The Great Gatsby: Prelim Quotation Bank

Important Relationship:
1. “he stretched out his arms toward the dark water… a single green light”
 Situated at the end of Daisy’s East Egg dock and barely visible from Gatsby’s West Egg lawn, the green light represents
Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy, and in Chapter I he reaches toward it in the
darkness as a guiding light to lead him to his goal. Because Gatsby’s quest for Daisy is broadly associated with the
American dream, the green light also symbolizes that more generalized ideal. In Chapter IX, Nick compares the green light
to how America, rising out of the ocean, must have looked to early settlers of the new nation.

2. “’They’re such beautiful shirts,’ she sobbed.”

 The genuine mourning of something so physical reveals how much Daisy’s life is centred on the significance of objects, and
within that, the grotesque materialism that is symptomatic of the self-centred elite. This moment is also very significant as
it reveals Daisy’s true feelings towards her relationship with Gatsby. As she cried, the reader realists that she is not
yearning for the lost years she could have shared with her teenage love, but instead the wealth and fortune she could have
shared with him. This reveals that she is unconcerned about her relationships with other people and their feelings as long
as she has wealth, and the stability and comfort that it provides.

3. “With every word she was drawing further and further into herself.”
 The importance of time and the past manifests itself in the confrontation between Gatsby and Tom. Gatsby’s obsession
with recovering a blissful past compels him to order Daisy to tell Tom that she has never loved him. Gatsby needs to know
that she has always loved him, that she has always been emotionally loyal to him. Similarly, pleading with Daisy, Tom
invokes their intimate personal history to remind her that she has had feelings for him; by controlling the past, Tom
eradicates Gatsby’s vision of the future. That Tom feels secure enough to send Daisy back to East Egg with Gatsby
confirms Nick’s observation that Gatsby’s dream is dead.
 The false, shallow nature of Daisy’s feelings is completely revealed in that moment – the reader discovers that they were
not built on the foundations of love but admiration towards Gatsby’s impressive mansion and possessions. Now that Daisy
has realised that Jay Gatsby is a fragile façade, she is literally pulling away from him. This moment highlights the
disregard Daisy has for anyone else – she is perfectly happy to do what she wants without worrying about the people that
she hurts in her way. Now that Gatsby doesn’t fit her rigid, superficial standards, she has stopped stringing him along and
she retreats to the comfort and security of old money life. The hypocrisy of this moment is overwhelming – Daisy tosses
Gatsby aside once discovering his criminal activities and returns to the unfaithful Tom, who treats her with as little regard
as she treats others. Daisy’s retreat to Tom emphasises the grotesque nature of the elite. Their destructive and selfish
nature allows them to be as careless as they wish while leaving others to pick up the pieces.

4. “He looked…as if he had ‘killed a man’. For a moment the set of his face could be described in
just that fantastic way.”
 Fitzgerald’s use of the phrase “killed a man” immediately suggests that there has been a death, but it is not a literal o
ne; rather, it is the death of the man Gatsby had created around himself. Although it may be untrue that Gatsby has
killed someone, for Nick, his face in that moment betrays the fantastical nature of his persona – the created ʹJay Gats
byʹ- shattering in the face of Tomʹs accusations. This effectively shows that at this moment, any front or false persona
Gatsby has left has now disappeared – he is revealed for what he truly is.

5. Observing a scene of intimacy between Tom and Daisy, Nick realizes that the couple has
reconciled. When he leaves, Jay Gatsby is still watching the house, which in Nick's words is
"watching over nothing."
 Gatsby’s decision to take the blame for Daisy demonstrates the deep love he still feels for her and illustrates the basic
nobility that defines his character. Disregarding her almost capricious lack of concern for him, Gatsby sacrifices himself for
Daisy. The image of a pitiable Gatsby keeping watch outside her house while she and Tom sit comfortably within is an
indelible image that both allows the reader to look past Gatsby’s criminality and functions as a moving metaphor for the
love Gatsby feels toward Daisy. Nick’s parting from Gatsby at the end of this chapter parallels his first sighting of Gatsby
at the end of Chapter I. In both cases, Gatsby stands alone in the moonlight pining for Daisy. In the earlier instance, he
stretches his arms out toward the green light across the water, optimistic about the future. In this instance, he has made it
past the green light, onto the lawn of Daisy’s house, but his dream is gone forever.

