great gatsby reaction essay

The Great Gatsby Reflection Paper

The Great Gatsby is one of the most famous pieces of literature in the world. It explores the themes of the American dream, ethics and morals of the Roaring 20s, as well as the questions of love and loss. The Great Gatsby reaction paper below discusses these and more.

Reflection of the Great Gatsby – A Summary

Introduction.

Published in the mid-1920s, The Great Gatsby is often said to be a reflection of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s era, dreams, and ambitions. The book tells the story of Jay Gatsby, an extravagant man whose only desire is to reunite with his first love, Daisy Buchanan. It is told from the perspective of his new friend, Nick Carraway. Gatsby’s relentless pursuit takes him from poverty to riches, and eventually leads him to his death.

The essay is a book reflection on the book Great Gatsby written by written by Scott Fitzgerald an American and published in April 1925. The story is during the happening of the First World War characterized by hard economic conditions. The novel works on various diverse levels, providing readers with memorable characters and events.

The story tells of an event involving major characters as Nick, Tom, Daisy, Gatsby, the Wilsons and Jordan. It involves individuals who are trying to rekindle their relationship. For instance, Gatsby tried to win back the love of Daisy although the later is married to Tom.

On the other hand, Tom has a mistress Myrtle who is married to George. The turning of events later led to the death of Myrtle who was hit by a car and the shooting of Gatsby by George Wilson after gathering information about the owner of the car that hit his wife. He also killed himself. Although Gatsby was reach and famous, his funeral arranged by Nick was attended by very few individuals (Fitzgerald, 43).

Great Gatsby: Reflection

Throughout the novel the major character Nick who was the narrator managed to bring out the main themes of the novel as well as developing other characters. Additionally, the manner with which he transformed or changed fascinated me.

The fact that Nick transformed throughout the novel made me like this skillful piece of art that was logically and artistically developed. The flow of sequence of events will always keep one at the edge of the seat trying to unravel what is the next chapter.

Concerning Nick transformation he initially seen as a man who hold high level of morals such integrity, honesty, trustworthy to mention but a few. However, when he tried fitting to his new friends’ lifestyle, for instance Tom and Jordan he losses his moral. For instance he accepted Jordan dishonesty “it made no difference to me. Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply-I was casually sorry, and then I forgot” (Fitzgerald, 125). The deeper Nick is drawn closely relating to his friends the less honest he turns out to be. At the end he is rebuked by Jordan for being just as dishonest and careless as the rest of group.

Additionally he chums around with Tom and Mrytle to suit their lifestyle.

Its is worth noting that Nick perception towards people has changed because he encounter individual who engage in adultery, hypocrisy, lying although he tried to fit with them but later sought to distance himself, this is depicted by this statement, “He [Gatsby] was clutching at some last hope and I couldn’t bare to shake him free.” (Fitzgerald, 195). This is probably an indication of Nick being tired of and ready to give up on friends who are not morally upright in the society.

Thus Nick in my humble opinion is the character I liked the most in this novel. The character who was least favourite was Gatsby. His acts of hosting parties with the desire that his former love will attend so that he rekindles the relationship and the manner with which he treated others was not good.

I would highly recommend the novel to individuals in high school, collages as well as those who are over the age of 16. The reasons for this rest on the idea that the novel has a lot of moral teachings and the author managed to bring out his ideas using simple English that can be easily understood. For this artist work, I would rate it 9 out of 10.

Fitzgerald, Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribners, 1925. Print.

• Short Summary
• Summary (Chapter 1)
• Summary (Chapter 2)
• Summary (Chapter 3)
• Summary (Chapter 4)
• Summary (Chapter 5)
• Summary (Chapter 6)
• Summary (Chapter 7)
• Summary (Chapter 8)
• Summary (Chapter 9)
• Symbolism & Style
• Quotes Explained
• Essay Topics
• Essay Samples
• Questions & Answers
• F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Biography
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, October 28). The Great Gatsby Reflection Paper. https://ivypanda.com/essays/reflection-on-the-book-great-gatsby/

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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Great Gatsby Reflection Paper." October 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/reflection-on-the-book-great-gatsby/.

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The Great Gatsby Essay TDA Writing Prompts, Grading Rubrics, & Prewriting Tasks

Description.

In this resource, students will conduct a literary analysis of  The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald  and write a  TDA Essay  using textual evidence to support their responses.

There are TWO writing options students can choose from for this Response to Literature/TDA essay.

Included in this product you will get one copy of the following each as PDFs  (ready to print)  as well as one copy of the following each as WORD Documents (as to be  editable   for teachers ).

• Essay Prompts for two different topics on the novel  The Great Gatsby
• Two Prewriting Graphic Organizers for students to brainstorm ideas, thesis, examples, and textual evidence
• TDA Essay Rubric broken down into categories: content, focus, organization, style, conventions, and format

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The Great Gatsby is usually studied in the Australian curriculum under Area of Study 1 - Text Response. For a detailed guide on Text Response, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response .

Introduction

Call it the greatest American novel or ultimate story of unrequited romance— The Great Gatsby is undoubtedly a stunning snapshot of one of the most American decades that America has ever seen. The 1920s saw significant economic growth after WWI, and what’s more American than material excess, wealth, and prosperity? The stock market was going off, businesses were booming, and people were having a great time.

Well, not everybody—and on the flipside, what’s more American than socio-economic inequality or the ever-quixotic American Dream?

In this blog, we’ll go through the novel in this context, examine some of its key themes, and also have a think about the critiques it raises about American society. We’ll also go through an essay prompt that ties some of these things together.

Life in the Roaring Twenties

This snapshot from the 2013 film adaptation actually tells us a lot about the 1920s. On the one hand, social and cultural norms were shifting—men no longer sported beards, and women were dressing more androgynously and provocatively. On the other hand, the modern, American economy was emerging—people began buying costly consumer goods (like cars, appliances, telephones etc.) using credit rather than cash. This meant that average American families were able to get these things for the first time, while more prosperous families were able to live in extreme excess.

In Fitzgerald’s novel, the Buchanans are one such family. Tom and his wife Daisy have belonged to the 1% for generations, and the 1920s saw them cement their wealth and status. At the same time, the booming economy meant that others (like the narrator Nick) were relocating to cities in pursuit of wealth, and (like Gatsby) making significant financial inroads themselves. 

The Great Gatsby traces how the differences between these characters can be destructive even if they’re all wealthy. Add a drop of Gatsby’s unrequited love for Daisy, and you have a story that ultimately examines how far people go for romance, and what money simply can’t buy. 

The answer to that isn’t so obvious though. Yes, money can’t buy love, but it also can’t buy a lot of other things associated with the lifestyle and the values of established wealth. We’ll get into some of this now.

Wealth and class

Fitzgerald explores tensions between three socio-economic classes—the establishment, the ‘nouveau riche’ and the working class.

Tom and Daisy belong to the ‘old money’ establishment, where wealth is generational and inherited . This means they were born into already wealthy families, which affects their upbringing and ultimately defines them, from the way they speak (Tom’s “paternal contempt” and Daisy’s voice, “full of money”) to their major life decisions (including marriage, symbolised through the “string of pearls” he buys for her—which, fun fact, is estimated to be worth millions of dollars today). It also affects their values, as we’ll see in the following section.  For now, consider this image of their home (and those ponies on the left, which they also own), described as follows:

“The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for [400 metres], jumping over sun-dials and brick walls and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run.”

Nick Carraway also comes from a similar (though not as extravagant) background—his family had been rich by Midwestern standards for “three generations” before he came to New York.

Conversely, Gatsby belongs to the ‘ nouveau riche ’, or new money. Unlike the Buchanans, Gatsby was born into a poor family, only coming to wealth in the 1920s boom. Specifically, he inherited money from Dan Cody after running away from home at 17.

Although they are all rich, there are significant cultural differences between old and new money. Old money have their own culture of feigned politeness which Gatsby doesn’t quite get. When Tom and the Sloanes invite Nick and Gatsby to supper in chapter six, Gatsby naively accepts, to which Tom would respond behind his back, “Doesn’t he know [Mrs. Sloane] doesn’t want him?” Even though Gatsby is financially their equal, his newfound wealth can’t buy his way into their (nasty, horrible) lifestyle.

Finally, this is contrasted with the working class, particularly George and Myrtle Wilson who we meet in chapter two. They live in a grey “valley of ashes”, the detritus of a prosperous society whose wealth is limited to the 1%. Fitzgerald even calls it a “solemn dumping ground”, suggesting that life is precarious and difficult here. Consider what separates George—“blond, spiritless… and faintly handsome”—from Tom (hint: $$).

Myrtle is described differently, however—she is a “faintly stout” woman with “perceptible vitality”. This may be less of a description of her and more of a commentary on Tom’s sexuality, and what attracts him to her such that he cheats on Daisy with her. Still, Myrtle’s relative poverty is evident in her expressions of desire throughout their meeting—“I want to get one of those dogs,” she says, and Tom just hands her the money.

Ultimately, looking at the novel through the lens of class, we see a society where upward social mobility and making a living for yourself is possible, just not for everybody. Even when you get rich, it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll suddenly, seamlessly integrate into the lives of old money. 

Morality and values

Added to this story of social stratification is a moral dimension, where Fitzgerald can be a little more critical. 

Firstly, old money is portrayed as shallow . Daisy’s marriage to Tom and the Sloanes’ insincerity are elements of this, but another good example is Gatsby’s party guests. Many aren’t actually invited—they invite themselves, and “they came and went without having met Gatsby at all.” Their vacuous relationship to Gatsby is exposed when he dies, and they completely abandon him. Klipspringer, “the boarder”, basically lived in Gatsby’s house, and even then he still wouldn’t come to the funeral, only calling up to get a “pair of shoes” back. 

The rich are also depicted as cruel and inconsiderate, insulated from repercussions by their wealth. Nick’s description of Tom’s “cruel body” is repeatedly realised, as he breaks Myrtle’s nose in chapter two and condescends Gatsby with “magnanimous scorn” in chapter seven. After Myrtle dies, Nick spots the Buchanans “conspiring” and describes them as “smash[ing] up things and creatures and then retreat[ing] back into their money or their vast carelessness”—he sees them as fundamentally selfish.

Gatsby is portrayed more sympathetically though, which may come from his humble upbringing and his desire to be liked. This is probably the key question of the novel—is he a hero, or a villain? The moral of the story, or a warning? Consumed by love, or corrupted by wealth?

I’m going to leave most of those for the next section, but I’ll finish here with one last snippet: Lucille, a guest at his parties, tears her dress and Gatsby immediately sends her a “new evening gown”. Weird flex, but at least he’s being selfless…

That said, a major part of Gatsby’s character is his dishonesty, which complicates his moral identity. 

For starters, he fabricates a new identity and deals in shady business just to reignite his five-year-old romance with Daisy. We see this through the emergence of Meyer Wolfsheim, with whom he has unclear business “gonnegtions”, and the resultant wealth he now enjoys. 

In chapter three, Owl Eyes describes Gatsby as a “regular Belasco”, comparing him to a film director who was well-known for the realism of his sets. This is a really lucid analysis of Gatsby, who is in many ways just like a film director constructing a whole fantasy world.

It’s also unclear if he loves Daisy for who she is, or just the idea of Daisy and the wealth she represents. Indeed, he doesn’t seem to treat her as a person, but more like something that he can pursue (like wealth). This is a good read, so I won’t really get into it here—just consider how much things have changed since Gatsby first met Daisy (like her marriage and her children), and how Gatsby ignores the way her life has changed in favour of his still, stationary memory of who she used to be.

