What aspects of Gatsby and Daisy are highlighted in this passage from Chapter 7 of "The Great Gatsby"?

...but now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail. He knew that Daisy was extraordinary but he didn’t realize just how extraordinary a "nice" girl could be. She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing.

The passage is in reference to Gatsby's youth, and the first time that he and Daisy had engaged sexually, before Gatsby went off to war. Gatsby had for some time been in search of a "nice" girl, which to him meant little more than a prospective partner that he could use as leverage to parlay his way into the upper class. He no doubt planned to sleep with her just to get a taste of the experience of wealth. However, when he did this, he found himself completely obsessed and devoted to her. This is what is meant by the biblical allusion of following a "grail." He is obsessed with finding something that cannot be found.

He had no notion of how extraordinary that night would turn out to be. When she leaves him at the end of the night and "vanishes into her rich house," Gatsby's entire being becomes preoccupied with becoming the metaphorical "rich house" that she can call home. When she leaves him, she leaves him not only with, but as, absolutely nothing. He states afterwards that he felt married to her, implying that no woman, not even one of similar prestige and wealth, would be able to compare to her in his mind.

What aspects of Gatsby are highlighted in the given passage from chapter 8 of The Great Gatsby? Is Daisy as "extraordinary" as Gatsby perceives?

... he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail. He knew that Daisy was extraordinary but he didn’t realize just how extraordinary a "nice" girl could be. She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing.

In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald cautions us against valuing sparkly, attractive things over those of substance. We see this in Gatsby's dazzling, opulent parties—he throws them to keep appearances up, but doesn't especially enjoy them himself. They're bait—a way to lure in the members of the community that will give him social prestige and bring him closer to his lost love, Daisy Buchanan.

When Daisy is likened to a "grail" in the passage above, this is exactly what the narrator is getting at. Gatsby is infatuated with the idea of beautiful, unattainable Daisy, but Daisy herself is almost incidental to his pursuit. He doesn't know her, he covets her. He invests all his time and resources in winning her time and affection. When he does eventually come to know her well, she's a shallow, surface-level character with little to offer. Sparkly and attractive, yes, but without any underlying substance. He's invested time and energy into a world he doesn't especially enjoy, all to win further entrenchment into a world he doesn't especially enjoy.

While Daisy turns out to be exactly—and only—what is advertised be on the surface, Gatsby does to be more. Gatsby cloaks himself in the glitzy costume of the elite to hide his true origins, hoping this will give him access to his sparkly, beautiful holy grail. And for a time, it does—his hard work earns him a spot in West Egg society and the temporary attention of the woman he admires.

Knowing how ordinary Daisy turned out to be under the surface, we can interpret the narrator's use of the term "extraordinary" as irony in this passage. He's poking fun at the romanticized promise of Daisy, in comparison to the reality of her. Gatsby's pursuit is akin to planning an elaborate heist, only to realize you've stolen a fake diamond.

What aspects of Gatsby does the passage from chapter 8 raise? Is Daisy as extraordinary as Gatsby believes? Why is irony used?

He found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail. He knew that Daisy was extraordinary but he didn’t realize just how extraordinary a "nice" girl could be. She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing.

In this passage, F. Scott Fitzgerald calls attention to Jay Gatsby’s personality as a romantic, comparing him to a Medieval knight in search of the Holy Grail. With this analogy, Fitzgerald emphasizes the futility of Gatsby’s quest. Rather than truly expecting to find the object of his desire, the knight-like Gatsby had become obsessed with the quest itself. From their initial interactions, Gatsby had formed the impression of Daisy as a “‘nice’ girl,” which was not inaccurate. Nick interprets Gatsby’s attitude as intending to “take what he could get—ravenously and unscrupulously….” Instead, he fell deeply under her spell.

Nick is being truthful in reporting his interpretation of Gatsby’s belief: Daisy is extraordinary. But the irony in Nick’s statement, which is part of the narrative he wrote after Myrtle’s and Gatsby’s deaths, lies in his implication that Gatsby had never imagined the possibility that such a nice girl could do truly terrible things. The golden radiance that Gatsby sees as surrounding Daisy has blinded him to her very real flaws. The first time they separated, Daisy literally vanishes into her house and life. At the end of their relationship, she also figuratively vanishes: Gatsby could no longer maintain the image of Daisy that sustained him through the years of war and postwar empire-building. What bothers Gatsby most is not that he was wrong about Daisy, but that he was wrong about himself.