Quotes On The Great Gatsby

"This is a valley of ashes-a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operation from your sight." Page 27

Gatsby is a character that seems to be moving towards a bright future, where Daisy a girl who loved Gatsby will be in the picture again. Again, Gatsby can’t help what happened in the past, and wants the future to be only filled with the nostalgic feeling of the past. Gatsby’s dream is Daisy, but that dream is a sort of after image of what Daisy really is. Nick comments in chapter five how Gatsby’s view of Daisy was only a, “colossal vitality of his illusion.” Gatsby isn’t in love with Daisy in the present, nor is he in love with the thought of creating new memories with Daisy as they live together. Gatsby has created an illusion of what he expects Daisy to be like. Ironically, in the same chapter Gatsby begins to lean his head back and break Nick’s clock when he sees Daisy sitting their. Gatsby tries to fix the clock with his, “trembling fingers, and set it back in place.” This scene symbolizes how Gatsby is trying to go back in time, or in this case fix the time that he has missed with Daisy in order to achieve his dream of being with Daisy. This dream of trying to go back to the past isn’t new, the dream of returning to a simpler time where things aren't as complicated is common with people remembering the nostalgic

Gatsby was convinced he could alter events from his past because the alternative of accepting his current reality was too difficult. In the beginning, Gatsby and Daisy were in love but were separated because Gatsby was drafted. However, Daisy did not patiently wait for his return

Specifically, Gatsby, a generally loving character, would appear to be embody genuine love through his persistent efforts to win Daisy back. For example, Gatsby had bought a huge house in West Egg just to be closer to Daisy and also threw parties every weekend, inviting everyone, in hopes that Daisy would come and notice him. However, Gatsby’s fixation on him and Daisy’s past is what drives him to love. Gatsby’s lack to accept Daisy for what she is in the present is what deviates his commonly perceived efforts as disingenuous. For example, in efforts of taking Daisy away from Tom, Gatsby insists that Daisy “tell[s] him the truth- that [she] never loved [Tom].” (132) Gatsby, disillusioned by the fact that his past lover has vanished, wants to rewind time and reverse the love she has been through. Consequently, Gatsby fails to see that even now when Daisy has admitted that she loves him more, he is bothered and obsessed by the fact that she has loved someone else. In a religious perspective, these feelings of envy oppose the standard for what qualities true love should uphold. Furthermore, Gatsby’s obsession of the past is made more prevalent when Nick states to Gatsby that “[he] can’t repeat the past” (110) and Gatsby rebuts with, “‘Can’t repeat the past?...‘Why of course you can!’”(110). Gatsby’s powerful response reinforces his mania of turning back time living a manipulated reality. His love for what is real is evidently not present as he attempts to change Daisy into someone whom he might have genuinely loved. Moreover, Gatsby fashions an unrealistic image for Daisy as he assumes most of Daisy’s other loves were “trouble,” regarding them as “get[ting] foolish ideas” (131). With this in mind, it is implied that Gatsby views all of her valid actions as foolish because of his entitled past superiority over all other loves.

The effect of time on Gatsby just shows that he can’t deal with the fact certain things changed with time and one of them happens to be Daisy. Another example, confirming that Gatsby can’t let go of the past and accept that times have changed between him and Daisy is

The affection that Gatsby had for Daisy Buchanan made him thirst for the affluent that he believed would earn her love back. “He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something. Some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was” (Fitzgerald 117). Gatsby wanted to gain the love of Daisy, trying to go back to the position they once were before he was enlisted into the war. When Jay and Daisy met time stood still while he was falling in love with her, or at least the idea of her. After they had separated nothing seemed to be perfect with Gatsby goes off to serve in the war and Daisy meeting Tom, almost calling off her wedding for Gatsby. “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can. I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before” (Fitzgerald 116-7). Jay tells Nick that just because Daisy loves someone else, Tom, that does not imply they cannot love each other once more, attempting to go back to the stage where

In The Great Gatsby the main character Jay Gatsby not only contends with the past, but also is utterly consumed by the past. The entirety of the novel portrays Gatsby’s overwhelming desire to reinvigorate a love affair from his earlier years. For Gatsby he never fully contended with the loss of the women he desired, and as such Gatsby’s constructed his life completely absorbed in the past.