Love, desire and hope

All of this makes it tricky to distil what the novel’s message actually is. 

Is it that Gatsby is a good person, especially cast against the corrupt old money?  

This analysis isn’t wrong, and it actually works well with a lot of textual evidence. Where Nick resents the Buchanans, he feels sympathy for Gatsby. He explicitly says, “they’re a rotten crowd…you’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.” Maybe love was an honourable goal compared to money, which ostensibly makes you “cruel” and “careless”. 

I wouldn’t say he was cruel, but this reading is complicated by how he can be careless, choosing not to care about Daisy’s agency, and letting his desires overtake these considerations. 

Is it that Gatsby and his desire for Daisy were corrupted by wealth despite his good intentions? 

There’s also evidence to suggest wealth corrupts—Nick describes it as “foul dust” that “preyed” on Gatsby, eroding his good character and leaving behind someone who resembles the vacuous elite. Although love might’ve been an honourable goal, it got diluted by money. 

Gatsby’s paradigm for understanding the world becomes driven by materialism, and he objectifies Daisy. He starts trying to buy something that he originally didn’t need to buy—Daisy’s love. She certainly didn’t fall in love with this man who owned a mansion and a closet full of “beautiful shirts.” Thus, Gatsby is a sympathetic product of a system that was always stacked against him (a poor boy from North Dakota). Capitalism, right?

Is it that capitalist America provides nothing for people to pursue except for wealth, and therefore little reason for people to feel hope?

Past the basics: structural economic tension and the doomed American Dream

Now we want to start thinking beyond the characters (e.g. if Gatsby is a good person or not) and also factor in their social, historical, political and economic context (e.g. if he was doomed to begin with by a society driven by money). This subheading does sound a bit much, but we’ll break it down here. 

A key part of this novel is the American Dream, the idea that America is a land of freedom and equal opportunity, that anyone can ‘make it’ if they truly try. Value is placed on upward social mobility (moving up from a working-class background) and economic prosperity (making $$), which defined much of the Roaring 20s…

…for some. 

For many others, there was significant tension between these lofty values and their lived reality of life on the ground. As much as society around them was prospering, they just couldn’t get a piece of the pie, and this is what makes it structural—as hard as George Wilson might work, he just can’t get himself out of the Valley of Ashes and into wealth. Indeed, you can’t achieve the Dream without cheating (as Gatsby did). 

So, there’s this tension, this irreconcilable gap between economic goals and actual means. Through this lens, the tragedy of The Great Gatsby multiplies. It’s no longer just about someone who can’t buy love with money—it’s about how nobody’s dreams are really attainable. Not everyone can get money, and money can only get you so far. Everyone is stuck, and the American Dream is basically just a myth. 

Thus, the novel could be interpreted as a takedown of capitalist America, which convinced people like Gatsby that the answer to everything was money, and he bolted after the “green light” allure of cold, hard cash only to find out that it wasn’t enough, that it wasn’t the answer in the end.  (.

Consider what kind of message that sends to people like the Wilsons—if money can’t actually buy happiness, what good is it really to chase it? And remember that Gatsby had to cheat to get rich in the first place. 

Is [the novel’s message] that capitalist America provides nothing for people to pursue except for wealth, and therefore little reason for people to feel hope?

You tell me.

Prompt: what does Fitzgerald suggest about social stratification in the 1920s?

Whenever you get a new essay topic, you can use LSG’s THINK and EXECUTE strategy , a technique to help you write better VCE essays. If you’re unfamiliar with this strategy, then check it out in How To Write A Killer Text Response .

Let’s try applying this to a prompt. I’ll italicise the key points that have been brought up throughout this post. 

Firstly, social stratification clearly divided society along economic lines . This could be paragraph one, exploring how class separated the Buchanans and Wilsons of the world, and how their lifestyles were so completely different even though they all lived in the prosperity of the Roaring 20s . George Wilson was “worn-out” from work, but he still couldn’t generate upward social mobility for his family, stuck in the Valley of Ashes. Conversely, Tom Buchanan is born into a rich family with his beach-facing mansion and polo ponies . Colour is an important symbol here—the Valley is grey, while East Egg is filled with colour (a green light here, a “blue coupe” there…).

The next paragraph might look at the cultural dimension , exploring how you just can’t buy a way of life. This might involve analysing Gatsby’s wealth as deluding him into thinking he can “repeat the past” by buying into the life(style) of old money . This is where Fitzgerald disillusions us about the American Dream —he presents a reality where it isn’t possible for anyone to ‘make it’, where the Buchanans still treat you with scorn even if you’re just as wealthy. Gatsby’s dishonesty is ultimately a shallow one—try as he might, he just cannot fit in and win Daisy back.

Finally, we should consider the moral dimension —even though the wealthier socioeconomic classes enjoyed more lavish, luxurious lifestyles, Fitzgerald also argued that they were the most morally bankrupt. Money corrupted the wealthy to the point where they simply did not care about the lives of the poor, as seen in the Buchanans’ response to Myrtle’s death. Even Gatsby had to compromise his integrity and deal in shady business in order to get rich—he isn’t perfect either. Social stratification may look ostentatious and shiny on the outside, but the rich are actually portrayed as shallow and corrupt. 

A good essay on this novel will typically combine some of these dimensions and build a multilayered analysis. Stratification, love, wealth, morality—all of these big ideas can be broken down in terms of social, economic, cultural circumstances, so make sure to consider all angles when you write. 

Have a go at these prompts!

1. Nick is biased in his assessment of Gatsby—both of them are no better than the corrupt, wealthy Buchanans. Do you agree?

2. In The Great Gatsby , money is a stronger motivating factor than love. Do you agree?

3. Daisy Buchanan is more innocent than guilty—explore this statement with reference to at least 2 other characters. 

4. What does Fitzgerald say about happiness in The Great Gatsby ?

5. Is money the true antagonist of The Great Gatsby ?

6. The women of The Great Gatsby are all victims of a patriarchal society. To what extent do you agree? (Hint: are they all equally victimised?)

Challenge: According to Fitzgerald, what really lays underneath the façade of the Roaring 20s? Make reference to at least 2 symbols in The Great Gatsby . (Hint: façade = “an outward appearance that conceals a less pleasant reality” – think about things like colours, clothes, buildings etc.)

The Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response

How To Write A Killer Text Response Study Guide

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5 Tips for a mic drop worthy essay conclusion

The Importance of the Introduction

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Struggling to answer the essay topic?

Has your teacher ever told you:

"You're not answering the prompt"

"You're going off topic"

Then you're not alone! If you struggle to understand and stay on topic, learn how to answer the prompt every time with our How To Write A Killer Text Response study guide.

Most people only think about EXECUTING their essay - the writing. Whether that be essay structure, memorising quotes or how to avoid repeating yourself in the dreaded conclusion. However, my strategy places emphasis on the THINK. 

THINK is the brainstorm, exploration, and development of ideas. Get this right, and you'll come up with ideas and a response that pushes you ahead of your peers. The EXECUTION comes next, only strengthening your lead to the finish line.

So what does THINK actually involve? 🤔

You need to consider aspects of an essay topic that most students gloss over, including:

💭What's the essay topic type ?

Knowing the essay topic type will change your essay structure. While you might wish for a one-size-fits-all essay structure, this is a limited viewpoint that stops you from reaching your potential. Different essay types include:

• Theme-based prompts
• Character-based prompts
• Author's message-based prompts
• Metalanguage-based prompts

By understand what's required in each one of these essay topic types, you'll have a template you can follow to ensure that you answer the prompt (no more complaints from your teacher complaining that you're going off topic!).

💭 What are the question tags ?

Never heard of this term previously? That's because majority of teachers don't teach you to change your Text Response according to the question tag. A ' do you agree?' essay topic expects a different response from a 'discuss' essay topic.

💭 How do I ensure I respond to each keyword ?

This is important so you don't go off topic (we've all at least experienced this once in our high school writing careers 😥). Sometimes, one missed keyword is all it takes to derail your entire essay. No matter how well you've written your essay, an essay that doesn't answer the prompt won't fare well.

For example, have a think about which keywords can be found in this essay topic "Jeff's attempt to pursue justice are entirely without honour. To what extent is this true?".

For me, the keywords include:

- 'Attempt'

- 'Pursue justice'

- 'Entirely'

- 'Honour'

- 'To what extent is this true?'

Even though I've labelled almost every word in the essay topic, individually, each of these keywords will shape my response. Majority of students will pick up the necessity to discuss the keyword 'entirely' in their essays. They will potentially argue that Jeff's attempt isn't entirely without honour, and mention instances where honour was shown. However, a less obvious keyword that needs further exploration is 'justice'. Most students will take this word for granted, and won't really explore what the word 'justice' means in this sentence. A more advanced student will understand that 'justice' in this essay topic is viewed from Jeff's perspective, meaning that what Jeff deems to be 'justice', might not be the same 'justice' for a viewer. These are the nuances in an essay topic that I'd like you to be very confident in.

Knowing how to THINK will ensure that you EXECUTE your essay writing most effectively, optimising your potential to nail that A+. If I went from average to consistent A+s in Year 11 and Year 12, I have no doubt you can do it too. That's why I created the How To Write a Killer Text Response ebook.

I know that you are probably like I was, searching for a clear, simple way to get better at English without just relying on my teacher (despite the fact that I had a great teacher!). I've compiled my 10 years of tutoring English, refining this strategy year after year. With this knowledge, many of my students achieved a study score they thought was impossible (one student Ruby, wanted a study score of 30 to get into her university course, and ultimately achieved a 40 study score! WOW! 😮).

If you're interested, How To Write a Killer Text Response ebook shows you the inner workings of my brain 💭- what I think when I see an essay topic, how I tackle it, and how I turn these thoughts into a high-scoring essay. The ebook includes:

‍ - 50-pages teaching you how to respond to ANY essay topic

- Examples from 15+ popular VCE English texts

- Know exactly what to  THINK  about so you can formulate the best possible essay response

- Plus a bonus 20-pages of high vs low scoring essays , fully annotated (what works and what doesn't) so you know exactly what you need to do and what not to do

Click here to access the FULL version now!

Like a House on Fire is usually studied in the Australian curriculum under Area of Study 1 - Text Response. For a detailed guide on Text Response, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response .

• Historical Context
• Essay Planning
• Essay Topics

1. Historical Context

Kennedy’s anthology of fifteen short stories, Like a House on Fir e, explores the impacts of familial and social issues on an individual’s sense of identity and humanity, illustrating the vast spectrum of human condition. Having lived a majority of her life in Victoria, Australia, Kennedy’s collection follows the stories of various protagonists whose voices are characteristic of Australian culture and society. As the text is set in the backdrop of rapid Australian modernisation, the novel also depicts the paradoxical nature of technology, as various characters are depicted to be torn between confronting or embracing this fundamental change. Despite approaching the stories of characters conflicted by modern and social challenges with both humour and cynicism, Kennedy’s lack of judgement is notable; it is with this empathetic stance that she is able to the universal nature of human emotions to her readership. 

