Critical views Flashcards
Leland S.Person Jr on Daisy
‘Daisy in fact is more than victimised: she is a victim first of Tom’s cruel power, but then of Gatsby’s increasingly depersonalised vision of her’
Claire Stocks on Nick
‘Nick wants to portray Gatsby as great and ignore or edit anything that might undermine this image’
Thomas Flanagan on Gatsby
‘Gatsby lives in the world of romantic energies and colours’
David O’Rourke on Nick
‘Nick is considered to be quite reliable, basically honest and ultimately changed by his contact with Gatsby’
A.E Dyson on Gatsby
‘In one sense, Gatsby is the apotheosis of his rootless society…he really believes in himself and his illusions’
Edwin Clark Fitzgerald’s presentation of the characters
‘absence of loyalties’
A.E Dyson on Tom
‘Tom’s restlessness is an arrogant assertiveness seeking to evade, in bluster, the deep uneasiness of self-knowledge’
Thomas Flanagan on Gatsby
‘Gatsby is somewhat vague. The reader’s eyes can never quite focus upon him, his outlines are dim’
Edwin Clark on the book
‘A curious book, a mystical, glamorous story of today’
Marius Bewley on Daisy
‘She is an emptiness that we see curdling into the viciousness of a monstrous moral indifference as the story unfolds’
Alfred Kazin on Daisy
‘She is vulgar and inhuman’
Christine Ramos on Tom
‘By attempting to maintain his way of life, Tom has reduced whole people to ashes without any thought of consequences’
William Rose Bennett
‘The queer charm, colour, wonder and drama of a young and reckless world’
Kathryn Schulz
“The Great Gatsby is less involved with human emotion than any book of comparable fame I can think of”
