While Nick and Jordan mingle at Gatsby’s party, they learn many intriguing things about their host, and everything they learn underscores the idea of reality versus rumor that underlies so much of The Great Gatsby. One of the first things the couple find out is that when one partygoer tore a dress at a party, Gatsby sent her a new evening gown worth a small fortune. Nick and Jordan also discover that part of the Gatsby mythos is that “he killed a man once.” Another romantic rumor places Gatsby as “a German spy during the war.” How interesting that no one really knows much about Gatsby! In a way, it is a sad commentary on the people attending the party: Can they really care so little about their host that they don’t even have the common courtesy to find the difference between fiction and fact? Instead, they believe what is convenient or easy for them, creating a version of Jay Gatsby that meets their ideals. Ironically, the guests’ construction of their host is not unlike how the host himself, as is later revealed, has constructed himself.
As Nick and Jordan saunter around, they also shed more light on the partygoers themselves. For example, while Nick and Jordan explore the house (under the pretense, at least, of looking for Gatsby), they meet a man know throughout the book as “Owl Eyes” due to his glasses. Two things are striking about him. First, he seems impressed that the books in Gatsby’s library are real. Although this may seem merely a careless remark, in fact, it speaks volumes. Gatsby, unlike Tom, is “new money,” and Owl Eyes knows it. Clearly he has spent a great deal of time among the nouveaux riches and knows them well enough to know that they are, by and large, about appearances. He is surprised that the books are real, expecting, instead, for them to “be a nice durable cardboard,” giving the illusion of a library where none really exists. Instead, Gatsby does indeed have real books. Everything in the house, Gatsby reveals later, has been painstakingly chosen to create an image of affluence. The second revealing statement Owl Eyes makes is that he’s “been drunk for about a week now.” In this respect, he is a perfect poster boy for the Jazz Age, drunk to incapacitation for weeks on end.
