while still retaining a level of fantasy. And it is the pursuit of this fantasy that will preoccupy Gatsby in one way or another for the remainder of the story.

The reunion between the old lovers is certainly awkward at first. Gatsby conducts himself "in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease." But then he knocks a clock from the mantel with his head, and he barely catches it with "trembling fingers." Daisy doesn't fare much better, as she sits, "frightened but graceful," at the edge of her chair. The awkwardness begins to diffuse when the tea and cakes arrive, but Gatsby panics a little bit because of how awkward it's been. Nick leaves them alone for a while, and this seems to do the trick. When he returns, Gatsby "literally glowed." There are many references to time in this chapter, what time the rain stops or starts, what time Daisy is supposed to arrive, the time when Gatsby assumes she will not come, and so on. Gatsby even almost breaks Nick's clock, which would seem to symbolize the possibility of stopping time. Gatsby is hoping to turn back time, we later find, and this chapter foreshadows the reality that this is simply not possible: Gatsby cannot stop time or turn back the clock (and so Nick's clock does not break), and time keeps marching on no matter his feelings or hopes.

The reunion between Gatsby and Daisy is pivotal to the story because up until this point we have only heard Gatsby talk about it. We are not sure if he really knew Daisy and had a relationship with her. We just have his word to go on, but when they have their meeting, we can see that there are feelings there, the kind of feelings that have been there for a long time. 

Gatsby is trying to get Nick to arrange a meeting between himself and Daisy. When Nick finally agrees, Gatsby is beyond thrilled. When it is time for the meeting, Gatsby isn't there at first. When he does arrive, he is soaking wet from taking a walk in the rain. When Daisy and Gatsby set eyes on each other, Nick had enough sense to leave. At first the reunion is very awkward. Gatsby is extremely nervous. In all reality Gatsby is finally being his real self. He is not putting on a front for other people. His real person is exposed. The awkwardness finally goes away, and the two of them have a great reunion. They spend a great deal of time together. Gatsby admits to watching the green light from Daisy's dock, knowing that it is her house.

"If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay...You always have a green light that all night that burns all night at the end of your dock."

After this meeting, the plot focuses on the romance between Gatsby and Daisy, and the tragic consequences that follows. This is why chapter 5 is so pivotal to the story. This chapter takes things in a whole new direction and sets up the reader for the tragedy that is to follow. 

The meeting between Gatsby and Daisy is initially very strained and tense. Nick has invited Daisy to his house for tea without Tom, and has not told her that Gatsby will be there. He actually doesn't know that they have a history.

Right as she arrives, upon hearing her car pull up, Gatsby leaves the room so when Nick escorts her in, it is empty. When Gatsby appears a few moments later, he looks "pale as death" and looks "tragically" at Nick.

Nick stays outside the room but hears her making a choking sound and laugh nervously before greeting Gatsby with a falsely polite bland generality. When Nick hears her say she is glad to see Gatsby "again," he realizes there is more to the story.

After a "horrible" pause, Nick enters the room. Daisy is seated stiffly and looks "frightened." Gatsby is so tense he almost breaks the mantle-piece clock. Nick is by now so embarrassed that he is blushing furiously.

Finally both Daisy and Gatsby tell him that they knew each other before and haven't seen each other for five years (Gatsby knows how long down to the month).

After another awkward spell as the three of them help with the tea, Gatsby gets Nick alone and tells him it was a big mistake to bring her there. Nick then discreetly leaves the two of them alone.

Later, when he goes back in and sees that Gatsby "glowed," he realizes how desperately Gatsby loves her.

Although Daisy and Gatsby finally cross paths again, and are startled to see one another in Ch. 5, it is not until Ch. 6 that we finally find out the story behind their discomfort (and Gatsby's passion.)  Gatsby recalls the beauty of a shared kiss, the result of which spurred his obsessive compulsion to be good enough to deserve her.  Nick recalls Gatsby telling him that ever since he and Daisy parted, his life had been "confused and disordered but if he could return to a certain place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was."

The kiss had the power to "forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath...At this lips touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete." 

But Daisy marries another, leaving Gatsby to seek to be worthy of her affections and win her over once again, no matter what it might take to do so. 

