Regret, the Past and Endings

Question 1

Gatsby and the green light

Answer 1

He stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, 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.

Question 2

Gatsby on repeating the past

Answer 2

“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!” He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.

Question 3

Nick’s reflection on Gatsby’s pursuit

Answer 3

He had come such a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close he could hardly fail to grasp it. But what he did not know was that it was already behind him, somewhere in the vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Question 4

The final line

Answer 4

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Question 5

Nick’s reaction to Gatsby’s life story.

Answer 5

Then I saw it, it was all there. I saw the skins of tigers flaming in his palace on the grand court, I saw him opening a chest of rubies, with the crimson red light, the depths, the gnawing of his broken heart.

Question 6

Mr Nobody (description of Gatsby)

Answer 6

Mr Nobody from Nowhere

Question 7

Daisy’s tears

Answer 7

Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormingly.

Question 8

Metaphor for Gatsby’s fantasy

Answer 8

Unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on fairy’s wing.