Gatsby Chapter Summary + Quotes Flashcards
Chapter 1 summary
Nick is introduced
Goes over to Tom’s + Daisy’s intro to Jordan…
Hear about Tom’s mistress + Gatsby
Gatsby at end w/ the green light
Chapter 1 quotes
‘It was a small eyesore’
‘She was a slender, small-breasted girl’
“He reads books with long words in them.”
“I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool- that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
‘He stretched out his arms towards the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling.’
‘Involuntarily I glanced seaward- and distinguished nothing except a single green light’
Chapter 2 summary
The valley of ashes
The meeting of Myrtle
Chapter 2 quotes
‘This is a valley of ashes- a fantastic farm where the ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the form of houses and chimneys and rising smoke’
‘His determination to have my company bordered on violence’
‘It’s really his wife that’s keeping them apart. She’s a catholic and they don’t believe in divorce.’
‘Her warm breath poured over me the story of her first meeting.’
‘Making a shot deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.’
Chapter 3 summary
Gatsby’s party
Gatsby’s intro
Jordan + Gatsby talk
Car wheel falls off
Description of his days away from parties + Jordan Baker
Chapter 3 quotes
‘In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths’ ‘Yellow cocktail music’
“I’ll bet he killed a man.”
“I thought you knew, old sport.”
“Anyhow, he gives large parties… And I like large parties.”
“I know very little about driving- next to nothing. It happened, and that’s all I know.”
‘Explained to him that wheel and car were no longer joined by any physical bond’
‘In a few minutes I was going to enter their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove’
‘She had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her’
‘I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known’
Chapter 4 summary
Description of another party
Gatsby + Nick go to town… Gatsby asks Nick his opinion of him
Gatsby backstory
Meets Wolfsheim + Tom… Gatsby disappears
Dinner w/ Jordan… explains what Gatsby wants him to do… Nick annoyed wanted dinner w/ Jordan
Pulls Jordan in… love or just who is available
Chapter 4 quotes
‘The world and its mistress’
‘Paid him the subtle tribute of knowing nothing whatsoever about him.’
‘The resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American’ ‘that comes, I suppose, with the absence of lifting work in youth’
‘Look here, old sport…. What’s your opinion of me, anyhow?’
‘Then it was all true.’
‘I hadn’t asked Jordan to tea in order to discuss Mr Jay Gatsby’
‘Anything could happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge’
‘Because it seemed romantic to me I have remembered the incident ever since’
‘Suddenly I wasn’t thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more, but this clean, hard, limited person, who dealt in universal scepticism, and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm.’
Chapter 5 summary
Gatsby’s house is light up
Nick arranges for Daisy to come over
Daisy + Gatsby reunite at Nick’s
Look at Gatsby’s house… crying at the shirts
Nick leaves, they are in a world of their own
Chapter 5 quotes
“I don’t want to put you to any trouble”
‘In a white flannel suit, silver shirt, and gold coloured tie’
‘A pause; it endured horribly.’
‘In a strained counterfeit of perfect ease’
“I’m sorry about the clock” ‘set us all back another minute’
“You’re acting like a little boy”
‘Entered by the pig postern’ ‘He revalued everything in his house according to the measure of the response it drew from well-loved eyes.’
“They’re such beautiful shirts” she sobbed
‘It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.’
‘No amount of freshness can challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart.’
‘They had forgotten me’
‘I went out of the room and down the marble steps into the rain, leaving them there together.’
Chapter 6 summary
News reporter goes to Gatsby’s
Tom + others stop in at Gatsby’s after a ride
Tom + Daisy attend one of Gatsby’s parties
Gatsby is afraid Daisy did not enjoy the party
Chapter 6 quotes
‘His imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all.’
‘His over-whelming self-absorption he took for granted.’
‘I may be old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around far too much these days to suit me.’
‘I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness’
‘Appalled by its raw vigour that chafed under euphemisms’
‘She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand.’
‘He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go up to Tom and say: ‘I never loved you’.
‘He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy.’
‘At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.’
‘But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.’
Chapter 7 summary
Gatsby’s parties stop + sacks all servants
Nick + Gatsby go over to Daisy’s + Tom’s
Daisy + Gatsby acting suspicious
On the way to NY Tom stops at Wilsons garage
Go to NY…. Gatsby tells Tom that Daisy never loved him.. Daisy says not nec true
Gatsby + Daisy driving back… hit Myrtle
Tom goes to investigate what was happening
Gatsby waits for Daisy to go to bed
Chapter 7 quotes
‘It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on Saturday night.’
‘As he left the room again she got up and went over to Gatsby and pulled his face down, kissing him on the mouth. “You know I love you.”
‘Afterwards he kept looking at the child with surprise. I don’’t think he had ever really believed in its existence before.’
“You always look so cool” ‘As if he had recognized her as someone he knew a long time ago.’
“Her voice is full of money.”
‘The shock of it had made him physically sick.’
‘There was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between sick and well.’
‘His wife and mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping precipitately from his control.’
‘Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white.’
“Your wife doesn’t love you”
‘Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time.’
“Oh, you want too much!” “I love you now- isn’t that enough?”
‘Even alone I can’t say I never loved Tom’
‘I just remembered today’s my birthday”
‘A change came over him, and he spoke gravely, and with decision.’
“I thought so; I told Daisy I thought so. It’s better that the shock should come all at once. She took it pretty well.”
“I disliked him so much by this time that I didn’t find it necessary to tell him he was wrong.”
‘There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture.’
Chapter 8 summary
Gatsby is rejected… sit in his house searching for cigarettes
Reminiscing over Daisy… story finally from Gatsby
Nick leaves and goes to work
Speaks to Jordan… want to see each other
Wilson talks about the yellow car to Michaelis… starts to go insane… believes the man who she was having an affair with/ killed her intentionally
Eckleburg seen as god
Gatsby murdered
