100 pages • 3 hours read
Upton SinclairA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapters 1-3
Chapters 4-6
Chapters 7-9
Chapters 10-12
Chapters 13-15
Chapters 16-18
Chapters 19-21
Chapters 22-24
Chapters 25-27
Chapters 28-30
Chapters 31-33
Chapters 34-36
Chapters 37-39
Chapters 40-42
Chapters 43-45
Chapters 46-48
Chapters 49-51
Chapters 52-54
Chapters 55-57
Chapters 58-60
Chapters 61-63
Chapters 64-66
Chapters 67-69
Chapters 70-72
Chapters 73-75
Chapters 76-78
Chapters 79-81
Chapters 82-84
Chapters 85-92
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tom Shutt graduates from the University of Michigan. His graduation is an elegant affair that, of all the Shutts, only Daisy attends. Tom introduces Daisy to “a lovely co-ed in pale blue chiffon, the daughter of a manufacturer, who gazed upon him with what appeared to be doglike devotion; so Daisy understood the meaning of a college education” (191). Daisy is so impressed that she tries to leave early so that Tom won’t have to “introduce his poor ignorant sister to his rich and learned friends” (191).
However, Tom insists on riding home with Daisy that night, and spends the ride trying to convince Daisy that everything she has seen is “the bunk” (192). The speaker “whose eloquent idealism had so moved her was a hireling of the power corporations” (192), and the manufacturer’s daughter was not his ideal. Rather:
the girl he might hit it off with was that cute little one with large spectacles and slightly stooped shoulders; she had got that way bending over a study-table preparing a set of graphs showing the relationship of profits and wages in depressions throughout American history. Real wages always dropped quicker than profits, she had proved, and they never came back so fast (192).