Kennedy explores the theme of identity mainly through physical injury, as various characters with physical trauma find themselves to be agonisingly limited within the confines of their condition. In Like a House on Fire , the narrator’s sense of identity becomes intertwined with his subsequently decreased masculinity, as his back injury leaves him unable to physically take care of his family, and his wife begins to undertake stereotypically masculine roles within the household. In tandem with this, Roley’s wife in Little Plastic Shipwreck is rendered humourless and witless due to her brain injury, distorting her once enthusiastic self into one shadowed by her illness; further emphasising the link between physical and mental identity. 

Order and Disorder

The inherent tension between order and chaos is continually examined throughout the anthology, particularly in Like a House on Fire, in which perfectionistic order and scatter minded disorder are embodied in the unnamed narrator and his wife respectively. As the two individuals are unable to establish a compromise between their contrasting personalities, Kennedy suggests that this lack of cooperation is the core reason for the deterioration of their marriage, and their subsequent misery. The notion of disorder is also symbolised by the domestic setting itself, as Kennedy depicts various characters who feel pervasive ennui and dissatisfaction within the ‘chaotic mess’ of their household environments.

Each protagonist in the collection is portrayed as possessing some object of longing, whether it be material or emotional. Kennedy utilises scattered verses of prose within her writing to communicate these human desires, building upon their significance poetically. In Static , Anthony attempts to negotiate his own wishes with those of his wife and family, leading him to wonder whether anything present in his life has been created by his own will or merely his eagerness to please others. His desire for various types of happiness, embodied in material concepts such as money or children, suggest that the human condition is built upon the foundation of dissatisfaction; that innate longing is what ultimately defines us as human.

The theme of love is present in each story of the collection, often used as an instrument through which the characters can heal and grow from their physical or spiritual pain. While suggesting that true love endures all hardship in Like a House on Fire , Kennedy also illustrates the various sacrifices one must make in order to protect the ones you love. Such is depicted in Five-Dollar Family , as a new mother makes the difficult decision of leaving her ‘loser’ boyfriend to give her child a chance at the best life possible, despite the unfortunate situation he has been born into. 

Communication

The vital importance of communication within families is emphasised in the anthology, as the lack of effective communication perceivably exacerbates dysfunctional relationships. The crushing regret of a son is explored in Ashes , as he laments his lack of communication with his father who he can no longer speak to. However, Kennedy empathetically depicts the difficulty of communicating potentially painful messages to loved ones in Waiting , as the protagonist anxiously agonises over the prospect of telling her husband that she may have another miscarriage following an excruciating string of lost children. 

In tandem with longing, Kennedy asserts that empathy is vital to the survival and happiness of a human being. This notion is aptly depicted in Little Plastic Shipwreck , in which the death of Samson the popular show dolphin results in Roley’s revelation of his manager’s complete lack of empathy, and subsequently the abundance of his own. Similarly, the salient importance of empathy is emphasised in Flexion , as the cold-heated and harsh victim of a brutal tractor incident repairs his marriage by allowing himself to feel more empathy for those who have supported his recovery and been understanding of his bitterness. 

The anthology centres around the concept of family, as both dramatic events unfold directly due to altercations and misunderstanding within the household. By depicting both the dramatic and mundane events that contribute to creating dysfunctional families, Kennedy asserts that kindness and understanding is vital to the maintenance of a healthy and loving family. The power of family is also depicted in Like a House on Fire , as the protagonist’s dissatisfaction with life is instantly washed away by the actions of his children, who remind him that despite his life-threatening injury, his family is his constant source of love and support. 

If you'd like to see how themes like these can be identified and analysed in one of Kennedy's short stories, you might like to check out our Close Analysis Of 'Cake' From Like A House On Fire blog post!

By the way, to download a PDF version of this blog for printing or offline use, click here !

3. Essay Planning

Question 1: ‘gender plays no role in the tragic identities of the characters in like a house on fire.’ to what extent do you agree, suggested contention: despite the ubiquitous nature of hardship, the short stories of like a house on fire explore the effect of gender roles on individuals’ sense of self-worth., body paragraph 1: .

• Pain is depicted to have no partiality to either gender in Like a House on Fire. 
• Much of the trauma explored throughout the anthology is a result of lack of emotional connection or familial misunderstanding arising through individual actions, rather than due to stereotypes associated with gender. 
• Kennedy suggests that there is no gender more at fault for these issues, but rather that it is mindset that determines one’s identity and fate, especially in relationships. For example, just as the protagonist’s wife in Flexion makes the mistake of cruelly wielding her physical dominance over her husband, the passive boyfriend in Five-Dollar Family is cruel in his apathy toward his girlfriend and their newborn baby.     

Body paragraph 2: 

• Despite this, Kennedy explores the social views that plague men as a result of their gender, compelling to limit their identity to meet these fatal expectations. 
• The concept of masculinity is explored throughout the collection, often presented as an inferiority complex for many male protagonists due to their physical disabilities. The societal idea that men should be physically strong in order to be able to provide for his family is heavily condemned in Like a House on Fire , as Kennedy depicts the destructive consequences of such on one’s sense of self-worth. 
• For example, the narrator of Like a House on Fire perceives his own physical weakness as unmanly, and subsequently himself as an unfit and useless father. As he is unable to pick up the  family’s Christmas tree, the tree seller looks towards him with disdainful judgment, perceiving the protagonist’s wife lifting the tree to be ‘destroying the social fabric’. 
• In addition to this, the narrator’s extreme attempt to physically help the family results in the destruction of the precious family nativity scene, symbolising the idea that social constructs of masculinity inevitably ends in destruction, as the narrator’s inability to recognise his physical limitations only exacerbates the problem. 

Body paragraph 3: 

• In tandem with this, the collection of short stories also examines the social limitations placed upon women solely due to their gender. 
• The difficulty for women to balance their roles of mother and career woman is explored in Cake , in which the protagonist Liz fails to separate one from the other, leading her to feel dissatisfaction in both. Kennedy ostensibly denounces the social expectations of women to be domestic helpers, as Liz faces judgement at work for bearing a child, whereas her husband is exempt from any judgement despite it also being his son. 
• The complicated and personal concept of pregnancy is further depicted in Waiting , as the protagonist agonises over the fact that she may lose another child due to a miscarriage. As the fear of disappointing others takes over her own pain and anguish, readers of the collection are invited to consider the harrowing expectations placed on women to be successful mothers. 

Question 2: ‘Like a House on Fire shows that family relationships are never perfect.’ Do you agree?

Suggested contention: through the constant depiction of dysfunctional families in like a house on fire, kennedy asserts the importance of communication and empathy in repairing broken relationships, and suggests that perfect families are unrealistic. .

• Every story in the collection depicts a family undergoing some kind of hardship, whether it be financial, emotional or spiritual. Through her depiction of broken families, Kennedy suggests that emotional stress and tension within families is sometimes inevitable, even in a loving and supportive environment. 
• The title of the collection, Like a House on Fire , is emblematic of the dual nature of families, as while the phrase symbolises the chaos and disorder of one’s family dynamic, it also symbolises the love and extreme passion that often coexists alongside it. 
• For example, while the protagonist in Like a House on Fire reminisces upon the ‘fiery’ sexual and emotional happiness of their marriage, he also deplores their current period of domestic stress, describing it as a ‘house on fire’. 
• Kennedy depicts the need for family members to engage in open and honest communication with one another to overcome the effects of trauma. 
• For example, in Ashes , Chris is only able to find closure by finally understanding the mindset off his parents through effective communication. His newly found ability to express his true emotions to his mother allows him to finally perceive the grief that was masked by her supposedly ‘cruel’ actions, and subsequently finally achieve a stable relationship with her. 
• Kennedy also advocates for the exercise of empathy between family members in order to find harmony within dysfunction. 
• This is apparent in Flexion , in which the seemingly emotionless protagonist and his wife undergo their respective journeys of expressing empathy for the other. As their marriage significantly improves due to their increased understanding of each other, Kennedy promotes the importance of vulnerability and openness within families. 

Beyond the Basics: 

How does Kennedy’s short story format add to the reader’s understanding of the themes uncovered in the novel? 

• The range of diverse, Australian voices depicted in the anthology work to portray the vast spectrum of the human condition. 
• The concise narrative present in each of the fifteen stories work to provide the readership with an extremely personal point of view that emphasises the emotions and mindset of the protagonist, furthering the sense of authorial empathy and compassion. 
• It is through this almost voyeuristic advantage we subsequently possess as readers, that we are able to fully understand the depth of each character’s humanity and sense of identity, as well as the various struggles that follow the course of an individual’s life.
• Kennedy’s ordering of the short stories also contributes to the reader’s depth of understanding. There is no apparent chronological order present in the collection, but rather a varied order of stories, depicting its diverse range of voices. For example, while the key themes and tones of the anthology remain consistent throughout, other factors such as age, gender and life experience of the protagonist vary in order to provide contrasting character viewpoints. 
• As such, this variation in narrative voice allows Kennedy to present her stories as universal human experiences, emphasising the ubiquitous nature of the themes present in Like a House on Fire . 
• Finally, the varied structure within each individual story lends an optimistic tone that underscores the entirety of Kennedy’s work. While some stories such as Flexion begin with the inciting event, others emphasise the chain of events that occur in leading up to the key event, as depicted in Ashes . As the undertones of hope and faith are present throughout the collection, the varied plot structure of each story allows Kennedy to assert that no matter the circumstance of hardship, one can always find a glimpse of optimism within its depths. 

If you'd like to see another essay topic breakdown, you might like to check out our Like a House on Fire Essay Topic Breakdown blog post!

4. Essay Topics

The following essay topics are extracted from our Like a House on Fire Study Guide :

• In Like a House on Fire, Kennedy illustrates that perfect families do not exist, and that family dysfunction is inevitable. To what extent do you agree?
• The characters in Like a House on Fire are largely defined by social expectations of their gender. Discuss.
• In Like a House on Fire, how does Kennedy show that in even times of hardship, human strength will prevail?
• ‘The range of narrative points of views used in Like a House on Fire illustrate the characters’ deeply personal responses to life’s challenges.’ Discuss.
• ‘…As the lifetime habit of keeping his responses to himself closed his mouth in a firm and well-worn line.’ How does Kennedy present communication as a key issue in the relationships in Like a House on Fire?

If you'd like to see A+ essays on these essay topics, complete with annotations on HOW and WHY the essays achieved A+ so you can emulate this same success, then you'll definitely want to check out our Like a House on Fire Study Guide ! In it, we also cover advanced discussions on topics like authorial views and values, symbols and motifs and context completely broken down into easy-to-understand concepts so you can smash your next SAC or exam! Check it out here .

5. Resources

Download a PDF version of this blog for printing or offline use

Like a House on Fire Essay Topic Breakdown

How To Get An A+ On Your Like A House On Fire Essay

Close Analysis Of 'Cake' From Like A House On Fire

Picture this: you’re sitting down at your desk, fumbling your fingers, inspecting the new stationary that you convinced yourself you needed for year 12, resisting the urge to check your phone. Your text response SAC is in two weeks. You’re freaking out because you want, no, need an A+. You decide to write a practice essay for your English teacher. Practice makes perfect, right? You stay up for hours, pouring your heart and soul into this essay. The result? B+. Where did I go wrong?

That’s where I come in! Writing an A+ essay can be really tough without examples and specific advice. Before reading on, make sure you've read our Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response and Golden Age blog so you are up to scratch.

In this article I will be explaining some basic dos and don’ts of writing an essay on The Golden Age , providing a model essay as an example. At the end of this blog is also a video based on another essay prompt to help you prepare for your Golden Age studies!