Gatsby's reunion with Daisy in Chapter Five is depicted through the trope of the death of time. Haunted by time as he has studied his watch in waiting for Daisy's arrival, Gatsby begins to despair of Daisy's coming. Then, awkward and nervous as he would have been as a younger man, Jay Gatsby, upon hearing Daisy's artificial voice, rushes out the other door of Nick's cottage, then comes around to the front as though he has just casually strolled over from across his "blue [suggestive of illusionary] lawn. He knocks with a "light, dignified" tap at Nick's door and enters "with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets" and a "tragic glaring" in his eyes.

"For a minute" Nick hears nothing; then, the "artificial note" of Daisy's voice is heard. Nick enters and notices Gatsby in "a strained counterfeit of perfect ease" standing against the mantelpiece where a "defunct...clock" rests. Significantly, Gatsby knocks off the clock, but catches it and replaces it upon the mantel. His action represents symbolically Gatsby's attempt to recapture the past, but because the clock does not work, this effort is really futile.

However, there is a certain return to the past as Daisy's voice loses its artificiality and acquires a "matter-of-fact" tone, and Gatsby informs her that is has been five years since they last met. Still, Gatsby continues to be nervous "like a little boy" as Nick tells him; finally, though, he sits with Daisy on the couch in maudlin sentimentality as he "glows" and Daisy, whose face is tear-stained, speaks,

Her throat, full of aching, grieving beauty, told only of her unexpected joy.

As Gatsby realizes that he has reached that green light of Daisy's dock, Nick observes that it possibly has occurred to him "that the colossal significance of that ight had now vanished forever."  Thus, the mystical quality of Gatsby's long desire is gone and Jay can only display for Daisy his wealth, knowing this is what attracted her to Tom Buchanan.

In his mansion, therefore, he tours Daisy through "Marie Antoinette rooms and Restoration salons," showing her his gilded toilette set [comb and brush]. but, as he does so, Gatsby recognizes moments in which "Daisy tumbled short of his dreams" although he is lured by her voice. Nevertheless, Nick narrates,

No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.

It is a "deathless song" which yet captivates Gatsby and immerses him in his dream of reunion with Daisy. This dream cannot sustain him, though, because in it he has confused materialism with moral and aesthetic values. Thus, the falseness of his values connotes Fitzgerald's fatal vision of America in the Jazz Age.

Consider this passage from the end of the chapter: 

They weren’t happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale—and yet they weren’t unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together.

Tom and Daisy are cut from the same cloth, so to speak.  They both want to status and recognition that come from wealth, particularly old wealth.  They are fashionable.  When Daisy hears of Gatsby's illegal dealings, she begins to doubt him and to be turned off of him.  Then, when the accident happens, Daisy and Gatsby are thrown further apart and Tom and Daisy closer together - conspiring together.  Also, Daisy herself says earlier in the chapter that she does love Tom.  So, faced with two men she loves, she chooses to stay with the one who a) has the respectable money;  and b) to whom she is already married.  It is the easier path.

Everything comes out in the open in chapter 7, and Gatsby tries to force Daisy to tell Tom that she never loved him. When Tom accuses Gatsby of being a gangster and earning his money dishonestly, Daisy watches and listens, looking at Gatsby with frightened eyes for the first time. She withdraws into herself, unable to say anything. Staying with Tom is the safe thing for Daisy. At worst, her life will continue as it always has been. With Gatsby, she would have to risk too much, and she's not willing to do that. As a result, she reconciles with Tom, especially after she hits Myrtle. She knows Gatsby will protect her, and she just wants to get out of the mess she's created and leave Gatsby to clean it up.

Tom and Daisy didn't have a marriage based on devotion solely to each other; they both considered their own interests and desires to be of more importance than the concerns of the other. However, they considered their social standing and reputation as a couple to be of even more importance than their individual positions because they enjoyed the status and lifestyle that wealth allowed them.

In the aftermath of the car accident, their separate interests became less important than coming together to protect and preserve the lifestyle they shared. Tom never found out that Daisy had been driving, that she was the one who actually hit and killed Myrtle Wilson. As far as Tom knew, Gatsby was responsible for the accident. Daisy never told him anything else, an indication of how much she cared about Gatsby's position in her life.

Tom and Daisy came together to figure out how they could distance themselves from the unpleasantness until all was forgotten.

Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table...He was talking intently across the table at her...Once in a while she looked up at him and nodded in agreement...There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together.