Wild: "I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men" (The Great Gatsby) (2025)

I have a problem too with the word "wild" in the following passage of Gatsby (chapter one):

He didn't say any more but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men.

I understood: dissolute, not to be associated with because of their dissolute / libertine life (in the following paragraph, Nick says it wanted "no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart", where "riotous" means "wild and disorderly", but I'm not sure. It could mean also "unsociable", "not communicative", "expansive"

Thank you

No, abnormal mentally = mentally ill

wild = unconventional; eccentric; idiosyncratic; 'off-the wall'; unique; unusual; odd; interesting because of the difference, etc.

Gatsby sees these characters as people of positive interest.

My apologies, I simply had not noticed the phrase - I must be more careful.

Let me correct myself: The usual meaning of abnormal mind in the commonest context (particularly around the time The Great Gatsby was written) would indicate that a person is mentally ill, or at least has problems.

In this context, "abnormal" = not ordinary; different from the majority; and the rest of the adjectives I used in post #4.

Nick may have been inwardly surprised by a few things these people said but he never let that show - the people would then tell him even stranger incidents - hence "

PaulQ said:

Let me correct myself: The usual meaning of abnormal mind in the commonest context (particularly around the time The Great Gatsby was written) would indicate that a person is mentally ill, or at least has problems.

Click to expand...

Not necessarily. "Abnormal" was actually more positive back then, and would mean "any deviation from the genetic/typical norm." Someone with an "abnormal mind" could be a neurotic, or a hysteric, or totally insane, or a criminal, or an idiot, or an alcoholic, or a pervert. That person could also be a genius, or a poet, or an aesthete.