The following prompt will be referenced throughout the post;

‘The Golden Age’ shows that everyone needs love and recognition. Discuss.

Planning: the silent killer of A+ essays

I’m sure your teachers have emphasised the importance of planning. In case they haven’t, allow me to reiterate that great planning is compulsory for a great essay . However, flimsy arguments aren’t going to get you an A+. The examiners are looking for complex arguments , providing a variety of perspectives of the themes at hand. From the above prompt, the key word is, ‘discuss’. This means that you should be discussing the prompt, not blindly agreeing with it . Make sure you don’t write anything that wouldn’t sit right with London. ‍

Don’t plan out basic arguments that are one-dimensional. This may give you a pass in English, but won’t distinguish you as a top-scoring student.

For example:

• Paragraph 1: The children at TGA need love and recognition.
• Paragraph 2: Ida and Meyer need love and recognition
• Paragraph 3: Sister Penny needs love and recognition.

The above paragraphs merely agree with the statement, but don’t delve into the many aspects of the novel that could contribute to a sophisticated essay.

Do create complex arguments, or paragraphs with a twist! If you can justify your argument and it makes sense, include it in your essay. There are many ways that you could answer this question, but my plan looks like this:

• Paragraph 1: Frank Gold yearns for mature, adult love, not recognition from onlookers or outsiders
• Paragraph 2: Ida Gold does not seek recognition from Australia, but love and validation from herself
• Paragraph 3: Albert requires love from a specific kind of relationship – family, and Sullivan may view love from his father as pity which he rebukes

See the difference?

The introduction:

How to start your essay off with a bang.

Personally, I always struggled with starting an introduction. The examiners will be reading and marking thousands of essays, so if possible, starting your introduction with something other than Joan London’s ‘The Golden Age’… is a great way to make you stand out from the crowd. Having a strong start is essential to pave the way for a clear and concise essay. You could start with a quote/scene from the text! This is not essential, but it’s a great way to mix things up. This is my start:

Perhaps nothing exemplifies the power of love and recognition more than the bond between Albert Sutton and his older sister, Lizzie, in Joan London’s ‘The Golden Age’. Many of London’s characters exhibit suffering that requires compassion and support to heal and grow, to distinguish present from past. However, London explores the perspectives of such characters from different aspects of trauma, and emphasise that love and recognition do not always work to heal and mature. Frank Gold, the novel’s resident “sneaky” boy who adjusts to newfound life in the Golden Age Convalescent Home seeks love as an adult, rather than eliciting sympathy as a supposed victim. Here love and recognition are unsuccessful in amending Frank’s troubles when given from the perspective of an outsider, a judgemental onlooker. In a similar sense, Ida Gold seeks recognition not from Australia, who she views as a ‘backwater’, but validation in herself after having been ousted from her Hungarian identity. London, however, makes sure to emphasise the impact that Sullivan has on Frank Gold’s life. Sullivan, a boy only a few years older than Frank, seems content with his future, with his fate, despite his sacrifice of rugby and conventional life.  There is a lacking sense of urgency for love and recognition in Sullivan’s life, rather, it appears that Sullivan accepts his fate, regardless of his father’s sympathy or support. Thus, London explores a myriad of ways in which love and recognition may or may not heal wounds inflicted upon individuals.

Remember, there are many other ways you could start your essay.

The body paragraphs: To TEEL or not to TEEL?

I’m sure you’ve heard of TEEL countless times since year 7. Topic sentence, evidence, explanation, link. The truth is that these elements are all very important in a body paragraph. However, following a rigid structure will render your essay bland and repetitive. It is also extremely important to note that you should be using evidence from multiple points in the text , and you should be making sure that your paragraphs are directly answering the question . Write what feels natural to you, and most importantly, don’t abuse a thesaurus . If you can’t read your essay without rummaging for a dictionary every second sentence, you should rewrite it.  If vocabulary isn’t your strong point (it definitely isn’t mine!), focus on clean sentence structure and solid arguments. There’s nothing worse than you using a fancy word incorrectly.

Don’t overuse your thesaurus in an attempt to sound sophisticated, and don’t use the same structure for every sentence. For example:

Prematurely in the paperback London makes an allusion to Norm White, the denizen horticulturalist of The Golden Age Convalescent Home…

That was an exaggerated example generated by searching for synonyms. As you can see, it sounds silly, and some of the words don’t even make sense. I mean, “denizen horticulturalist”…really?

Do mix up your paragraph structure! If vocabulary is your weak point, focus on clean language.

Here’s mine:

Early in the novel, London makes reference to Norm White, the resident groundskeeper of The Golden Age Convalescent Home. Norm White hands Frank Gold a cigarette, “as if to say a man has the right to smoke in peace”. Here, there is a complete disregard for rule and convention, an idea that London emphasises throughout the text. This feature provides a counter-cultural experience for Frank, pushing him to realise that he is a strong human being rather than a mere victim. This is a clear contrast to the “babyishness” of the home, and is used as evidence of true humanity in an era where society judged upon the unconventional. Frank yearns for a traditional Australian life after his trauma in Hungary; “his own memory…lodged like an attic in the front part of his brain”. Hedwiga and Julia Marai’s caring of him pushed him towards fear and reluctance to trust, yet also pressured him to seek acceptance in a world that ostracises him for his Jewish heritage and polio diagnosis. This here is why Frank desires a mature, adult connection – love that regards him as an equal human being. Frank seeks Elsa’s love and company as she too loathes being reduced to a victim, an object of pity. Frank thereafter uses humour to joke of his wounds; “we Jews have to be on the lookout”. Elsa sees “a look in his eyes that she recognised”, thus their bond enables both characters to heal. London alludes that Frank requires love and recognition not from the perspective of a sorrowful onlooker, rather he longs to be recognised as a mature adult.

To learn more about using the right vocabulary, read 'Why using big words in VCE essays can make you look dumber'.

The conclusion: closing the deal

I firmly believe in short and sharp conclusions. Your body paragraphs should be thoroughly explaining your paragraphs, so don’t include any new information here. A few sentences is enough. Once again, write what feels natural, and what flows well.

Don’t drag out your conclusion. Short and concise is the key to finishing well.

Do write a sharp finish! Sentence starters such as, “Ultimately…” or “Thus, London…” are great.

Although trauma is often treated with love and compassion, London details different perspectives on this idea. Whilst Frank Gold requires a specific kind of recognition, Ida and Meyer seek validation in themselves and their relationship, whilst Sullivan is at ease with his fate and does not yearn sympathy from his father.

‍ To learn more about A+ essays, you should also have a read of 10 easy English points you're missing out on .

I'll finish off by giving you an exercise: brainstorm and write up a plan for the essay topic shown in the video below. I'd recommend you do this before watching Lisa's brainstorm and plan. That way, you can see which of your ideas overlapped, but also potentially see which ideas you may have missed out on. Good luck!

Updated 24/12/2020

• Themes, Motifs and Key Ideas
• Comparative Essay Prompt Example
• Sample Essay Topics

The Crucible is a four-act play that portrays the atmosphere of the witch trials in Salem. As an allegory of McCarthyism, the play primarily focuses on criticising the ways in which innocent people are prosecuted without any founded evidence, reflecting the unjust nature of the corrupted authoritarian system that governs Salem. It starts off with the girls dancing in the woods and Betty’s unconsciousness, which causes the people of Salem to look for unnatural causes. People start scapegoating others to escape prosecution and falsely accuse others to gain power and land, facilitating mass hysteria which ultimately leads to the downfall of the Salem theocracy. The protagonist John Proctor is one of those that decides to defy the courts and sacrifices his life towards the end of the play, ending the play on a quiet note in contrast with its frenzied conflict throughout the acts.

The Dressmaker shows the audience the treatment towards Tilly Dunnage upon her return to fictional town Dungatar years after she was wrongly accused of being a murderess. Rosalie Ham critiques the impacts of rumours on Tilly and Molly, also establishing her condemnation of the societal stigma of this isolated town. Tilly starts making haute couture outfits to transform the lives of the women in the town and help them present themselves as more desirable and elevate their ranks. However, the townspeople still see Tilly negatively, except for some individuals who are able to look past the opinions of others and get to know Tilly themselves. Ham’s gothic novel garners the audience’s sympathy towards the outcasts of the town and antagonises those who find pleasure in creating drama and spreading rumours about others.  

2. Themes, Motifs and Key Ideas

Through discussing themes, motifs, and key ideas , we’ll gain a clearer understanding of some super important ideas to bring out in your essays. Remember, that when it comes to themes, there’s a whole host of ways you can express your ideas - but this is what I’d suggest as the most impressive method to blow away the VCAA examiners. Throughout this section, we'll be adhering to the CONVERGENT and DIVERGENT strategy to help us easily find points of similarity and difference. This is particularly important when it comes to essay writing, because you want to know that you're coming up with unique comparative points (compared to the rest of the Victorian cohort!). I don't discuss this strategy in detail here, but if you're interested, check out How To Write A Killer Comparative . I use this strategy throughout this discussion of themes and in the next section, Comparative Essay Prompt Example.

Similarities and Differences (CONVERGENT and DIVERGENT Ideas)

Social class .

Both The Crucible and The Dressmaker talk extensively about class. By class, what I mean is the economic and social divisions which determine where people sit in society. For instance, we could say that the British Royals are ‘upper class’, whilst people living paycheck to paycheck and struggling to get by are ‘lower class’.

Ultimately, both The Crucible and The Dressmaker are set in classist societies where there is no opportunity for social advancement. Whilst Thomas Putnam steals the land of poor Salemites accused of witchcraft, the McSwineys are left to live in absolute poverty and never leave the ‘tip’ where they have lived for generations. Dungatar and Salem view this social division as a ‘given’ and reject the idea that there is anything wrong with certain people living a life of suffering so others can have lives of wealth and pleasure. As such, for both Salem and Dungatar, the very idea that anyone could move between the classes and make a better life for themselves is inherently dangerous. What we can see here is that class shapes the way communities deal with crisis. Anything that overturns class is dangerous because it challenges the social order – meaning that individuals such as Reverend Parris in The Crucible , or Councillor Pettyman in The Dressmaker may lose all their power and authority.

For The Crucible , that’s precisely why the witchcraft crisis is so threatening, as the Salemites are prepared to replace Reverend Parris and deny his authority. Although Abigail and the group of girls thus single-handedly overturn Salem’s class structures and replace it with their own tyranny, Parris’ original intention was to use their power to reinforce his authority. In The Dressmaker , Tilly is threatening because she doesn’t neatly fit in to Dungatar’s class structure. Having travelled the outside world, she represents a worldly mindset and breadth of experiences which the townspeople know they cannot match.

For this theme, there’s a DIVERGENCE of ideas too, and this is clear because the way that class is expressed and enforced in both texts is vastly different. For The Crucible , it’s all about religion – Reverend Parris’ assertion that all Christians must be loyal to him ensures the class structure remains intact. More than that, to challenge him would be to challenge God, which also guides Danforth in executing those who don’t follow his will. In the case of The Dressmaker , there’s no central authority who imposes class on Dungatar. Rather, the people do it themselves; putting people back in their place through rumour and suspicion. However, by creating extravagant, expensive dresses for the townspeople, Tilly inadvertently provides people with another way to express class.  

Isolated Communities

CONVERGENT:

The setting forms an essential thematic element of The Crucible and The Dressmaker . Both communities are thoroughly isolated and, in colloquial terms, live in the ‘middle of no-where’.