Gatsby reaches forward, but he is really reaching back into the past when Daisy was a part of his life. Not only does Gatsby desire to repeat the past, but he is also enchanted by Daisy for what she possesses: His love. For example, ¨In this view, he desires only love, Daisy's love, and his gaudy wealth is merely a fumbled effort to create the environment of riches that Daisyś love requires to thrive and flower¨(Sarracino 37). This demonstrates Gatsby's dedication to recapturing a golden perfect past with Daisy. He repeatedly keeps thinking about her and how she seems perfect for him, but Gatsby doesn't realize that trying to fix the past will eventually lead to his life being wasted with an impossible

Many stories and novels usually interest us because they show you how life can really be and the more you read into it, the more you feel you can relate to it. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel "The Great Gatsby" many of the characters have their flaws which reels in the reader even more. This novel shows how some characters have gone through some things to be where they are now. The Great Gatsby relates to the American Dream in certain things such as luxury, ambition, love affairs and more.

In the novel, The Great Gatsby you’ll read about past events, present events and future events in Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby’s life. Throughout the story Jay Gatsby dedicates his life to recreate or recapture his “perfect past” with Daisy Buchanan, Nick’s cousin, who is now married to Tom Buchanan. Gatsby believes that money is the answer to his perfect future.

“Nick was trying to retrieve the uncommerciable memory. He had tried to shape the words, but nothing came out. He was at a loss of words. Gatsby tends to misuse the past to enliven the present because he believes that Tom will leave and everything that he wants will happen. When somebody is constantly wishing in their past their future is probably not very exciting, so they pull from something that they did have and experience.

The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald was a book about Jay Gatsby trying almost his whole life to get his love Daisy Buchanan back. Fitzgerald said in the book “So we beat on, boats against the current borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Reliving the past is not as easy as it seems as Fitzgerald showed through the book. As Gatsby wanted to relive his past with Daisy and have a perfect life with her, but unfortunately it does not turn out the way it was supposed to.

There is often a darkness that belies the lives of the rich and powerful, something that takes all of the beautiful opulence of their surroundings and damns it all to hell. Like a phantasm draped in jewels that drip rubies from its wounds, it is ever present in their lives. Day to day it haunts their minds, and in the night- in their nightmares- it comes to life. All the fine parties, fine wine, and fine things can’t save them from their fate that seems inevitable.

Gatsby’s life gets corrupted by the power of love and money because Gatsby has the dream of getting back with Daisy in his mind all throughout his life but everything he attempts to do to make that dream come true leads to his life getting corrupted. One of the main events in the story that show this idea is the green light because the green light itself shows his dream of getting back with Daisy and then his life getting corrupted because of all of the different things he did to try and make that dream come true. Gatsby worked with Dan Cody and Major Wolfsheim to try and earn more money but it just ends up being a corruption for his life and Gatsby also tries to impress Daisy by making big parties which fail and he also tries to help out Daisy in the end but it all just fails and leads him to getting murdered. A statement about life that I have is to never get too confident on the things you are trying to do to make a dream come true because it can just lead to a disaster in the end, always take a good decisions and think about what you are going to

The Great Gatsby chronicles the events of one fateful summer in 1922s New York. The story is told through the point of view of Nick Carraway, a stockbroker, who moves to New York to work and discovers that his neighbor, Jay Gatsby, throws the best parties in all of New York. Gatsby is in love with Carraway’s cousin, daisy, who is married to Tom Buchanan. Their love sets a chain of events that leads to the downfall of the charismatic Gatsby. Fitzgerald portrays romance as baseless through the relationships of Tom and Daisy, Gatsby and Daisy, and Tom and Myrtle.