Great Gatsby: Love and Loss of Dreams

Question 1

Foul dust

Answer 1

It was what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams

C1, P4

Question 2

Dark water

Answer 2

He stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, as 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, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness

C1, P16

Question 3

Daisy and the letter

Answer 3

She wouldn’t let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her and squeezed it up into a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the soap-dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow

C4, P49

Question 4

The rock of the world … fairy’s wing

Answer 4

For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing

C6, P63

Question 5

Desolate path

Answer 5

He broke off and began to walk up and down a desolate path of fruit rinds and discarded favors and crushed flowers

C6, P70

Question 6

Gatsby’s dream proves futile

Answer 6

But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room

C7, P86

Question 7

Snail

Answer 7

On the green Sound, stagnant in the heat, one small snail crawled slowly towards the fresher sea

C7, P75

Question 8

Wisp of air

Answer 8

He [Gatsby] stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost part of it, the freshest and the best, forever

C8, P97

Question 9

Paid a high price for living too long with a single dream

Answer 9

He [Gatsby] had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass

C8, P103

Question 10

Tom’s description of Gatsby

Answer 10

He threw dust into your eyes just like he did in Daisy’s

C9, P114