Romantic Committment

Question 1

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds”

Answer 1

• Immediately evokes the institution or sacrament of marriage. Yet the speaker suggests that the union of two suited minds should be free to join together.
• Enjambment separates “marriage of two minds” from “admit impediments” emphasising that true love should have no impediments.

Question 2

“Repeating the past… Of course you can”

Answer 2

• “Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course you can!” Jay Gatsby, the protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, said this to his friend Nick Carraway in order to convince both himself and Nick that he could recapture Daisy Buchanan, his former love.
• However, some of Fitzgerald’s critics argue that, on a second level, Fitzgerald is asking this question of his own audience.

Question 3

“Love’s not Times’ fool”

Answer 3

• “Time’s” capitalisation indicates it has been personified, specifically as Death.
• This therefore refers to how love can transcend time, much how Gatsby loves Daisy across multiple times in his life.

Question 4

“If it wasn’t for the mist, we could see your house across the bay”

Answer 4

• Gatsby bought the house across the bay from Daisy and Tom as a result of his obsessive need to be close to Daisy.
• This highlights the extent of his beliefs that his future with Daisy is inevitable.
• The mist could symbolise Daisy and Tom’s facade of wealth and prosperity hiding their manipulative personalities

Question 5

“Golden”

Answer 5

• highlights Daisy’s wealthy allure and superficiality

Question 6

“He felt married to her”

Answer 6

• Gatsby is deluding himself that after in fact only knowing her briefly, that he has compulsively committed to her.

Question 7

“I must all other beauties wrong”

Answer 7

• Ironically suggests that he would wrong other women by not sleeping with him- in reality he will wrong them by sleeping with them.
• illustrates his arrogance and the male stereotype of casual physical relationships, similar to Tom Buchanan
• objectifies women as only valuable for physical purposes

Question 8

“Tedious 12 hours’ space”

Answer 8

• The alliteration and assonance of ‘tedious twelve’ is in itself tedious.
• The speaker puts her down by intimating their time together was boring or unsatisfying.
• This is highly dismissive and objectifies the woman as their relationship seems transactional.

Question 9

“Bought her cold cream and a small flask of perfume”

Answer 9

• This exhibits Myrtle’s materialist nature and how her consumerist reasons to be with Tom. Also shows her superficiality.
• Shows how easily Tom “buys” Myrtle as a commodity, and uses her to satisfy and maintain his masculine hegemony

Question 10

“Remember me”

Answer 10

• Repetition of the central request “remember” indicates speaker’s hope of everlasting love.
• Repetition also conveys the finality of poem’s message- speaker will likely not be seen or heard from again.
• imperative language signals a demand

Question 11

“You tell me of our future that you had planned”

Answer 11

• direct address- clearly intended for a loved one.
• implies their love was set in stone- both demanding an unattainable future- link to Daisy and Gatsby.

Question 12

“He hadn’t used the pool all summer”

Answer 12

• He wanted to use the pool one last time before it gets drain, so leaves would not get into the pipes. That represents he still has the desire for luxury and still had the dream of achieving it.
• The drainage of the pool represents Gatsby’s entire dream of luxury diminishing.
• When Gatsby says he had not used the pool all summer, it means he never realized his dream.
• When he gets murdered in the pool, it represents that he was trapped because of his dreams.

Question 13

“Watching over”

Answer 13

• shows his continual protectiveness over Daisy, even when she is not committed to him anymore

Question 14

“Must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream”

Answer 14

• With this quote, Nick reflects on Gatsby’s last moments of life.
• The “old warm world” is the hopefulness of winning Daisy which previously drove his life’s journey and sustained his rise to riches.
• The idea of a “single dream” shows how devoted and genuine his commitment was to Daisy, which more or less meant all his eggs were in one basket, risking everything on her.
• Though it shows that he had many blind spots, it is somewhat admirable that he was able to sustain his commitment to her so strongly.