The Great Gatsby Analysis of Chapter 9
by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The poor attendance at Gatsby's funeral exemplifies the ultimate failure of Gatsby to ever achieve what he wanted. The woman he loved was not present, she was off with her husband. None of the people who frequented the parties over the summer showed up and Wolfsheim, one of the few people who could be called a close friend to Gatsby, refused to attend. This can all be tied into the final quote about trying to grasp for that green light. The more Gatsby tried to obtain, the less he ended up with. Like the green light, it receded before him no matter how badly he wanted all of it.

And Tom and Daisy's sudden disappearance shows the truly careless nature of these two. As Nick says, "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then receded back into their money...". The privileged life the two had led made them incapable of accepting responsibility for their actions. They simply were not able to accept their judgments. This is why Daisy is willing to leave Gatsby in order to escape the punishment she should have received for the accident. No matter how true her words of love to him were, she was willing to sacrifice them to run away from responsibility.

Another look at the importance of the word "careless" is when Nick goes to see Jordan. She brings up the time he called her a careless driver. She says that Nick was careless also and that it was careless of her to trust him, that he was false and a liar. This is also interesting because of how honest Nick claims to be. Because we have no objective perception of the situation it is one character's word against the other's.