The exchange between Nick and Gat*****y that opens this chapter highlights the uncertainty at the heart of their relationship. Is Gat*****y's friendship with Nick merely expedient? Is he merely using him to draw closer to Daisy or is he genuinely fond of Nick?
The question cannot be easily answered: while it becomes clear that Gat*****y has great affection for Nick, it is also true that he uses money and power as leverage in all of his personal relationships. Gat*****y, in his extreme insecurity about class, cannot believe that anyone would befriend him if he did not possess a mansion and make several million dollars per year. Fitzgerald seems to bitterly affirm this insecurity, given the fact that Gat*****y was abandoned by Daisy because of his poverty, and remains ostracized by the East Eggers even after his success. In the world of the novel, only Nick does not make friendships based upon class.
The gross materialism of the East and West Egg areas explains the obsessive care that Gat*****y takes in his reunion with Daisy. The afternoon is given over to an ostentatious display of wealth: he shows Daisy his extensive collection of British antiques and takes her on a tour of his wardrobe. Gat*****y himself is dressed in gold and silver. His Gothic mansion is described as looking like the citadel of a feudal lord. Nearly everything in the house is imported from England (the scene in which Gat*****y shows Daisy his stock of English shirts is one of the most famous in American literature). Fitzgerald implies that Gat*****y is attempting to live the life of a European aristocrat in the New World of America. This, Fitzgerald suggests, is a misguided anachronism: America committed itself to progress and equality in abandoning the old aristocracy. To go back to such rigidly defined class distinctions would be retrograde and barbaric. This is reinforced by the fact that the major proponent of such ideas is Tom Buchanan, who is clearly a brute.
This chapter presents Gat*****y as a man who cannot help but live in the past: he longs to stop time, as though he and Daisy had never been separated and as though she had never left him to marry Tom. During their meeting, Nick remarks that he is acting like "a little boy." In Daisy's presence, Gat*****y loses his usual debonair manner and behaves like any awkward young man in love. Gat*****y himself is regressing, as though he were still a shy young soldier in love with a privileged debutante.
Nick describes the restless Gat*****y as "running down like an over-wound clock." It is significant that Gat*****y, in his nervousness about whether Daisy's feelings toward him have changed, knocks over Nick's clock: this signifies both Gat*****y's consuming desire to stop time and his inability to do so.
Daisy, too, ceases to play the part of a world-weary sophisticate upon her reunion with Gat*****y. She weeps when he shows her his collection of sumptuous English shirts, and seems genuinely overjoyed at his success. In short, Gat*****y transforms her; she becomes almost human. Daisy is more sympathetic in this chapter than she is at any other point in the novel.
The song "Ain't We Got Fun" is significant for a number of reasons. The opening lyrics ("In the morning/ In the evening/ Ain't we got fun") imply a carefree spontaneity that stands in stark contrast to the tightly-controlled quality of the lovers' reunion. This contrast is further sharpened by the words of the next verse, which run: "Got no money/ But oh, honey/ Ain't we got fun!" It is bitterly ironic that Gat*****y and Daisy should reunite to the strains of this song, given the fact that she rejected him because of his poverty.
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