select a passage that develops a character. Respond to the passage by identifying the strategies employed by the author to develop this character and comment on the effect these strategies have on your reaction to this character.
I think the passage below speaks volumes about Tom's character. In fact, we learn so much about the man, in so short a time, that we can hardly make the effort to want to get to know him any better. This particular passage sets Tom up as the ultimate playboy, albeit a married playboy. He thinks only of himself, has no respect for his wife's feelings or honor (let alone his own honor), embarrasses their friends, and cuckolds his mistress' husband without thought.
"The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known. His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with whomsoever he knew. Though I was curious to see her, I had no desire to meet her — but I did. I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon, and when we stopped by the ashheaps he jumped to his feet and, taking hold of my elbow, literally forced me from the car.
“We’re getting off,” he insisted. “I want you to meet my girl.”
I think he’d tanked up a good deal at luncheon, and his determination to have my company bordered on violence. The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to do.
I followed him over a low whitewashed railroad fence, and we walked back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare. The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it, and contiguous to absolutely nothing. One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night restaurant, approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage — Repairs. George B. Wilson. Cars bought and sold. — and I followed Tom inside.
The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car visible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner. It had occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind, and that sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead, when the proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste. He was a blond, spiritless man, anaemic, and faintly handsome. When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes.
“Hello, Wilson, old man,” said Tom, slapping him jovially on the shoulder.
“How’s business?”
“I can’t complain,” answered Wilson unconvincingly. “When are you going to sell me that car?”
“Next week; I’ve got my man working on it now.”
“Works pretty slow, don’t he?”
“No, he doesn’t,” said Tom coldly. “And if you feel that way about it, maybe I’d better sell it somewhere else after all.”
“I don’t mean that,” explained Wilson quickly. “I just meant ——”
His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage. Then I heard footsteps on a stairs, and in a moment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty, but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and, walking through her husband as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye."
The Great Gatsby/ Chapter 2