However, what is starkly different between the texts is how this isolation shapes the respective communities’ self-image. For Salem, its citizens adopt a mindset of religious and cultural superiority – believing that their faith, dedication to hard work and unity under God make them the most blessed people in the world. Individuals as diverse as Rebecca Nurse and Thomas Putnam perceive Salem to be a genuinely incredible place. They see Salem as the first battleground between God and the Devil in the Americas, and as such, construct a grand narrative in which they are God’s soldiers protecting his kingdom. Even the name ‘Salem’ references ‘Jerusalem’, revealing that the Salemites see themselves as the second coming of Christ, and the fulfilment of the Bible’s promises.

Not much of the same can be said for The Dressmaker . Dungatar lacks the same religious context, and the very name of ‘Dungatar’ references ‘dung’, or beetle poop. The next part of the name is 'tar', a sticky substance, creating the impression that Dungatar's people are stuck in their disgusting ways. The townspeople of Dungatar are acutely aware of their own inadequacy, and that is why they fight so hard to remain isolated from the outside world. Tilly is therefore a threat because she challenges their isolation and forces the men and women of Dungatar to reconsider why their community has shunned progress for so long. In short, she makes a once-isolated people realise that fear, paranoia, division and superstition are no way to run a town, and brings them to acknowledge the terribly harmful impacts of their own hatred.

On top of that, because Salem is literally the only Christian, European settlement for miles, it is simply impossible for them to even think about alternatives to their way of life. They are completely isolated and thus, all of their problems come from ‘within’ and are a result of their own division. For Dungatar, it’s a mix of societal issues on the inside being made worse by the arrival of people from the outside. The township is isolated, but unlike Salem, it at least has contact with the outside world. All Tilly does, therefore, is show the people of Dungatar an alternative to their way of life. But, for a community used to the way they have lived for decades, it ultimately contributes to its destruction.

3. Comparative Essay Prompt Example

The following essay topic breakdown was written by Lindsey Dang. If you'd like to see a completed A+ essay based off this same essay topic, then check out LSG's A Killer Comparative Guide: The Crucible & The Dressmaker , written by 50 study scorer and LSG tutor, Jordan Bassilious!

[Modified Video Transcription]

Compare the ways in which outcasts are treated in The Crucible and The Dressmaker.

Step 1: Analyse

Before writing our topic sentences, we need to look at our key words first. The keywords in this prompt are outcasts and treated .

So, who are considered outcasts in the two texts? Outcasts can be those of traditionally lower classes, they can be characters with physical flaws, those that are different to others or those who do not abide by the standards of their respective societies.

• In The Crucible : Tituba, Abigail, John Proctor or even Martha Giles can be considered as outcasts.
• In The Dressmaker : We can consider Tilly, Molly, The McSwineys, etc.

We also need to look our second key word ‘treated’. How would we describe the treatment towards these characters? Are they treated nicely or are they mistreated and discriminated against? Do ALL members of that community have that same treatment towards those outcasts or are there exceptions? Remember this point because we might be able to use this to challenge the prompt.

We’re going to skip Step 2: Brainstorm today, but if you’re familiar with LSG teachings, including the THINK and EXECUTE strategy discussed in my How To Write A Killer Text Response ebook, then you’ll be good for this part.

Step 3: Create a Plan

Both texts portray outcasts as victims of relentless accusations or rumours, seeking to engage the pathos of the audience towards those who are marginalised.

• In The Crucible , Tituba the ‘Negro slave’ is the first person to be accused by witchcraft in Salem. Her ‘consequent low standing’ is also shown through her use of language ‘You beg me to conjure! She beg me make charm’ which is fraught with grammatical errors, compared to Judge Danforth who uses legal jargon and the Putnams who are much more well-spoken.
• Similarly, the McSwineys are also those of lower class and are seen as the outcasts of Dungatar. Their names show us their position in the social hierarchy because they are associated with swines which are pigs. This is confirmed by Sergeant Farrat who said ‘Teddy McSwiney was, by the natural order of the town, an outcast who lived by the tip’. Even when Teddy McSwiney died, the townspeople still did not reflect on the impacts that their prejudice and bigotry had on him, eventually forcing the McSwineys to leave the town because they could not find a sense of belonging living there.
• Tilly is also poorly treated due to the fact that she is fatherless, being bullied by the kids at school especially Stewart Pettyman and also used by William as a leverage to marry Gertrude, threatening Elsbeth that ‘it’s either her [Gertrude] or Tilly Dunnage’
• Also discuss Giles Corey’s death and the significance of his punishment as the stones that are laid on his chest can be argued to symbolise the weight of authority

Miller and Ham also denounce the ways in which outcasts are maltreated due to their position in the social hierarchy through his antagonisation of other townspeople.

• There’s also a quote on this by Molly ‘But you don’t matter – it’s open slather on outcasts'. Herein, she warns the audience of how quickly outcasts can become victims of rumours and accusations as the term ‘slather’ carries negative connotations.
• Similarly, the theocracy that governs Salem dictates the rights of their people and children. He specifically states 'children were anything but thankful for being permitted to walk straight, eyes slightly lowered, arms at sides, and mouths shut until bidden to speak', which explains the girls’ extreme fear of being whipped. Salem is very violent to children, slaves and helpers and it can be seen that this is the result of the social hierarchy and the Puritan ideology.
• For The Dressmaker , also discuss the ways in which they name others in this quote ‘daughter of Mad Molly is back – the murderess!’ Likewise discuss how Goody Osbourne the ‘drunkard half-witted’ and Sarah Good an old beggar woman are the first ones to be named. You can talk about Martha who is accused of being a witch just because she has been ‘reading strange books’, and Sarah Good due to the mere act of ‘mumbling’. The normality of these actions underlines the absurdity of the accusations made against these individuals, furthering Miller’s chastisement of the fictitious nature of the trials and also the ways in which outcasts are the first to be scapegoated.

However, there are still characters that are driven by their sense of morality or remorse instead of mistreating the outcasts of their community.

• Both Sergeant Farrat and Proctor are motivated by their remorse to make amends. Proctor’s evasion of ‘tearing the paper’ and finding ‘his goodness’ is motivated by his desire to atone for his sin (having committed adultery with Abigail), and Sergeant regretted sending Tilly away. He, in his eulogy, says ‘if you had included [Tilly], Teddy would have always been with us’, expressing his regret for the ways outcasts are treated in Dungatar. Similarly, Teddy McSwiney also has a pure relationship with Tilly and treats her differently instead of judging her based on the rumours about her being a ‘murderess’.
• While those who can sympathise with outcasts in The Dressmaker are either outcasts themselves or are remorseful (or both), there are those in The Crucible that are purely and solely motivated by their moral uprightness. Rebecca Nurse is neither an outcast (as she is highly respected for her wisdom) nor remorseful (as she has remained kind and pure from the beginning of the play). She is always the voice of reason in the play and tries to stop authoritative figures from convicting and prosecuting outcasts. A quote you can use would be ‘I think you best send Reverend Hale back as soon as he come. This will set us all to arguin’ again in the society, and we thought to have peace this year'.

4. Sample Essay Topics

1. 'I say—I say—God is dead.' —John Proctor, The Crucible . Explore how communities respond to crisis.

2. People must conform to societal expectations in The Crucible and The Dressmaker . Do you agree?

3. Discuss how The Crucible and The Dressmaker use textual features to convey the author’s perspective.

4. Gender repression is rife in both The Crucible and The Dressmaker . Discuss.

Now it's your turn! Give these essay topics a go. If you're interested in reading a 50 study scorer's completed essays based off these 4 essay topics, along with annotations so you can understand his thinking process, then I would highly recommend checking out LSG's A Killer Comparative Guide: The Crucible & The Dressmaker.

This blog has written contributions from Lindsey Dang.

Understanding Context in The Crucible and The Dressmaker

The Crucible by Arthur Miller

The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham

Updated on 11/12/2020

• Introductions
• Themes in Ransom and The Queen
• Similarities and Differences
• Literary and Cinematic Techniques in Ransom and The Queen
• Essay Topics for Ransom and The Queen
• Resources for Ransom and The Queen

1. Introductions

Set during the Trojan War, one of the most famous events in Greek mythology, David Malouf’s historical fiction Ransom seeks to explore the overwhelming destruction caused by war , and the immense power of reconciliation . Drawing on The Iliad , the epic poem by Homer, Malouf focuses on the events of one day and night, in which King Priam of Troy travels to the enemy Greek encampment to plead with the warrior Achilles to release the body of Priam’s son, Hector. Maddened by grief at the murder of his friend Patroclus, Achilles desecrates the body of Hector as revenge. Despite Achilles’ refusal to give up Hector’s body, Priam is convinced there must be a way of reclaiming the body – of pitting new ways against the old, and forcing the hand of fate. Malouf’s fable reflects the epic themes of the Trojan War, as fatherhood , love , grief , and pride are expertly recast for our times.

To learn more, head over to our Ransom Study Guide (which covers themes, characters, and more).

Set in the weeks leading up to and after the infamous death of Princess Diana in 1997, The Queen captures the private moments of the monarchy's grief and loss , and Queen Elizabeth II's inner conflict as she attempts to keep her private and public affairs separate.

The film opens with Tony Blair's "landslide victory" in the election as the "youngest Prime Minister in almost two hundred years", preempting viewers of the "radical modernisation" that's to come as he takes the reign. Juxtaposed with Blair's introduction is the stoic Queen Elizabeth II, residing in Buckingham Palace serenaded by bagpipes, in a ritual unchanged since Queen Victoria, immediately establishing the entrenched traditional values she represents. Princess Diana’s sudden death at the hands of relentless paparazzi results in turmoil in both the lives of those in the monarchy and adoring British citizens who mourn for the loss of the “people's princess". As days ensue with no public response from the Royal Family, the British people grow in disdain towards the authority , demanding a more empathetic response. Caught between the people and the monarchy is Blair, who sees the Royal Family’s public image suffer as a result of inaction.

Despite heavy resistance from the Queen, he eventually encourages her to surrender old royal protocols and adopt a more modern approach to meet public expectation: to fly the flag at half-mast, hold a public funeral, and publicly grieve for the loss of Princess Diana – all in all, to show the people that the monarchy cares. The Queen’s decision to accept Blair’s advice ultimately reconnects her with the British people and restores the Royal Family’s reputation amongst the public.

Together, Ransom and The Queen showcase the challenges involved in leadership roles : the inner conflict that leaves these individuals torn between their private and public demands . More on this in the next section.

2. Themes in Ransom and The Queen ‍

Parenthood and leadership.

In both texts, deaths act as a catalyst for both Priam and the Queen’s personal change – Priam’s son Hector, and the Queen’s, ex-daughter-in-law, Princess Diana.

In Ransom , we learn of the familial sacrifice Priam has needed to make as a leader . His separation from loved ones is expected as he has been ‘asked to stand…at a kingly distance from the human, which in [his] kingly role…[he] can have no part in'. Up until Hector’s death, Priam has been removed from paternal experiences, a sad truth when he admits that his relationships with his children are merely ‘formal and symbolic,’ and a part of the ‘splendour and the ordeal of kingship'. Unlike his wife Hecuba, whose grief is assailed by intimate moments with her children as she recalls, ‘Troilus was very late in walking…I was in labour for eighteen hours with Hector', Priam is unable to recall these private memories . Despite what would ordinarily be experiences shared by both father and mother, Priam cannot echo his wife’s grief to the same extent as these experiences have not been ‘in his sphere’ and he is even ‘unnerved’ by them. Malouf demonstrates how Priam’s royal obligations have suffocated his role as a father, and consequentially, he has been unable to connect with his family in the way he would desire to.

