Character Analysis
Hopkins is the only other character in this story, and we essentially get his resume according to Nick: he was a serious coffee drinker, he was super rich and played polo, he had a girlfriend called the Blonde Venus, and he wanted to buy a yacht. Sounds like he’s got it made. But the key words here are was and a long time ago. Nick mentions that “They never saw Hopkins again” (I.36). Well, why not a reunion then? A yacht sounds pretty nice.
Well, actually, the implication here is that he will never see Hopkins again because Hopkins is dead. Remember, this is a story “about” the war without the war ever being mentioned. It’s an exercise in extrapolation. Remarks like “Hop deserved that,” and “Hopkins went away when the telegram came,” and “It was to remember him always by” paint this really eerie picture that something bad has happened to Hop. In this story’s historical context (it was written not long after WWI and before WWII), why else would a young, super-rich man be suddenly called away never to return? Because this is a story about Nick being scarred by his experiences in the war and trying to leave it behind, when Hopkins comes up (and you’ll notice that he gets a fair amount of page real estate for a story of this length) we get a sense that it’s another moment of the war trying to creep up on Nick’s memory.