Book 2, Chapter 3: Evil (?) Pounds Amory's Soul to Flakes

JARED: I miss evenings at Starbucks. Coffee here mostly means bakeries. The bakeries aren't open at night. You can get a coffee at a bar, of course, but it's not the same atmosphere. Here's an important question: If Amory were in Princeton today, would he be a Starbucks guy or a Small World guy? Or maybe even an Infini-T(ea) person. I'd say definitely not the latter. Maybe Small World, but probably Starbucks. Amory's a bit corporate. But probably he'd spend more time at the Tap Room.

My main thought from Amory's summer with Eleanor is that most of the girls Amory spends considerable time with seem to reflect his own personality, his own qualms, and the phase he's going through in his own life. And in this respect his time with Eleanor seems most disturbing to me.

His time with Rosalind, by contrast, seemed to me to be a period where he was still somewhat between adulthood and childhood. Their relationship had the levity of youth, even though in the end it came to a painful end. But even the painful end wasn't so much because they were growing apart, it was more that she was unable to merge her idea of adulthood with the future she saw with Amory. It was more about adulthood impinging on their lives than about their love dissipating.

His relationship with Eleanor, however, seems more disturbing to me. The imagery of the chapter - with Amory meeting her in flashes of lightning and then parting with her after she makes a bold near-suicide attempt is disturbing enough on its own. Aside from all that, though, it's as if they both see no real future from the beginning of the relationship yet they recognize that in each other and put themselves through the relationship anyway. When I say that they both see no future, I think I mean more than just no future in their relationship. I think they bonded in a way because neither can see how their lives will play out in a satisfactory sense. In Amory's case, I don't think he could begin to picture what a satisfactory ending would even look like.

It was also interesting to me how this chapter began with heavy handed foreshadowing as it pertains to Eleanor. Although, you can't really call it foreshadowing. He casts not so much a shadow over Eleanor but rather a big Sharpie X. We enter the chapter with hope, but it lasts, well... not even a sentence.

My question, however, is what Fitzgerald means in the last sentence of the first paragraph of the chapter:

"Eleanor was, say, the last time that evil crept close to Amory under the mask of beauty, the last weird mystery that held him with wild fascination and pounded his soul to flakes."

Does this mean the next woman Amory meets will be the one? Or maybe he goes back to a girl he's already met? Or does this mean the end of love in his life, or even the end of his life itself? I don't really think the latter, but it's quite a striking sentence. Having read the chapter, it seems strong for Fitzgerald to refer to Eleanor as "evil... under the mask of beauty"? Is he referring to her possible mental illness? I don't have an answer. Just saying. And what's the irony to which Fitzgerald refers in the chapter's title?