humanity, and its vulgarity carries more authentic feeling than any formal elegy could.
How to Use in Essay
One of the novel's most cited moments—ideal for essays on the hollowness of Gatsby's social world, or for arguing that Owl Eyes functions as the novel's truth-teller, the one character who sees through appearances (books, parties, the man himself) to the reality beneath.