I wanted to get somebody for him. I wanted to go into the room where he lay and reassure him: "I'll get somebody for you, Gatsby. Don't worry. Just trust me and I'll get somebody for you—"
Chapter 9 · Narrator
Context
As Nick desperately tries to contact people who might attend Gatsby's funeral—calling Daisy, Wolfshiem, and others—he finds himself unable to locate anyone who will come. His frustration transforms into a fantasy of speaking to the dead Gatsby, promising to find someone who cares.
Analysis
The anaphoric repetition of 'I wanted' and 'somebody' creates a rhythm of desperation that mirrors Nick's futile attempts to reach people by phone, while the shift into imagined direct address to the dead man collapses the boundary between the living and the dead—Nick is haunted not by Gatsby's ghost but by the obligation the dead place on the living. The trailing dash at the end leaves the promise unfinished, formally enacting the impossibility of fulfilling it: there is no 'somebody' to get, and the sentence cannot close because the task cannot be completed.
How to Use in Essay
Suitable for essays on Nick's role as Gatsby's only genuine mourner and the moral weight that creates, or for analyzing how the novel uses the funeral preparations to expose the emptiness of Gatsby's social world.