Gatsby - Characters Flashcards
Gatsby
“Well they say he’s a nephew of Kaiser Wilhelm’s. That’s where all his money comes from.”
“if one brick was removed, the whole library was liable to collapse”
“standing alone on the marble steps” / “he could climb to it, if he climbed alone”
“month of love”
“Can’t repeat the past?, he cried incredulously, Why of course you can!”
“he was running down like an over-wound clock”
“He was at present, a penniless young man without a past” / “he had no real right to touch her hand”
“He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath”
“He had committed himself to the following of a grail”
“as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand”
“No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart”
“Your wife doesn’t love you” / “She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me”
“Not for a common swindler who’d have to steal the ring he put on her finger”
“Was Daisy driving?” / “Yes, but of course I’ll say I was”
“I’m just going to wait here” / “I want to wait here till Daisy goes to bed”
“heard the shots”/ “There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water” / “the holocaust was complete”
“Paid a high price for living too long with a single dream”
“Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further… And one fine morning-“ / “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Daisy
“extraordinary” / “lovely” / “charming”
“She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby - nothing”
“Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor”
“Daisy tumbled short of his dreams - not through her down fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion, that it had gone beyond her, beyond everything”
“cried to Gatsby” / “Oh, you want too much! I love you now - isn’t that enough?”
“And I hope she’ll be a fool - that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool”
“It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such- such beautiful shirts before”
“Daisy loved me when she married me and she loves me now” / “The trouble is that sometimes she gets foolish ideas in her head and doesn’t know what she’s doing”
“Her frightened eyes told that whatever intentions, whatever courage she had had, were definitely gone”
“She and Tom had one away early that afternoon, and taken their baggage with them”
Tom
“It was a body capable of enormous leverage - a cruel body”
“Civilisation’s going to pieces, broke out Tom violently”
“Tom’s got some woman in New York”
“It’s really his wife that’s keeping them apart. She’s a Catholic and they don’t believe in divorce.” / “Daisy was nota Catholic”
“Tom Buchanan and Mrs Wilson stood face to face discussing, in impassioned voices, whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy’s name… broke her nose with his open hand.”
“Daisy loved me when she married me and she loves me now” / “The trouble is that sometimes she gets foolish ideas in her head and doesn’t know what she’s doing”
“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 the same all that time”
“Not for a common swindler who’d have to steal the ring he put on her finger”
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy”
Myrtle
“carried her flesh sensuously as some women can”
“walking through her husband as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Tom”
“Tom Buchanan and Mrs Wilson stood face to face discussing, in impassioned voices, whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy’s name… broke her nose with his open hand.”
“her eyes, wide with jealous terror, were fixed not on Tom, but on Jordan Baker, whom she took to be his wife”
“She rushed out into the dusk, waving her hands and shouting… the death car as newspapers called it didn’t stop”
“they saw that her her left breast was swinging loose like a flap”
“It seemed to me that she warred to speak to us, thought we were somebody she knew”
Nick
Jordan
Wilson
