Who Is Walter Chase In The Great Gatsby - T-Tees - Your Answers Await, Life's Questions Unraveled

Table of Contents

Great Gatsby Chapter 7 Activity: Teapot Dome Scandal

Bring history and ELA together for a cross-curricular Gatsby reunion! If you’re like me, it’s easy to fall into the rabbit hole known as JSTOR, the digital library that contains, according to its website, more than “12 million journal articles, books, images and primary sources.” It’s even easier to fall into the JSTOR rabbit hole when you’re also a huge fan of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

You may be interested

Recently, I stumbled across an interesting article that shed some light (for me, anyway) on the critical, climactic moment when Jay Gatsby lost Daisy Buchanan forever.

You are viewing: Who Is Walter Chase In The Great Gatsby

It’s the precise moment when Tom Buchanan made one particular comment and — POOF! — Jay and Daisy were no more. In the book, it happens quickly albeit over the course of a few paragraphs of perfectly scripted dialogue. And if you’re like me, and struggle to catch every detail (there’s just so many!) folded into Fitzgerald’s prose, it’s easy to miss.

What was Tom’s comment that so unhinged Gatsby? Here it is:

“That drug-store business was just small change,” continued Tom slowly, “but you’ve got something on now that Walter’s afraid to tell me about.”

I like how Fitzgerald has Tom speak slowly here, as if Tom knowingly suspects his divulgence will be Gatsby’s undoing. Fitzgerald follows Tom’s rumor from his friend Walter Chase with a paragraph where Nick tells us that Daisy stares between Gatsby and Tom, Jordan keeps quiet, and finally, Gatsby looks as if he had just “killed a man.”

Nick continues to paint the scene, describing how Jay then “began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything, defending his name against accusations that had not been made.”

Refer to more articles: Who Is The Best Mother In The World

Yikes. It’s painful to picture a panic-stricken Gatsby withering beneath the pressure to cover up and explain away Tom’s carefully spoken accusation to Daisy. But it doesn’t work.

Nick continues, “But with every word she (Daisy) was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room.”

And with that, Jay lost Daisy

I’ve read The Great Gatsby numerous times, but never really noticed the potential significance of Tom’s slowly spoken words “something on now.” Of course, thanks to my JSTOR discovery, I have a new perspective on the argumentative gymnastics that took place in that “stifling” suite high up in the Plaza Hotel at four o’clock one afternoon in 1922.

What “something” was Tom referring to? Whatever it was, it must have been damning for Gatsby, and Tom knew it.

So if the “something on now” isn’t bootlegging and isn’t gambling, what is it?

Well, that’s where my JSTOR discovery comes into play.

In John H. Randall’s “Jay Gatsby’s Hidden Source of Wealth,” an article published in the Summer 1967 issue of Modern Fiction Studies, Randall makes an interesting argument for what the “something on now” may have been.

Drumroll, please…

The “something on now” could be the Teapot Dome Scandal of the early 1920s.

According to History.com, “Before the Watergate Scandal, the Teapot Dome Scandal was regarded as the most sensational example of high-level corruption in the history of U.S. politics.”

Refer to more articles: Who Is Krystiana Tiana Married To

For more basic info about Teapot Dome, watch this video:

According to the History.com article, “Albert Fall, a former Secretary of the Interior, was charged with accepting bribes from oil companies in exchange for exclusive rights to drill for oil on federal land. The sites included land near a teapot-shaped outcrop in Wyoming known as Teapot Dome, and two other government-owned sites in California named Elk Hills and Buena Vista Hills.”

The scandal reeked of corruption

It involved, History.com explains, “oil tycoons, poker-playing politicians, illegal liquor sales, a murder-suicide, a womanizing president and a bagful of bribery cash delivered on the sly.”

Hmmmm… just the ingredients for “hard-boiled detective fiction”, the term NPR book critic Maureen Corrigan uses to describe The Great Gatsby in her engaging tribute, “So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures.”

In fact, Randall notes that the first “crucial transactions” of the Teapot Dome Scandal occurred in 1922, the year The Great Gatsby is set. The scandal, which Randall describes as “the biggest financial scandal of the 1920s,” hit the newsstands in 1924, the year before the novel was published.

But does the Teapot Dome scenario really matter?

Maybe and maybe not. But it’s an intriguing idea to discuss with students, too, which I contend is one of the most satisfying aspects of teaching The Great Gatsby. There are always more and deeper layers to Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, and when I can supplement a text with additional insights, and draw connections across the curriculum to American history and current events, I go for it.

Thanks for reading! I hope I’ve added to your store of possible talking points with your students the next time you teach The Great Gatsby. I’m amazed at how The Great Gatsby is the book that just keeps giving and giving.

Once I feel I have it figured out, I come across an article like Randall’s that opens up new possibilities, new conversations, and new revelations. Have you ever discussed Teapot Dome during your Gatsby units? Leave a comment in the replies below or use my Contact page to tell me your experiences.

Also, feel free to check out my growing number of Gatsby posts by clicking The Great Gatsby in the pull-down Blog Menu at the top of this page or by clicking the green box below.