While Priam’s overt expressiveness in his limitations as a father may sway empathy from Ransom readers, Queen Elizabeth’s stoicism at first makes her appear cold-hearted and unfeeling. Her reaction to Prince Charles’ desire to fly a private jet to see Diana in hospital (‘Isn’t that precisely the sort of extravagance they always attack us for?…this isn’t a matter of state.’) is one from a leader's mindset - she's more concerned of the media’s reaction, rather than offering familial care and concern. However, as the film unfolds, viewers come to understand that her stoicism doesn’t necessarily come about because of her own personal choice , but rather, because her leadership role demands it of her.

TIP: Save the words ‘stoicism’ and ‘stoic’ to use in your essay. These words describe someone who experiences suffering but doesn’t openly express it.

We see the Queen’s quiet intentions to protect her grandchildren – ‘I think the less attention one draws to [Diana’s death], the better…for the boys’ – yet her silence is the inadvertent cause of public scorn. As such, Frears doesn’t make a villain out of the Queen, someone who on the outside may seem unfeeling and apathetic, but encourages viewers to see her from a unique perspective – a woman who struggles to manage her identity in both the private and public light.

It is only when Priam and the Queen detach themselves from their traditional roles that we see a change for the better in both of their personal journeys. Priam’s removal of his ‘jewelled amulet [and] golden armbands’ is symbolic of his shedding of the royal weight, and paving way for his step into a paternal role. Likewise, the Queen’s physical distancing from Buckingham Palace, an iconic symbol for tradition , into the public sphere where she mingles with the British people enables her to finally play the role of a grandmother. Both texts show how parenthood can lead to a more enriched human experience. Malouf finally portrays Priam as a happy man when he has the vision to be remembered in his legacy for his role as a father first, then as a king. Likewise in The Queen, her highness’ public mourning connects her with her people , and brings her joy and delight at last.

Tradition, Change, and the New

Both texts explore the challenging tug and pull between upholding traditions and making way for the new.

As humans, we cherish traditions because they are customs or beliefs that have been passed on from generation to generation. They have sentimental value, and by continuing on these traditions, our actions show that we respect the path our elders have laid for us. Tradition is not necessarily depicted in a negative light in either texts, but rather, shown to have its place. The Queen’s resistance against sailing the flag at half mast is out of deference for her elders. Even Somax’s casual storytelling about his daughter-in-law’s griddlecakes is customary, as each time his son would ‘set up the stones’ and her ‘quick and light…flipping’ of the cakes. However, Frears and Malouf both assert that adaptability in upholding tradition is also needed in order for us to grow and develop as humans.  

The new is not depicted as an experience one should fear, but rather, an experience one should approach with curiosity . As Malouf writes, ‘[Priam] saw that what was new could also be pleasurable'. The following positive expressions from the king ‘chuckling’ and ‘smiling’ echo the sentiment that while humans naturally resist change, embracing it is often beneficial to our lives. To be meta, Ransom is the retelling of the Trojan events, but Malouf adds to this tradition with a fresh perspective on the story.

Frears and Malouf both demonstrate that change is often propelled into possibility through the support and urging of others . Priam’s vision for his journey is instilled by the goddess Iris, who comes to him in a dream. His consequential journey is supported by Somax, whose ordinary everyday experiences teach Priam more about fatherhood than he had learnt as a father himself. Meanwhile, Achilles drags Hector’s body day after day, with no intention of change until Priam suddenly appears in his camp. Both texts highlight the influence those surrounding us can have on our personal change.

3. Similarities and Differences

At LSG, we use the CONVERGENT and DIVERGENT strategy to help us easily find points of similarity and difference. This is particularly important when it comes to essay writing, because you want to know that you're coming up with unique comparative points (compared to the rest of the Victorian cohort!). I don't discuss this strategy in detail here, but if you're interested, it's worth checking out my How To Write A Killer Comparative ebook to see how you can really set yourself apart and ace Comparative writing. I use this strategy throughout my discussion of themes above and techniques in the next section. To help you get started, here are some questions to get you thinking about the similarities and differences between the two texts:

• Public vs. Private Spheres: how is public vs. private life portrayed in either texts?
• Stories and Storytelling: who tells the story in either texts? Is there power in storytelling? Why do humans share stories?
• Grief, Death, and Loss: How do humans deal with death? What emotions do we experience?

4. Literary and Cinematic Techniques in Ransom and The Queen

Opening portrayals of queen elizabeth and priam.

When Charles consoles Prince William and Harry after informing them of their mother’s death, Queen Elizabeth peers inwards from outside the room, distant and removed from her family. The enclosed frame of the door only serves to heighten her isolation from her family as she is pained by the ‘unrestrained intimacy and affection’ between the boys and their father, something she is unable to partake in. Her face half-covered by the shadows stresses how her familial experience only occurs from afar as she prioritises her role as her highness. Internal change, at least at this point in the film, has yet to begin.

Meanwhile in Ransom , Priam’s journey of personal change is established immediately as he realises that he needs to move beyond this ‘brief six feet of earth he moves and breathes in'. The finite space he has become accustomed to now almost represents (and this may be an intense interpretation) a jail cell in which he as a father, as a human being, has been incarcerated in. He is ready to pursue a new identity beyond just that as a king. Both Ransom and The Queen showcase the sacrifices made by both leaders, and the rigid, almost-dehumanising expectations that are set upon them when they take reign. Both texts encourage their audience to empathise with the leaders , for the challenges they face in their unique positions.

The Queen Film Techniques

I created an in-depth video on the first 20 or so minutes of The Queen you'd might find helpful. Have a watch and see whether you missed out on any film techniques:

[Video Transcription]

To begin with, we have this quote that is displayed at the very start of the film, and it says,

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,"

and it's spoken by Henry IV Part II. So, the Part II gives me an indication that this is a quote from some way in Shakespeare's texts. If I then go on Google and actually have a look and type up this quote, then I know for sure that it is indeed from Henry IV Part II, a text and play that was written by William Shakespeare. So, I'm telling you these things because this is actually how I would go on to learn information about the film. I don't just automatically know for sure that it is from this particular text that Shakespeare wrote up. So, I want to ensure that I'm right by going and having a look at Google.

Quotes at the start of any film, at the start of any book, usually have importance to them and they usually should give you an insight as to what's to come. And, for me, I find when I look at this particular quote, it definitely links to the themes of leadership, of motherhood, parenthood, and of perhaps the sacrifices that the queen has needed to make in order to lead her nation. So, with this particular quote, I would write it down somewhere and keep it in mind as you're watching the remainder of the film, because you'll see those themes come to life and have a better understanding of what this quote is talking about.

So, immediately, this film opens up with a news presenter talking about Tony Blair going to the election polls. It's displayed as footage on a TV screen. This gives us insight into a couple of different things. Firstly, it gives us context. The second thing is that it's displayed on a TV and it's broadcasted by a news channel. And, as you probably know, the media, the paparazzi, and just the entire culture of representing news during this time is something that will be heavily explored throughout this film. Especially because it may or may not have led to the death of Princess Diana.

So, again, contextually, it gives us an idea that around this time, the news media was quite overwhelming and omnipresent, which means that it was sort of just everywhere. It was always around. It's sort of no different from today, but there's a reason why they establish it as an opening shot. And that's just sort of give us as viewers an understanding that the news has a big play in what's going to happen in the remainder of this film.

So, I really liked the quote,

"We're in danger of losing too much that is good about this country, as it is,"

that's spoken by the painter, who's drawing a portrait of the queen. This, again, sort of establishes that idea of change immediately at the beginning of the film, or should I say, resistance to change. So, it's already sort of outlining the path that this film is about to take.

Again, I really like this quote,

"The sheer joy of being partial."

So, from the onset with the queen, I think it's important to understand that we don't villainise her, or at least the director doesn't villainise her. He portrays her as a human being, as somebody who is in this position of the queen, which has a lot of weight upon it. And you can tell that she's all glammed up and she's fulfilling her role as the queen, but she's admitting that she envies us as everyday citizens being able to vote, to be able to have an opinion, and just go to the booths. To me, this establishes her as somebody who I empathise with, or sympathise with even.

I think this part with the music in the background and how the queen breaks the fourth wall. So, the fourth wall is basically when any character inside a film actually looks directly at the camera, at you, as the audience. And, to me, this gives me a sense of joy. It makes me feel like it's quite funny, the way that she's looking at us, especially with the...and again, this sort of reiterates my idea that we're not supposed to look at the queen as some evil or some cold-hearted person who is unfeeling for Diana's death later on, but that she's just like one of us and she can participate in a joke and we come to see this in a little bit.

So, in the next scene, we have a wide shot of Buckingham Palace, and in the background, you can hear bagpipes playing. This is something called diegetic sound. Diegetic sound is when you have sounds that come directly from the world in the film. So, the bagpipes sort of establish this sense of tradition. Everything in the scene represents tradition. Buckingham, Palace, the flag, the bagpipes, and that as an early shot of this film sort of shows us the entrenched tradition that exists. That nothing has changed as of yet, and things as sort of going on as they've always had.

Again, Frears is trying to show us the human side of the queen. And so that's why we've got the shot of her waking up in bed. She's all cuddled up and snuggled up in warm and comfy bedding. And it shows that she's vulnerable, in a way. And this is important for us as viewers, as we come to understand her inner thoughts and feelings later on.

So, immediately when the queen wakes up, she has a pile of newspapers in front of her. That adds, again, to that sense of omnipresent media. It's all around us, at least in that period of time.

This time, we have archival footage. So, archival footage is footage that has been taken from that period of time and placed into this film. It adds to the film's sense of authenticity, the fact that it's based off historical offense.

I really like this shot as the queen and Robin walking down the hallway to meet Tony Blair. This is a great snapshot and a great mise-en-scene. And mise-en-scenes, basically, to me anyway, it's when you pause the screen and it's everything that's inside that shot from props, in the foreground, in the background, what the person is wearing, or what the characters are wearing. So, with this particular art, we can not only see the two characters, but we can also see everything that's in the background.

And again, this really adds that sense of tradition because you've got all these paintings from probably famous people back in the day, or ancestors of the monarchy, and then you've got Robin saying he's promising a constitutional shake up, the first one in 300 years, and the queen saying, "Oh, you mean he's going to try and modernise us?" This is a great juxtaposition between the new coming in versus the old.

When Robin makes the joke about Tony Blair's wife having a curtsy that's described as shallow, it's humorous, it's funny, and the queen laughs as a result. The humor that's speckled throughout this film, I think really helps to lighten up the situation, but also to again, show us that the queen is human and that she can enjoy a joke.

I think this is a great snapshot as well. So, we've got the camera looking down at Tony Blair and his wife. When a camera does look down at an object or character, it gives us, as the audience, a sense that that person or character is inferior or they're not in a position of control. And it ties in with the fact that this is Tony Blair's first day in Buckingham Palace as a prime minister and he's only just onboarding the role.

So, in terms of him versus the queen or the monarchy, which is symbolised by everything around him, the setting that he is encompassed in, it shows that he really isn't the one who's playing the field here. He's not the one who is in charge. I love that we've got one of the queen's men giving them rules on what they need to do.

