Nick had a chance meeting with Tom Buchanan in New York, on Fifth Avenue. Tom was the one who noticed him and came to shake Nick's hand but Nick refused the gesture. When Tom asked him if he was refusing to shake hands with him, Nick bluntly replied, "Yes. You know what I think of you." It is either that Tom was too idiotic to realize why Nick despised him or that he could not believe that someone could actually dislike him, for he could not understand, as he called it, 'what was wrong with' Nick.
At that point, Nick pertinently asked him what he had told Mr. Wilson the afternoon after Myrtle's accidental death when she was knocked down by Daisy whilst she was driving Jay Gatsby's car. Tom was dumbstruck and Nick knew he had guessed correctly - that Tom had informed Wilson that it was Jay who had knocked down his wife, killing her. As Nick walked away, Tom grabbed his arm and confessed to what Nick suspected:
“I told him the truth,” he said. “He came to the door while we were getting ready to leave, and when I sent down word that we weren’t in he tried to force his way up-stairs. He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadn’t told him who owned the car. His hand was on a revolver in his pocket every minute he was in the house ——”
What makes this revelation shocking is not only the fact that Tom acknowledged that he was indirectly responsible for Jay's death by implicating him, but also that firstly, Daisy seemed to have lied to him about who had been driving the car at the time and, secondly, that he assumed an attitude of righteous indignation for Nick's resentment, for he says:
“What if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him. He threw dust into your eyes just like he did in Daisy’s, but he was a tough one. He ran over Myrtle like you’d run over a dog and never even stopped his car.”
Nick then told him the truth. Tom further displays his lack of remorse and self-absorption by trying to glean some sympathy from Nick. He tells him:
“And if you think I didn’t have my share of suffering — look here, when I went to give up that flat and saw that damn box of dog biscuits sitting there on the sideboard, I sat down and cried like a baby. By God it was awful ——”
Nick was unforgiving and felt that Tom believed that his actions were justified. He concluded that Tom and Daisy were careless people who made a mess and expected others to clean up after them so that they could return to the comfort of their wealth and their careless lives. Nick felt as if he was talking to a child, alluding to Tom's utter inability to even realize the wrongfulness of his actions.
Nick's sentiments in this instance echo what he had previously told Jay about the Buchanan's and their sort:
“They’re a rotten crowd,” I shouted across the lawn. “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”
It is a pity that our hopeful idealist never saw it that way and paid for his folly with his life.
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