Great Gatsby Quote Analysis

Triple Entry Notebook -July 4, 2014 F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. Chapters 1-2.

1 . “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘Just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had. ” (1)

2. “And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, Just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning ever again with the summer.

12)

3. “Well, these books are all scientific,’ Insisted Tom, glancing at her Impatiently. ‘This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will take control of things. ” (20)

1. This quote begins near the start of the novel. Nicks father tells Nick that before he judges anyone he should keep in mind that not everyone has had as many advantages as he had.

What this means is that Nick should be empathetic to others and consider their upbringing before chastising them.

Nick says that his father’s advice has been in his head wrought his entire life since he first heard it. This makes me think that Nick swears by this advice and carefully adheres to it throughout his life. I want to know more about Nick and If he really does follow this advice because it seems like a very hard quote to stand by.

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2. This quote Just makes me want to know even more about Nick than before. The quote makes me think that perhaps this summer is Nick’s chance to be successful at something and that he wants to change something about his life. It is also telling us that the novel will be set (or at least start) in summer. The time this book was set in as the roaring twenties and the most exciting things happen in summer such as parties and going outside. This makes me think that the book will be very exciting and enjoyable to read. I can really picture the setting that Fitzgerald is setting because of the exciting, vivid imagery (“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing In the trees… “).

3. My pollen of Tom Is already very poor because of this quote. After reading this quote my mental Image of Tom is an Ignorant, arrogant, and racist man. He seems like a pseudo-intellectual and tries to sound smart by Insisting that his pollen on there races is well founded by “scientific” books. I feel like he already felt that he was books simply provide assurance and gives him an excuse to think this way. I think that Tom will be one of the significant characters in this narrative because he’s rich, powerful and lives close the main character, Nick. His arrogance will probably lead to conflicts later on.

Group Discussion:

-Daisy knows that Tom is cheating on her but refuses to acknowledge it because she feels a sense of duty towards him since she’s his wife. This is because of societies view on women during this time period, men had more power and women were expected to look after their husband and stay with him through thick and thin.

– Gatsby is a mysterious character that nobody actually Knows. The only thing people have heard about Gatsby are rumors and it makes the reader want to know even more about Gatsby -Daisy cynically says that she wants her daughter to grow up pretty and dumb Just like her. She says this because in their society the only way for a woman to be rich and live a comfortable life is to be attractive enough to be a rich man’s wife or to be born into.

-After hearing a few more thoughts on Daisy my opinion of Daisy changed. I still think that she is careless and very materialistic but now she has a good reason to in my mind. There are not a lot of options for women in this setting so I can’t really blame her for being the way she is. Triple Entry Notebook -July 7, 2014 Chapters 3-7.

1 . “The caterwauling horns had reached a crescendo and I turned away and cut across the lawn toward home. I glanced back once. A wafer of a moon was shining over Gatsby house, making the night fine as before, sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation he figure of the host, who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell. ” (51)

2. I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known” (54)

3. “The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God?a phrase which, if it means anything, means Just that?and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented Just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end. ” (82)

1. This quote, to me, truly illustrates how fake Gatsby life is and how lonely he is. After the exciting and extravagant party Gatsby silently waves good-bye at his guests. He barely participates in his own parties and it seems like he Just throws the parties because he feels like that’s what he should be doing with his excess money. Gatsby has these parties every weekend and no one even knows who he is yet. Throughout the party people Just talk about the newest rumor they heard about Gatsby. Gatsby never meets with anyone and actually talks to them. To his party goers he’s Just the mysterious guy who throws the party. Putting this all together I think that Gatsby is very lonely because he does not have any friends and probably feels incredibly isolated and lonely inside his gigantic house.

2. Nick is being hypocritical when he says that he’s one of the few honest people he’s ever met. He is pursuing Jordan while writing love notes to a girl back at his old home. He is basically tricking/lying both of these girls and is anything but honest. Before this I placed a lot of trust in Nick. He seems to be a spectator in this book rather than an actual character. All he does is stand by quietly and make silent observations unless someone talks to him first. After reading Nicks lie I am going to be more careful and stop blindly trusting everything Nick tells us about what’s going on in his life. I can relate to what Nick says about everybody thinking they have at least one good virtue to themselves. Nobody is perfect and they know that so they try to find a redeeming quality in themselves.

