Great Gatsby quotes Flashcards
“I hope she’ll be a fool- that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool”
pg.13
Daisy wishes her to be ignorant to life’s struggles
“she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where”
pg.13
Tom infidelity
“except a sing green light, minute and far away, that might have been at the end of the dock”
pg. 16
symbol of the green light
“faintly stout, but carried her flesh sensuously”
pg.18
lust and sensuality
“walking through her husband as if he were a ghost”
pg.18
love as suffering
“I want to see you,’ said Tome intently. ‘Get on the next train’”
pg.18
power dynamics
“Mrs Wilson had changed her costume sometime before and was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress”
pg.21
materialist love and transactional relationships
“I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe”
pg. 23
transactional relationships- Wilson can’t provide for her
“Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.”
pg. 25 abusive relationships
“They were so engrossed in each other that she didn’t see me until I was five feet away”
pg.48 idealised love
“The officer looked at Daisy while she was speaking, in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at some time”
pg. 48
idealised love
“the pearls were around her neck and the incident was over”
pg. 49
ownership and power dynamics
“Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay”
pg.51
“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired”
pg. 51
unattainable love
“rested against the face of a defunct mantlepiece clock”
pg.55
Gatsby trying to cheat time
“he turned and caught it with trembling fingers”
pg. 55
Gatsby trying to control time and retrieve the past
“he hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy”
pg.59
“the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever”
pg.60
idealised love v reality
“there must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams”
pg.61
“It had gone beyond her, beyond everything”
pg.61-62
Not in love with Daisy but what she represents
“But the rest offended her”
“she was appalled by West Egg”
pg. 69
Doesn’t believe in social mobility and new money
“I feel far away from her,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to make her understand.’
pg.70
separation and barriers to love
“He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: ‘I never loved you’. After she had obliterated 4 years with that sentence”
pg.70
Gatsby trying to return to the past without acknowledging the changes that have taken place
“‘Can’t repeat the past?’ he cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can!’
pg.70
Gatsby has dedicated his entire life to recapturing a golden,
perfect past with Daisy. Gatsby believes that money can
recreate the past.
“as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand”
pg.70 unattainable love
“He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God.”
pg.71
Love as devotion
Gatsby’s love for Daisy linked to extreme visions of grandure
“Her voice is full of money”
pg.76
Gatsby in love with what Daisy represents
“He had discovered that Myrtle had some sort of life apart from him in another world, and the shock had made him physically sick”
pg.79
Unattainable love and love as suffering
“Your wife doesn’t love you,’ said Gatsby. “She’s never loved you. She loves me”
pg.83
“Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back”
pg.84
“you loved me too?” he repeated
pg.85
“Oh you want too much!” she cried
pg.84
unattainable love
“but with every word she was drawing further and further into herself”
pg.86
separation
“I heard a low husky sob, and saw that the tears were overflowing down his face.”
pg.90
love as suffering
“He spoke as if Daisy’s reaction was the only thing that mattered.”
pg.92
Obsessive and idealised love
‘but of course I’ll say I was”
pg.92
selfless love
“I waited, and about 4 o’clock she came to the window and stood there for a minute and then turned out the light.”
pg.93
separation
“He was clutching at some last hope”
pg. 94
devotion, obsession, idealised
“It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy- it increased her value in his eyes”
pg.94
transactional relationships
“he had committed himself to the following of a grail”
“he felt married to her, that was all”
pg.95
obsessive love
“Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.”
pg.95
“she was feeling the pressure of the world outside”
pg.96
transactional relationships
“I don’t think she ever loved him’”
pg.96
“And the result was she hardly knew what she was saying”
pg.97
“Wilson had no friend: there was not enough of him for his wife”
pg.101
“The gardener saw Wilson’s body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete”
pg.103
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money”
pg.114
destructive love, selfish love
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us”
pg.115
idealised love