So, we're slowly walking up the stairs towards the queen who is in position of power. So, the staircase is quite symbolic.

Another important thing to know is that Mrs. Blair is actually accompanying the prime minister this first time round that he goes to Buckingham Palace. It shows that he is nervous, he said it himself, but he's not entirely comfortable with his role yet. So he needs the support of his wife. This is in comparison with later in the film at the very end, actually, where Tony Blair goes to Buckingham Palace himself and conducts a meeting with the queen, very similar to the one that he's doing now.

This shot where we've got Mrs. Blair sitting opposite the guard at quite a distance adds to the sense of awkwardness, and it's paralleled with the sense of openness between the queen and the prime minister as well. So, it shows that we've got the old and the new sort of coming together and sort of not really gelling.

Something to keep an eye on is parallels in the film. It's always a really good idea to compare the start and end of this particular film, because we've got such similar scenarios in meaning at the start of the film and in meaning at the end of the film. What you'll notice in this particular scene is that they don't appear in the same shot. They sit opposite one another and one shot on Tony Blair, one shot on the queen, and it sort of goes back and forth. And that's to heighten that sense of distance between them. That sense of unfamiliarity. This is in comparison with the end of the film when we see the two of them walking down the hallway together, out into the garden as equal.

Here's another great shot. So, to add on the idea of the queen having more power versus prime minister, it's quite clear here as he sits down and asks for her hand.

I love the way that Mrs. Blair walks. She's sort of like half...I don't know how you would explain her stride, but it's obviously not one that is aligned with how the queen walks, which is quite poised and quite together. Rather, Mrs. Blair's walk is sort of frumpy, it's sort of bouncy, and her arms are sort of flailing around a little bit, and so adds to that sense of new, of change, of difference. And so that adds to the story of Tony Blair and his family and what he represents as something new and different and probably unwelcome for the queen.

So, that's it, that's my analysis of the first 10 minutes or so of this film. If you're interested in a more detailed film technique analysis, I've just written a killer comparative based on Ransom & The Queen. In this, I show you film techniques that I pick out throughout watching the film, how to analyze them, and also then go on to show you how they are used in A-plus essays. I'm so confident that this study guide will be able to help you improve your understanding of both texts and get you towards that A+ for your SAC and exams.

If you're curious about what's inside the study guide and want to see if it's right for you, head on over and read a free sample to see it for yourself. I hope it gives you something to launch off. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the description box below. I have plenty of resources for you guys down there as well if you needed help for your SAC and exams and I'll catch you guys next time. Bye.

Historical Footage and Context

Based on historical events, The Queen is interspersed with real archive television footage leading to, and following Princess Diana’s death. Frears incorporates these clips to help provide viewers insight on the politics, media culture, and public reaction in 1997.

Princess Diana’s introduction through archival clips at the beginning of the film highlight her as a vulnerable individual at the mercy of oppressive and intrusive tabloid newspapers. The sweeping pan of paparazzi on the night of Diana’s death serves to emphasise the obsessive media, who at the time, were paid in excess of one million pounds for taking photos of her. Moments of her kissing on a boat are revealed to the world without any respect for her privacy. This archival footage helps viewers understand the distressing omnipresence of the media, and the turn of the public against the paparazzi and media following Diana’s death.

Likewise, Malouf uses parts of The Iliad as foundations for his novel. The original tale, written during the 8th century BC, explores in detail Achilles’  refusal to fight for his leader Agamemnon, Patroclus’ role in the war, and also the disputes between the gods as they argue over the fate of mortals. By offering a retrospective of this historical story, Malouf invites readers to better understand the Trojan War and Greek mythology, and the impact the gods had on Trojans and Greeks.

For more discussion on literary and cinematic techniques, have a look at my A Killer Comparative Guide: Ransom & The Queen . In this in-depth study guide, Angelina Xu (ATAR 99.6, 46 English study score) and I also break down 5 essay topics, providing you explanations on how to brainstorm and plan each of these essays, then convert these plans into A+ essays complete with annotations! I've dropped some sample essay topics below for you to try at home yourselves:

5. Essay Topics for Ransom and The Queen

"I told him he shouldn't change a thing." ( The Queen ) Compare how Ransom and The Queen explore resistance to change.

Compare the ways the two texts explore the efficacy of different leadership types.

Compare the ways the two texts explore the importance of storytelling.

'Wordless but not silent.’  ( Ransom ) Ransom and The Queen explore how silence can be louder than words.

"Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.” ( The Queen ) “...the lighter role of being a man.” ( Ransom). Compare how the two texts show the burden experienced by those in leadership positions.

‍ 6. Resources for Ransom and The Queen

Ransom Study Guide

[Video] Ransom Themes (Revenge, Grief, Forgiveness) and Essay Topic Tips!

The following resources are no longer on the study design; however, you might still pick up a few valuable tips nonetheless:

Ransom and Invictus

Ransom and Invictus Prompts

[Video] Invictus and Ransom | Reading and Comparing

[Video] Ransom Literary Devices & Invictus Film Technique Comparison

• Plot Summaries
• Textual Features Analysis
• Themes (Convergent and Divergent Strategy)
• LSG’s Bubble Tea (BBT) Strategy for Unique Strategies
• Sample Essay Questions

Essay Topic Breakdown

For a detailed guide on Comparative, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Comparative.

1. Plot Summaries

In Stasiland , Anna Funder, the author and first-person narrator , meets and listens to the ordinary people of East Germany : those who resisted the GDR dictatorship, those who were crushed by it, and those who diligently and remorselessly worked for it as Stasi informants or officers. As Anna speaks with those whose lives have been traumatised by the Stasi, she reflects on how the reunified Germany has dealt with (or ignored) its citizens' trauma and whether memory can be reconciled . Anna is an Australian working for a television station in Berlin in 1996. As an outsider Anna is uniquely positioned to ask East Germans about their experiences , as they do not have to battle with prior knowledge and experience to share their stories. She is interested in the former German Democratic Republic and what has happened to the East German people since the country reunified with West Germany. She became curious after learning that there are people putting together documents that were shredded by the Stasi.

Anna travels to Leipzig and visits the former headquarters of East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi, which is now a museum. The Stasi were the East German secret police and internal surveillance and defense force . Headed by Erich Mielke, they conducted surveillance on the East German population, aided by a vast number of civilian informants. While in Leipzig, Anna meets with a woman called Miriam Weber, who attempted to sneak out of East Germany when she was just a teenager. Miriam, sleep deprived and tortured, lied about receiving help from an organisation to cross the Wall and was sentenced to jail time. Her husband Charlie was also imprisoned by the Stasi and died while in custody. Miriam was told he committed suicide by hanging, but she suspects he was killed after the Stasi refused to show her his body and went to great lengths to hide Charlie during the funeral.

Returning to the apartment she rents in Berlin, Anna puts an advertisement in the paper calling for former Stasi agents and informers to share their stories with her. She meets with several ex-Stasi men, including Herr Winz, Herr Christian, Herr Bohnsack and Hagen Koch. She also visits and speaks to Karl-Eduard von Schitzler, a hateful man who hosted a propaganda-filled television program that criticised West Germany and gave false information about Communist success. In their discussions the former Stasi agents are concerned with justifying their involvement with the Stasi, although many also remain committed to communist ideals and await with anticipation the next revolution and restoration of the communist government.

Anna rents her apartment from an unpredictable and evasive young woman called Julia. Over time, Julia comes to trust Anna and shares her story of the Stasi cruelly interfering with her life. Anna also speaks with her rock musician friend Klaus Renft – East Germany’s Mick Jagger, and a woman named Frau Paul who was separated overnight from her sick infant son when the Berlin Wall went up and was later imprisoned for inflated charges of assisting people to escape East Germany.

After Anna’s mother is diagnosed with cancer, she goes home to Australia for 3 years, returning to Berlin to meet with some of the people she spoke with during her earlier stay, including Hagen Koch and Miriam. She also finally visits the ‘puzzlers’ in Nuremberg, whose story first sparked her interest in investigating the lives of East Germans affected by the Stasi. Anna is disappointed in the puzzlers, realising that their work is futile and there is no real effort put towards uncovering the lost information.

Almost all East Germans were left reeling at the sudden collapse of their government. For many, the collapse of the GDR took with it ideological security and made them nostalgic for the past. For others, being confronted with the level of the Stasi’s intrusion into their lives was deeply traumatic, as people realised they had been grievously betrayed by their fellow citizens, neighbours and even family members. The nostalgia for the regime that Funder witnesses shows how people cling to certainty and position and sometimes struggle with new freedoms. However, having spoken with so many individuals whose lives were ruined by the Stasi, Anna feels that the old regime was oppressive and authoritarian, and that the East Germans are better off with the challenges of their freedom, rather than stuck with the certainties of their oppression.

Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go is set in a dystopian alternative reality in England in the 1990s. The narrator, Kathy H, is a thirty-one-year-old 'carer' – a clone who looks after other clones who are donating their organs. Kathy is about to retire after a long career as a carer to become a donor herself, meaning she will soon 'complete' ( a euphemism for dying ). However, this premise is not immediately apparent to the reader . At the start of the novel, Kathy informs us she will be leaving her role as carer in a few months and has started to write down memories of her life, sorting through her time as a 'student' at Hailsham. However, at the start of the novel the reader is not aware that Kathy is a clone, although she appears to be addressing an insider from her world.

In the first third of the novel Kathy reflects on her childhood and teenage years at Hailsham . Hailsham is an institution where clones are looked after by 'guardians' and referred to as 'students', and which at first appears to be a private boarding school with a heavy focus on the arts and creativity. Their best works of painting, pottery, drawing or poetry were selected and taken away by a woman known as 'Madame', for what the students presume, and what is later confirmed to be, a gallery. The students know they are different from their guardians and the people who live outside Hailsham, referred to as 'normals', but the truth of what the clones are and their certain fate is not fully articulated until the characters are adults.

Kathy is close friends with a confident and controlling girl called Ruth and a boy named Tommy, whose work is never selected for the Gallery – an acknowledgement that defines status at the school. Tommy, teased and excluded, struggles to control his temper and often explodes into furies of rage. The students collect items and other students’ artwork for their own memory boxes , bought or traded at the school’s Exchanges and Sales. Kathy buys a cassette tape by a woman named Judy Bridgewater that contains a song called ‘Never Let Me Go’. This song makes Kathy emotional, and one day she is caught dancing to it by Madame, who Kathy is surprised to see is in tears watching her. Kathy presumes Madame is upset because she knows Kathy can never have children.

Ruth and Tommy start dating and Part Two sees the three friends reach early adulthood and move to a place known as the Cottages, to live with other clones from around the country and experience some freedom before beginning their donations or training to become a carer. When Rodney, another Cottage resident, believes he saw Ruth’s 'possible' – an original that one of the clones was modelled off – the three friends along with Rodney and his girlfriend Chrissie, take a trip to Norfolk to find her. Norfolk exists in the imagination of the Hailsham students as a 'lost corner', where things they have lost will be found. While the 'possible' is not Ruth’s original, Kathy and Tommy find a copy of the Judy Bridgewater tape that Kathy had lost. Ruth was secretly desperate to find her possible and hoped to find her working in an office. Ruth dreams of working in an office and her wish that her possible will be an office worker is one of the only suggestions we have that the clones secretly long for more from their lives and view their possibles as versions of them and what they are capable of. Back at the Cottages, Ruth continues to be manipulative and self-promoting, leading to a falling out with Kathy where she decides to leave early to begin training as a carer and falls out of contact with Ruth and Tommy.

