Great Gatbsy: Class and Status Flashcards
Myrtle describing how she made a mistake by marrying Wilson
“The only crazy I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in, and never told me about it
C2, P23
Incomparable milk of wonder
Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees - he could climb it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the palp of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.
C6, P71
Description of Tom and Daisy following Myrtle’s death
They weren’t happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale - and yet they weren’t unhappy either. Their was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said they were conspiring together.
C7, P93
Tom talking about change in society
“I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that’s the idea you can count me out … 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”
C7, P83
Tom adamant that Daisy isn’t leaving him
“She’s not leaving me!” Tom’s words suddenly leaned down over Gatsby. “Certainly not for a common swindler who’d have to steal the ring he put on her finger”
C7, P85
Daisy’s voice being “full of money”
“Her voice is full of money” he said suddenly. That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money - that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it … high in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl …
C7, P75
Gatsby breaking like glass
“Jay Gatsby” had broken up like glass against Tom’s hard malice
C8, P94
Gatsby’s distance between him and “nice” girls
…always with an indiscernible barbed wire between
C8, P94
Gatsby’s feelings about Daisy’s house
There was a ripe mystery about it, a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through its corridors, and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year’s shining motor cars and of dances whose flowers scarcely withered.
C8, P94
“Many men had already loved Daisy…”
It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy - it increased her value in his eyes.
C8, P94
Gatsby - ravenous and unscrupulous
Gatsby took what he could get, ravenously and unscrupulously - eventually he took Daisy one still October night, took her because he had no real right to touch her hand.
C8, P94
Tom and Daisy - careless
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made …
C9, P114
Gatsby viewing Daisy as extraordinary
He knew that Daisy was extraordinary, but he didn’t realise just how extraordinary a “nice” girl could be
C8, P95
Gatsby and Daisy above the struggles of the poor
Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth impressions and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor
C8, P95
Daisy feeling pressured
She was feeling the pressure of the outside world, and she wanted to see him and feel his presence beside her
(C8, P96)
