Nick Dines with the Buchanans, Explained：have the decency

What's really going on

Everyone at this table is performing. Tom's phone keeps ringing, and Daisy never names the affair; she just says, "She might have the decency not to telephone at dinnertime," which turns a private humiliation into a joke about manners. Nick, the outsider, watches old money at work: the Buchanans belong here, and his own West Egg address draws the phrase "social-climbing... primitive new-money types." One line claims she is "pretty cynical about everything," yet the scene's real weight lands later, when she hopes her newborn daughter will be "a beautiful little fool" — the best a girl can be in this world. Charm, wealth and contempt share one dinner table.

Theme

このチャプターで学べること

• Use create a scene to stop a public fuss
• Hear paralyzed with happiness as irony
• Explain beautiful little fool as bitter hope
• Catch throw one's lot in as picking sides

発音のポイント

• the golden girl — stress
• paralyzed with happiness — elision
• remind me of — weak form