At Gatsby's Party in The Great Gatsby, Jordon says to Nick about Gatsby's parties, At Gatsby's Party, Jordon says to Nick about Gatsby's parties,...

This quote brings up an interesting paradox about parties.
Jordan says something that doesn't seem like it could be true -- it seems that the opposite would
be true -- and yet with some thought the quote makes perfect sense. That is the definition of a
paradox: a seemingly contradictory statement that is actually
true.

In this case, Jordan is talking about parties. She claims that
large parties are more intimate. At a first thought that makes no sense: how can you have
intimate conversations or interactions with people at a large party? There are so many people
around it would seem that it would be hard to get into deep conversations with people. You could
spend your whole night just making a superficial attempt to meet and greet fellow party
attendees. She extends her thought by adding that at a small party there isn't any privacy, when
in actuality, small parties are very private: only a select few are in attendance. So the
question is, "how can Jordan be right?"

Jordan is right because at a
large party there are so many people present that each individual can actually have a sense of
anonymity and be "lost in the crowd." If two people are lost in the sea of other people, they
have an intimacy that could block out all the behavior and conversations of those around them.
There is no intense scrutiny of them. You have the opportunity to have an intimate conversation
if there are lots of other people having lots of other conversations with everyone else. One the
other hand, when you are at a small party, there is no escape. Your absence is noticeable. You
can't have a private chat because the small group in the room is listening and observing the few
people around them. Perhaps there is only one conversation happening at a time. There would
certainly be no privacy in that circumstance -- whatever you say is said to the whole group.
There can be no asides without drawing everyone's attention to the
side-conversation.

Gatsby wants to attract Daisy's attention, and he
knows that she may attend one of his grand affairs for the express reason that she could remain
somewhat private and aloof amoungst a throng of party-goers. She would have the privacy to blend
into the background and merely observe -- to see for herself what Gatsby has
become.