Gatsby Quotes Flashcards
“bootlegger”
Toms description of Gatsby
“If we don’t look out, the whole white race will be submerged”
Tom on racial injustice
” a cruel body”
Nicks description of Tom
“something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas”
Nicks opinion of Tom and his affair
“I’m p-paralysed with happiness”
Daisy
“there was an excitement in her voice”
Nicks description of Daisy
“everybody else is so blind that they don’t see or care”
Nicks description of daisys benefits of not drinking
“her voice is full of money”
Gatsby says about daisy
“Daisy was young and artificial”
Nicks recall of Daisy before she left Gatsby
“if personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him” ( Gatsby)
Nick says this
“something sinister about him” gatsby
Nick says this after meeting gatsby
“there must have been moments where Daisy fell short of his dreams, not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion”
Nick about Gatsby
“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life”
Nick caraway
“Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry”
Nick makes a contradictory observation on American society, for in the middle ages, peasants were generally more free than serfs, yet americans were willing to enslave themselves into serfdom and money, as oposed to peasantry freedom
“and myrtles blood returned to the valley of ashes
a sense of social entrapment from myrtle as a lower class member
“the whole caravansary had fallen in like a card house at the disapproval of her eyes”
Nick- powerful imagery- of how quick Daisy is to dismiss things as a wealthy woman
imagery of how a card house takes much effort and time to build, but the smallest of things can cause it to collapse- image of the fragility
“golden girl”
Nicks description of Daisy
“you can’t repeat the past”
Nick
“you can’t repeat the past? why of course you can”
Gatsby
“men and women came and went like…”
“moths”
this simile is symbolic of how people were attracted to the bright ostentatious nature of Gatsby, as opposed to anything intrinsic
