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58 pages 1 hour read

Nghi Vo

The Chosen and the Beautiful

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Chapters 21-23Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 21 Summary

Khai turns up to rescue Jordan, telling her that she called to him from a dream. He then informs her that the vote on the Manchester Act happens today and that he, Bai, and all the traveling performers will board the Princess Titania to ship out to Shanghai on Friday. He invites Jordan to come with them.

She realizes that she feels more vulnerable around Khai and other groups of Asians than alone and contemplates how that explains why she tended to avoid Chinatown.

She goes home and sleeps and then wakes up to two pieces of news: the Manchester Act has passed, and Gatsby is dead.

Chapter 22 Summary

George Wilson shot Gatsby after Tom said Gatsby drove over Myrtle. Wilson came to Gatsby’s property and shot himself after the act. Jordan calls Nick to arrange a meeting, but he rebuffs her.

Aunt Justine advises that Jordan should go to Shanghai for the change of scene and regard the experience less as running away and more of going on retreat. Jordan drives the coupe back to the Buchanan home and finds Daisy playing with her little girl Pammy. Jordan insists on knowing what happened the night of the accident, although Daisy tries to put her off, saying that “Jay’s dead and gone, it’s over, why can’t you let it be over?” (248). Then, Daisy describes how Myrtle ran out so quickly, convinced that they would stop. She was the one driving the car. Then, Gatsby performed magic by closing his eyes and conducted some safety-bearing spell, which makes sense to Jordan when she later learns about Gatsby’s half-Chippewa, half-Black mother who also performed magic. Meanwhile, Daisy pulled Myrtle off the road while she was still alive and “making the most terrible noises” (250). She says that she is still haunted by Myrtle’s face and Jordan says that she is glad. Daisy briefly rebukes and slaps Jordan, before telling her to come to Barcelona with her and Tom. Jordan then tells Daisy to stop, because she is not in love with her, and in any event, love alone would not be enough. Jordan vows to definitively break with Daisy and runs away; however, she entertains thoughts of forgiving her when she hears a car and imagines that it might be hers.

The vehicle is, however, Nick’s. He drives her to his house in West Egg.

Chapter 23 Summary

Nick confesses that he attended Gatsby’s pauper’s funeral, which was only attended by his father. Later, in his own house, Nick admits that he has always liked Gatsby, despite the long list of young men he slept with. Even though Jordan knew Nick was gay, she still feels lonely and broken-hearted at the news that he prefers others to her.

Nevertheless, Nick and Jordan are fond of each other and kiss and comfort each other. He accuses Jordan of liking Daisy the best and she replies, “not anymore” and acknowledges that this will be true in a while (255). He says that he loves her, but that his love also goes so far.

Jordan glimpses a view of Nick’s heart, which includes the great-grandmother from Bangkok who Jordan feels an “odd kinship” with and a yearbook style vignette of Gatsby largest of all, and the other few men he knew in the war (256). She also sees her own name and plants a lipstick kiss to the edge of the card.

She takes Nick’s car and drives west to the city and encounters the ghost of Myrtle Wilson on the way. She tells the ghost that Tom and Daisy are going to Barcelona, and that she can meet her there.

Jordan looks at the city, not knowing when she will be back. She plans to go to Vietnam after Shanghai. She has a vision of Gatsby’s house going through several evolutions and being visited by gawkers, arsonists, and realtors who come to measure and divvy up the property. Jordan has a sense of renewal as she contemplates new skies and a new life.

Chapters 21-23 Analysis

The theme of The Other as Outsider reaches its culmination in Jordan’s escape plan from an officially more racist America that has passed the Manchester Act, as she plans to accompany Khai on the boat to Shanghai and later Vietnam. Yet, the fact that Khai instinctively felt her need for a solution in a dream indicates that she is no longer alone and that she stands to form a sense of solidarity with him and his paper-cutting troupe. Thus, this will be no idle retreat, but rather a chance to embrace a deeper sense of her identity. As Jordan embraces her non-white status, Vo shows similar aspects in other characters such as Gatsby and Nick. Gatsby’s utterance of a spell in the legacy of his half-Chippewa, half-Black mother indicates some acceptance of his roots, even as he does this to camouflage Daisy’s crime and remove them from the reality of the accident. Similarly, at the moment of their reconciliation and leave-taking, Jordan glimpses in Nick’s heart the Bangkok grandmother and relates to her. The grandmother’s action of choosing “a picture she was in rather than erasing herself entirely” aligns with Jordan’s current philosophy of standing out as her Asian self rather than blending in and seeking to not offend white people (256). This emphasis on Nick, Gatsby, and Jordan’s mixed or non-white ethnicity at the end of the novel creates a counter to the protected WASP block that the Buchanans found together when they escape to Barcelona to evade the scandal of the accident.

While Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is feted as a passionate love story, the feeling at the end of Vo’s novel is that “love wasn’t enough” (251). It is not enough for Daisy, who ultimately chooses Tom’s protection over her feelings for Gatsby, and it is not enough for Jordan, who loves Daisy, but recognizes that she needs to excise herself from an unhealthy one-sided dynamic where she is used and unable to fully come of age as herself. This separation is difficult for Jordan, and Vo shows Daisy’s hold over her when the former contemplates forgiving Daisy if the car on the horizon is hers. When the car turns out to be Nick’s instead of Daisy’s, the love between him and Jordan is not enough either. Both acknowledge that while there is mutual tenderness, their love does not have the same potency without Gatsby and that they must be free to go their separate ways. A lack of forced heterosexual happy ending indicates Jordan’s commitment to walking the most authentic path for herself. Interestingly, this contrasts with Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, where Jordan is “engaged to another man” at the end of the novel, and bitter that Nick had the audacity to “throw (her) over on the telephone” (Fitzgerald 180-181).

Vo’s novel ends with a contemplation of the land of Gatsby’s house and the changing seasons. The summer of parties has gone along with Gatsby and a climate of permissiveness that will now be replaced with conservatism as the Manchester Act is passed and the fall season starts. Still, Jordan is optimistic, given her journey and her faith in constant change. As she imagines the land in a constant change of hands, she acknowledges her hope for a more promising future where happiness and equality are possible.

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