The Great Gatsby Quotes and Analysis

The Great Gatsby Quotes and Analysis The following quotes from  The Great Gatsby  by F. Scott Fitzgerald are some of the most recognizable lines in American literature. The novel, which follows the pursuit of pleasure by the wealthy elites of the New York Jazz Age, deals with themes of love, idealism, nostalgia, and illusion. In the quotes that follow, well analyze how Fitzgerald conveys these themes. â€Å"I hope shell be a fool – thats the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.†Ã‚  (Chapter 1) Daisy Buchanan is talking about her young daughter when she makes this seemingly-unfeeling statement. In reality, this quote demonstrates a rare moment of sensitivity and self-awareness for Daisy. Her words show a deep understanding of the world around her, particularly the idea that society rewards women for being foolish rather than smart and ambitious. This statement adds greater depth to Daisys character, suggesting that perhaps her lifestyle is an active choice rather than the result of a frivolous mindset. â€Å"It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced – or seemed to face – the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.†Ã‚  (Chapter 3) The novel’s narrator, young salesman Nick Carraway, describes Jay Gatsby thusly when he first encounters the man in person. In this description, focused on Gatsby’s particular manner of smiling, he captures Gatsby’s easy, assured, almost magnetic charisma. A huge part of Gatsby’s appeal is his ability to make anyone feel like the most important person in the room. This quality mirrors Nick’s own early perceptions of Gatsby: feeling unusually lucky to be his friend, when so many others never even meet him in person. However, this passage also  foreshadows  Gatsby’s showmanship and ability to put on whatever mask someone wants to see. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. (Chapter 3) Although  The Great Gatsby  is often held up as a celebration of Jazz Age culture, it’s actually the opposite, often  critiquing the era’s  carefree hedonism. Fitzgerald’s language here captures the beautiful but impermanent nature of the wealthy’s lifestyle. Like moths, they’re always attracted to whatever the brightest light happens to be, flitting away when something else grabs their attention. Stars, champagne, and whisperings are all romantic but temporary and, ultimately, useless. Everything about their lives is very beautiful and full of sparkle and shine, but disappears when the harsh light of day- or reality- appears.   Ã¢â‚¬Å"No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.† (Chapter 5) As Nick reflects on Gatsby’s opinion of Daisy, he realizes how much Gatsby has built her up in his mind, so much so that no real person could ever live up to the fantasy. After meeting and being separated from Daisy, Gatsby spent years idealizing and romanticizing his memory of her, turning her into more illusion than woman. By the time they meet again, Daisy has grown and changed; she is a real and flawed human who could never measure up to Gatsby’s image of her. Gatsby continues to love Daisy, but whether he loves the real Daisy or simply the fantasy he believes her to be remains unclear. â€Å"Can’t repeat the past?†¦Why of course you can!†Ã‚  (Chapter 6) If there’s one statement that sums up Gatsby’s entire philosophy, this is it. Throughout his adult life, Gatsby’s goal has been to recapture the past. Specifically, he longs to recapture the past romance he had with Daisy. Nick, the realist, tries to point out that recapturing the past is impossible, but Gatsby utterly rejects that idea. Instead, he believes that money is the key to happiness, reasoning that if you have enough money, you can make even the wildest dreams come true. We see this belief in action with Gatsbys wild parties, thrown just to attract Daisy’s attention, and his insistence on rekindling his affair with her. Notably, however, Gatsbys entire identity stemmed from his initial attempt to escape his poor background, which is what motivated him to create the persona of Jay Gatsby. â€Å"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.†Ã‚  (Chapter 9) This sentence is the final line of the novel, and one of the most famous lines in all of literature. By this point, Nick, the narrator, has become disillusioned with Gatsbys hedonistic displays of wealth. He has seen how Gatsby’s fruitless, desperate quest- to escape his past identity and recapture his past romance with Daisy- destroyed him. Ultimately, no amount of money or time was enough to win Daisy, and none of the novels characters were able to escape the limitations imposed by their own pasts. This final statement serves as a commentary on the very concept of  the American dream, which claims that anyone can be anything, if only they work hard enough. With this sentence, the novel seems to suggest that such hard work will prove futile, because the â€Å"currents† of nature or society will always push one back towards the past.

Quests and Questions

Quests and Questions Quests and Questions Quests and Questions By Mark Nichol Many words with the letters que or qui stem from the Latin verb quaerere, which means â€Å"ask† or â€Å"seek,† and therefore pertain to questions and quests. This post lists and discusses such words. Quest was originally synonymous with inquest (literally, â€Å"search in†), which refers to a legal investigation, but the former word came to apply generally to any search or mission. Now, quest is often associated with chivalric adventures or related journeys in fantasy literature. (Bequest, referring to an act of providing for someone in a will, is the noun form of bequeath and is unrelated.) Question originally referred to a problem of philosophy or theology but later, by association, pertained to anything intended to prompt an answer or a discussion and came to serve as a verb as well. An act of interrogation is a questioning, someone who questions is a questioner, and an act of a dubious nature (which would prompt observers to question the actor’s morals or motives) is questionable. Query is synonymous with question as both a noun and a verb. Querent, likewise, is a synonym for questioner but usually in the context of someone who seeks astrological insight; it is rare. To inquire is to ask, and an act of asking is an inquiry; the latter word is also synonymous with inquest. (The variations enquire and enquiry are associated with British English but are sometimes used by writers in the United States.) Inquisition has the stronger sense of an interrogation; the adjectival form inquisitive implies mere curiosity, but it usually has the connotation of excessive interest. An investigation may also be referred to as a disquisition, although this term may alternatively refer to a long speech. Request also means â€Å"ask† as well as â€Å"something asked,† and originally was synonymous with the related verb require, but the latter term came to refer to asking something with the expectation that it must be answered; this imperative sense is matched in the noun form requirement. Something requisite is required in the sense of â€Å"necessary,† and a requisition is an instance of asking for something considered essential. The noun and adjective prerequisite, which literally means â€Å"required beforehand,† is not to be confused with perquisite (â€Å"thing sought†), which is often abbreviated to perk in the sense of â€Å"benefits of employment or membership.† Terms that may not appear to be related but are include the verb acquire (â€Å"earn† or â€Å"gain,† from the sense â€Å"seek to obtain†) and its adjectival forms acquired and acquisitive and noun form acquisition, the verb conquer (â€Å"search for†) and its noun form conquest (and the English and Spanish actor nouns conqueror and conquistador), and the adjective exquisite (literally, â€Å"carefully sought†). Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:When to Use â€Å"That,† â€Å"Which,† and â€Å"Who†Excited ABOUT, not "for" Parataxis and Hypotaxis