3. Gatsby has longed for the American dream since he was a teenage boy. He saw that his parents were poor and looked down at them. He did not want to be as poor as they are and so he invents a new name and persona for himself. James Gate is poor and imperfect whereas Jay Gatsby is rich and powerful. It’s not uncommon for the average person to dream about being rich and powerful but the fact that Gatsby followed through with his hopes and dreams to the very end is admirable. I understand that he doesn’t want to be poor anymore but he should have at least appreciated his parents for raising him to the best of their abilities.

-Tom freaking after Daisy’s affair with Gatsby was unjustified. He was perfectly okay with openly cheating on Daisy with Myrtle but once she cheats on him he becomes distraught and feels that he didn’t deserve it. He feels this way because of the way their society has placed man and woman.

-Nicks comment about him being one of the few honest people he has ever met is a change. Throughout the novel so far he always puts himself down and is incredibly modest.  Is this significant? Does it symbolize a change in Nicks character or has he always Just felt this way?

-The scene where Nick describes Gatsby amazing smile tells us that Gatsby appears a very charismatic man. Even though Nick says Gatsby has one of the most genuine smiles he’s ever seen I still doubt that Gatsby was actually smiling. I think that he smiles the way rich people will smile Just like how he throws parties the way he thinks rich people throw them. Triple Entry Notebook – July 8, 2014 Chapters 8-9.

1 . ‘”They’re a rotten crowd,’ I shouted across the lawn. You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together. ‘ I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end. First he nodded politely, and then his face broke into that radiant and understanding smile, as if we’d been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time. ” (124)

2. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy?they smashed up 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. (143)

3. “And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, nowhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning

– So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. ” (144)

1. This is a very strong statement/compliment from Nick. First of all Nick has never given a compliment to Gatsby so it sounds very genuine. Second of all this is the first mime Nick has made an open Judgment after keeping all his thoughts to himself rich that he has lost his innocence and more aware of how the real world is. I think that after reading Nicks experiences he is fully Justified in what he says and the rich (in the story) truly are rotten people and Gatsby is the only redeeming person out of all of them.

2. Tom and Daisy are incredibly inconsiderate and empathetic. They are used to getting what they want all the time and so they have become this way. They create a huge mess and expect other people to handle the cleanup. At this point of the novel I Lully dislike the Buchannan, more so Tom than Daisy though. I was shocked at how little Daisy seemed to actually care about Gatsby. After reading about how she almost cancelled her wedding with Tom after she received a letter from Gatsby or how she proclaimed that she loved him after their reunion I could not believe that she did not even go to the funeral or even call. I understand that she is probably shocked by all the events that happened (the car crash + Gatsby death most of all) but all she is doing now is trying to forget about it completely and move on with her life like nothing happened. I did not expect Tom to care or even acknowledge that he was at fault for Gatsby death but I expected more from Daisy.

3. This is the last line of the novel. Nick has come to the realization that the American dream is simply that, a dream. He has witnessed the darkness and sadness in pursuing the American dream. He sees that the Buchannan are an extremely dysfunctional and unhappy family even though they seem to have it all, he sees Gatsby struggle in obtaining the dream. Gatsby had almost achieved the perfect American dream in his mind. All he needed was Daisy and his dream would be complete. Well turns out that through all his years of pursuing the dream he had built up Daisy so much in his head that she could not possibly live up to his expectations. Once he finally had Daisy he should have been happy but he wasn’t, all he felt was disappointment. I think that the American dream exists because the prize is amazing. In addition as Nick says, everyday it seems that we are closer to obtaining it so we try harder and harder to obtain it in the hopes that one day we’ll wake up and have it. I think because of the events Nick went through he became corrupted and cynical of the world.

Gatsby lived in the past and that’s one of the reasons why he couldn’t achieve his American dream. He was chasing something that was not there anymore

-It was sad to see Gatsby watching out for Daisy at her house to ensure her safety and take the blame for hitting Myrtle. He truly loved her and I think at the moment where he saw Daisy acting like nothing happened, eating fried chicken with Tom was the moment that he realized that she did not love him as much as he thought she did.

-Nick has seen the dark side of the rich and because of this he has been internally corrupted