Page (1 of 7) Quotes:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
How we cite the quotes:
Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
| Quote #1 "It was a strange coincidence," I said.
"But it wasn’t a coincidence at all."
"Why not?"
"Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay." Then it had not been merely the stars to which he had aspired on that June night. He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendor. (4.147-151) |
Nick can’t understand Gatsby until he understands the man’s motives. This is why he reveals Gatsby’s past to us in the order that he does; Nick tells the story the way he would have needed to be told. Because Nick gets the information about Gatsby’s history later than we do, it is only natural that he initially dislikes the man.
| Quote #2 He hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a flight of stairs.
His bedroom was the simplest room of all – except where the dresser was garnished with a toilet set of pure dull gold. Daisy took the brush with delight, and smoothed her hair, whereupon Gatsby sat down and shaded his eyes and began to laugh.
"It’s the funniest thing, old sport," he said hilariously. "I can’t – When I try to –"
He had passed visibly through two states and was entering upon a third. After his embarrassment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed with wonder at her presence. He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an over-wound clock. (5.111-114) |
While Gatsby may have at one point loved the real Daisy, the love that survived over time is of his dream-like conception of her.
| Quote #3 After the house, we were to see the grounds and the swimming-pool, and the hydroplane and the mid-summer flowers – but outside Gatsby’s window it began to rain again, so we stood in a row looking at the corrugated surface of the Sound.
"If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay," said Gatsby. "You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock."
Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one. (5.120-122) |
Nick sees sadness, not joy, in Gatsby’s reunion with Daisy. Nick, it seems, recognizes the impossibility of Gatsby’s plans.
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