The next day was broiling, almost the last, certainly the warmest, of the summer.
Chapter 7 · Narrator
Context
Nick describes the day on which he, Gatsby, and Jordan are invited to lunch at the Buchanans' house—the day that will culminate in the confrontation at the Plaza Hotel and Myrtle Wilson's death. The oppressive heat pervades every interaction that follows.
Analysis
The pathetic fallacy establishes the extreme heat as both a literal atmospheric condition and a correlative for the emotional pressures about to explode—jealousy, desire, and rage reaching their boiling point simultaneously with the temperature. The phrase 'almost the last' carries a proleptic double meaning: it marks not only the end of summer but implicitly the end of Gatsby's dream, positioning this day as a temporal threshold after which everything declines toward death.
How to Use in Essay
Useful for essays on Fitzgerald's use of weather and seasonal symbolism to structure narrative tension, or for analyzing how the novel uses natural cycles to suggest the inevitability of Gatsby's downfall.