Well, let's see, Tom means to show
that he is well-read and knowledgeable about the world, but what he actually
does is prove that he is, in fact, an unintelligent, prejudiced
bigot.
The quote you mention can be found at the first
dinner that Nick spends with Daisy and Tom at their house in East Egg. This leg of the
conversation begins when Tom violently (and inappropriately) reacts to Nick's joke about
Midwestern crops. Suddenly, Tom is trying to sound learned by explaining Goddard's "The
Rise of the Colored Empires." After insisting that everyone read the piece, he tries to
expand by saying, "It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved" (13). (Note how Tom
neglects to give the evidence of this.) Heck, I won't even mention how ditsy this
conversation makes Daisy sound. Her idiocy is even worse
here!
Then Tom goes into a racist rant saying that "if we
don't look out the white race will be--will be utterly submerged" (13). He gives a long
tirade with the convoluted theory:
This fellow has worked out the whole thing.
It's up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have
control of things. ... This idea is that we're Nordics, ... And we've produced all the
things that go to make civilization--oh, science and art, and all that."
(13-14)
Ah, Tom's attempt at
the evidence makes him sound totally asinine. In trying to prove his intelligence, Tom
has proven just the opposite. The irony is that even little Midwestern,
unreliable-narrator Nick notices Tom's stupidity here by saying, "There was something
pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not
enough to him any more" (14).
In my opinion, this little
conversation is an invaluable part of Tom's characerization because it shows him to be
the "hulking brute of a man" (12) that Daisy accuses him of being. It should definitely
add to the reader's dislike of Tom's character.
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