Answer:
Nick laughs aloud and thinks anything can happen.
Explanation:
Nick is a character and the narrator in the novel "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. At the very beginning of the book, Nick is invited to his cousin Daisy's mansion to dine with her, her husband, and her friend. During dinner, Tom, the husband, mentions he's read a book concerning how black people would try to dominate to world by subjugating the white race. Tom, as we can see, is a prejudiced man who's used to having power and who does not wish the status quo to change.
In chapter 4 of the book, Nick is riding a car with the protagonist, Gatsby, when they see a limousine driven by a white chauffeur that contains three African Americans who stare defiantly at Gatsby's car. <u>Nick says, "I laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry." Immediately, Nick continues, "‘Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge,’ I thought; ‘anything at all…’</u>
We can make a couple of assumptions on the reasons why Nick laughed. Maybe he thought of Tom's fear of being subjugated and laughed because the world was truly changing and there was nothing Tom could do to stop it. Maybe he thought those people were foolish to even regard themselves as Gatsby's rivals - Nick refers to the men in the car as "bucks", which was quite an offensive term to refer to Native Americans. Or perhaps he simply realized nothing in his life, in society, and in the world was going to be the same anymore.
