poignant- physically painful; profoundly moving; touching This passage is when Nick is describing his daily routine and one thing the reader notices is that he is constantly alone. He pretends to follow girls and he dreams about being with them, but he never is. He says they are wasting the most poignant moments of night and life, but I feel he is also jealous of their ability to waste them.
wan- unnaturally pale, as from physical or emotional distress scornful- full of contempt or disdain felt toward a person or object considered despicable or unworthy; contemptuous; disdainful The sentence right before Nick talks about Daisy and how he doesn’t have her, so he has to settle for the next best thing, which is Jordan. Daisy isn’t the best thing for Nick, but in the eyes of Tom and Gatsby, she is, therefore she epitomizes what every guy wants. Nick doesn’t have her yet; therefore he is left out.
meretricious- attracting attention in a vulgar manner Gatsby wanted to be somebody he is not. So he changes his name when he’s 17-years-old and he believes forever that he has become the person he wanted to be.
pervading- to be present throughout; permeate The whole party atmosphere is the same as it always is, except this time Tom and Daisy are there. Then there was a sense of uneasiness as if something drastic might happen, because for some reason there’s instability.
vigil- a watch kept during normal sleeping hours; the act or a period of observing; surveillance This is definitely an example of anomie for Gatsby is standing outside his house, looking at nothing, and he is disturbed by Nick’s presence. So Nick leaves Gatsby to himself, he is all alone with his sacred watch.
amorphous- lacking definite form; shapeless This passage is unreal because it talks about ghosts and shapeless trees. There’s a sense of surrealism, and how nothing is going to go right. The telephone message didn’t come, and it seems that Gatsby didn’t care any longer that he was alone.
transitory- existing or lasting only a short time; short-lived or temporary commensurate- of the same size, extent, or duration as another The sense of loneliness is pervading in this passage because Gatsby is dead already; he is in another world, all alone. He never got what he wanted on earth, except a constant emptiness. His life was transitory, though he felt his love for Daisy wasn’t. At the end of the book, none of the characters have walked away with anything but a deeper sense of anomie.