6. Nick writes that Gatsby must have realized “what a grotesque thing a rose is.”
 The rose has been a conventional symbol of beauty throughout centuries of poetry. Nick suggests that roses aren’t
inherently beautiful, and that people only view them that way because they choose to do so. Daisy is “grotesque” in the
same way: Gatsby has invested her with beauty and meaning by making her the object of his dream. Had Gatsby not
imbued her with such value, Daisy would be simply an idle, bored, rich young woman with no particular moral strength or
loyalty.

7. “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...”
 Tom tells him that he was the one who told Wilson that Gatsby owned the car that killed Myrtle, and describes how
greatly he suffered when he had to give up the apartment he kept in the city for his affair. He says that Gatsby deserved to
die. Nick comes to the conclusion that Tom and Daisy are careless and uncaring people and that they destroy people and
things, knowing that their money will shield them from ever having to face any negative consequences. There seems to be
an impossible divide separating Gatsby and Daisy, which is certainly part of her allure for him. This divide clearly comes
from their different backgrounds and social contexts. Tom and Daisy, like other members of the upper class, have betrayed
America’s democratic ideals by perpetuating a rigid class structure that excludes newcomers from its upper reaches, much
like the feudal aristocracy that America had left behind. Gatsby, alone among Nick’s acquaintances, has the audacity and
nobility of spirit to dream of creating a radically different future for himself, but his dream ends in failure for several
reasons: his methods are criminal, he can never gain acceptance into the American aristocracy (which he would have to do
to win Daisy), and his new identity is largely an act. It is not at all clear what Gatsby’s failure says about the dreams and
aspirations of Americans generally, but Fitzgerald’s novel certainly questions the idea of an America in which all things are
possible if one simply tries hard enough.

Turning Point
1. “The day was broiling”
2. “Mr Gatsby, I understand you’re an Oxford man.”… “Then Tom’s voice incredulous and
insulting: “you must have gone there about the time Biloxi went to New Haven.”
3. “Mr Nobody from Nowhere”
4. “Your wife doesn’t love you,’ said Gatsby. ‘She’s never loved you. She loves me!”
5. “She hesitated. Her eyes fell on Jordan and me with a sort of appeal, as though she
realised at last what she was doing – and as though she had never, all along, intended
doing anything at all. But it was done now. It was too late.”
6. “I did love him once – but I loved you too”
7. “He looked…as if he had ‘killed a man’. For a moment the set of his face could be described
in just that fantastic way.”
8. “she was drawing further and further into herself…only the dead dream fought on”
9. “I think he realises that his presumptuous little flirtation is over.”
10. "So we drove on toward death through the cooling night"

Corruption/American Dream/Symbolism/Illusion/
 Point One: West Egg vs. East Egg

The difference between the Eggs and Daisy’s reaction to West Egg indicate the corrupt nature of American
society and the American Dream.

 “West Egg, the – well, the less fashionable of the two”

 “It was a factual imitation”
 “But the rest offended her…she was appalled by West Egg”

 Point Two: Gatsby Illusion

The Owl-Eyed man reveals that Jay Gatsby is an illusion:

 “What realism! Knew when to stop too – didn’t cut the pages”
In the hotel scene, this illusion comes crashing down and the façade of Jay Gatsby is torn down.

 “he looked as if he had ‘killed a man’. For a moment the set of his face could be described in just
that fantastic way”

 Point Three: West Egg – Valley of the Ashes

West Egg is revealed to have much in common with the Valley of the Ashes. Underneath the façade of wealth
and glamour, West Egg is revealed to be a place devoid of hope and a place abandoned by ‘the American
Dream’.

 “A line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track…immediately the ash grey men swarm up…”
 “There was an inexplicable amount of dust everywhere”

 Point Four: The green light

The green light represents the American Dream.

Gatsby was striving for it, but it is clear to the reader that it is false and unattainable.

 “he stretched his arms toward the dark water…distinguished nothing except a single green light”
 “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us”