Part Three encompasses Kathy’s time as a carer. Years after the time at the Cottages, Kathy organises to be Ruth’s carer and Ruth reconnects Kathy and Tommy, admitting she knew they loved each other and deliberately kept them apart. She hopes they will attempt to get a deferral from Madame. After Ruth 'completes', Kathy and Tommy finally become a couple. They visit Madame to ask for a deferral, who informs them there is no such thing. They learn from Madame that Hailsham was an attempt to reform the treatment of clones in their youth by proving they had souls . In most centers, clones are reared in deplorable, abusive conditions. They also learn that Hailsham had to be shut down. The normals became too uncomfortable with the reality of the clones’ souls but were not prepared to lose their organ supply. Never Let Me Go is a story about injustice and social stratification, where one group is made to suffer for the benefit of another. The 'normals' can deny their mortality while forcing the clones to confront their death sooner than their natural life span , and by shutting down schools like Hailsham, they do not need to think about the ethics of their choices.

Tommy dies and Kathy resigns herself to her fate as a donor. At the end of the novel, Kathy misses Tommy and Ruth, but consoles herself that she will always have her memories with her . Ishiguro explores the extent to which people accept their predetermined fate and how they can find meaning and love within those often-cruel limitations. 

2. Textual Features Analysis

A textual feature is a component of the text used by authors to give meaning to their work. It is necessary to engage with the actual construction of the texts and to discuss textual features using metalanguage (terms that describe and analyse language). To write a thorough and thoughtful essay, you need to understand the textual features and how they are connected to overall thematic ideas. Structural features and metalanguage can be used as evidence of authorial intent and deepen our understanding of how writers use literary techniques to develop ideas and create meaning. Let’s take a look at Genre . 

Stasiland is an example of creative nonfiction, meaning it tells a story of factual events and real people using literary and poetic techniques. The word ‘creative’ doesn’t give authors permission to exaggerate or dramatise the truth, instead this genre is one of factually accurate prose about real people and events that is told in a vivid and compelling way.

The reason Stasiland is classified as creative nonfiction and not under the genre of memoir is because although the events follow Anna Funder’s experiences in Berlin, they are not predominantly about her. A memoir is the writer’s own personal journey and life, whereas creative nonfiction generally has more public relevance and commentary. In Stasiland , Funder’s experiences in Berlin structure the chronology of the narrative but take a thematic backseat to the stories of the East Germans she meets and the historical events she relays . 

Never Let Me Go has elements of multiple genres: dystopian fiction, speculative historical fiction, science fiction and bildungsroman.

‘Dystopia’ means the opposite of ‘utopia’, but you’ll notice that most dystopian novels are set in societies where the ruling classes believe they are in a utopia. This is true of Never Let Me Go , as the clones pay with their lives and freedom for the utopian elimination of disease and extended life spans of the 'normals '. However, while clearly set in a horrific dystopian world, Never Let Me Go notably differs from other novels in the dystopian genre, as the oppressed clones never once consider rebelling against the status quo – the most Kathy and Tommy hope for is an extension before beginning their donations and 'completing'. Ishiguro has stated in multiple interviews that he was most interested in exploring why oppressed persons never consider rebelling against their fate – what leads them to passive acceptance of their position in society?  

In his exploration of this question, Ishiguro explores the development and growing up of Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy, trying to understand why they all submit without protest to their fate . In this sense the novel is a bildungsroman. Bildungsroman is a genre concerned with the psychological and moral development of a protagonist from childhood to adulthood, focusing on a person’s formation or coming of age. Never Let Me Go follows Kathy, Ruth and Tommy throughout their childhood and adolescence at Hailsham, their experience of limited freedom at the Cottages as young adults, and finally the reality of their short adult life as organ donors.

Of course, Never Let Me Go also fits into the category of speculative historical fiction and science fiction. The novel is set in an alternate historical reality where genetic science rapidly advanced after World War Two (significantly outstripping the real-world) and clones have been used to extend life in the UK for decades. However, Ishiguro does not give much narrative weight to describing the political reality of his fictional world , and neither does he offer much scientific explanation for the existence of clones. As we’ve already discussed, Ishiguro was vastly more interested in using these scientific and political circumstances to create conditions within which to explore characters and, by extension, human nature, so Never Let Me Go fits uneasily in these genres. 

3. Themes (Convergent and Divergent Strategy)

Now that we’ve looked closely at both Stasiland and Never Let Me Go , it’s time to discuss in depth the key themes and ideas. Themes are the big ideas about human experience that a text explores, and form part of the message the author is hoping to communicate. A sound knowledge of key themes is essential for developing a thoughtful essay. All essay topics will ask you to explore thematic ideas in one way or another. If you have a strong understanding of both texts’ themes and how they are communicated, you will be able to generate arguments for any essay topic with confidence.

I’ll be adhering to the CONVERGENT and DIVERGENT strategy. This guide doesn’t go into too much detail about using LSG’s CONVERGENT and DIVERGENT strategy, so perhaps familiarise yourself with it by reading How to Write a Killer Comparative . 

Convergent Idea: The Importance of the Act of Remembering

Both Stasiland and Never Let Me Go illustrate the importance of remembering through the very construction of the text: in the narrative voice and narrative structure. Both narrators are looking into the past to try to make sense of history. For Kathy, this is a personal history whereas for Funder it is an act of witnessing a nation’s past and elevating the voices of the victims.

Stasiland is a compilation of the stories of all kinds of people involved and impacted by the GDR , including those who rebelled against the system, those who supported it and those crushed by it. Thus, ‘both sides’ of history are represented. Funder said in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald after the publication of Stasiland that, 'When [Germans] read my book, people in the East are not proud of themselves. They'd rather not be reminded that other people were braver than they were. So there is a huge force to pretend that the Stasi regime was not as bad as it was.' This desire to forget the past so as to ignore confronting the terrible and terrifying truths contained within it is what Funder is working against by writing Stasiland . At one point in the text, she explicitly states what she’s doing: 

'I’m making portraits of people, East Germans, of whom there will be none left in a generation. And I’m painting a picture of a city on the old fault-line of east and west. This is working against forgetting, and against time' ( Stasiland , 147).

Julia explains the importance of these portraits, telling Anna 'For anyone to understand a regime like the GDR, the stories of ordinary people must be told. …You have to look at how normal people manage with such things in their pasts' (144). These 'things in their pasts' are not just trauma and hardship, but the knowledge that people just like them – their spouses, children, friends and neighbours – were capable of such cowardice, betrayal, self-interest and cruelty. It is this knowledge that Funder wants to preserve – that ordinary people are capable of both extraordinary courage and extraordinary cowardice .

Anna comes across a sobbing man 'I don’t want to be German anymore!...We are terrible…They are terrible. The Germans are terrible' ( Stasiland , 253-4). Anna reflects that East Germans were 'long used to thinking the bad Germans were on the other side of the Wall' and now he is forced to ask 'were his people, now broke or drunk, shamed or fled or imprisoned or dead, any good at all?' ( Stasiland , 254).

Although Kathy’s narration is entirely from her perspective , her act of remembering is also in many ways a political statement that forces us to consider the inhumanity people are capable of .

Kathy recollects and structures her memories of her childhood and relationships to understand them as a unified whole, essentially establishing her identity . More importantly, it is evident in phrases such as 'I don’t know how it was where you were, but at Hailsham…' ( NLMG , 13) and 'I’m sure you’ve heard it said plenty more' ( NLMG , 4) that Kathy is positing a reader for her writing. Assuming a reader places her autobiography in a social framework with the purpose of communicating her life , which turns it into a historical account that exists beyond the limit of her death. Kathy’s attempt to leave a legacy by writing down her experiences and structuring her identity is an act of protest against a society that believes she is sub-human , without feelings or motivations, and that her life meant nothing.

Divergent Idea: The Role and Value of Nostalgia

The way memory can be distorted is particularly clear in relation to the idea of nostalgia for a brutal past. This idea is explored differently in Stasiland and Never Let Me Go , with Funder condemning nostalgia as blinding people to the horrors of the past, and Ishiguro illustrating how drawing comfort from the past can help people through difficult times .

In Stasiland , many disaffected former East Germans tell Anna that things were 'so much better before' ( Stasiland , 251) the country’s reunification. Anna reflects: 

'I don’t doubt this genuine nostalgia, but I think it has coloured a cheap and nasty world golden; a world where they was nothing to buy, nowhere to go and anyone who wanted to do anything with their lives other than serve the Party risked persecution, or worse' ( Stasiland , 251-2).

Similarly, while working at the radio station on Ostalgie parties ( Ostalgie is nostalgia for life in Communist East Germany), Miriam observes 'a crazy nostalgia for the GDR – as if it had been a harmless welfare state that looked after people’s needs. Most of the people at these parties are too young to remember the GDR anyway. They are just looking for something to yearn for' ( Stasiland , 275). Funder is critical of nostalgia because it minimises past injustice .

Conversely, in Never Let Me Go , nostalgia and false memories are shown to be consolatory and even useful. Before Kathy begins to recount her childhood, she mentions a donor who was once under her care who 'knew he was close to completing' ( NLMG , 5). He asks Kathy to share memories of her childhood and 'What he wanted was not just to hear about Hailsham, but to remember Hailsham, just like it had been his own childhood. …so the line would blur between what were my memories and his' ( NLMG , 5). Although this man is falsifying his memories, he is not editing and revising history like some people in east Berlin , he is replacing them entirely to suppress the trauma of his own past. He is not yearning for a return to an idealised past the way some people in Stasiland do. For Kathy, nostalgia for her childhood helps her reconnect with her friends, creating a sense of belonging and identity. Her attachment to Hailsham strengthens her worldview, her relational bonds and gives meaning to her life. Nostalgic memory in Never Let Me Go brings comfort, although you could argue that it also fosters passivity and acceptance in the face of oppression .

4. LSG’s Bubble Tea (BBT) Strategy for Unique Strategies

Why is an interpretation important.

Your interpretation is what English is all about; it’s about getting you to think critically about the essay topic at hand, to formulate a contention (agree, disagree, or sit on the fence) and argue each of your points with the best pieces of evidence you can find - and it’s something you might already be starting to do naturally.

In this section, we aim to help you develop your own interpretation of the text, rather than relying on your teacher, tutor or even a study guide (including this one) author’s interpretation. By developing your own interpretation, you become a better English student by:

• Writing with meaning. For a text to be interpreted, you need a text and an interpreter (i.e. you!). Whenever we read a new text, our interpretation of a text is shaped by our pre-existing beliefs, knowledge and expectations. This should be reassuring because it means that you can leverage your own life experiences in developing a unique interpretation of the text! We’ll show you how this works in the next point.
• Remembering evidence (quotes or literary devices) more easily. If you know you admire a character for example (which is in itself an interpretation 😉), you can probably remember why you admire them. Perhaps the character’s selflessness reminds you of your Dad (see how you’re using real life experiences mentioned in Point 1 to develop an interpretation of the text?). You will then more easily recall something the character said or did in the text (i.e. evidence) that made you admire them.
• Having an analysis ready to use alongside the evidence. As a result of Point 2 , you’ll be able to write a few sentences based on your own interpretation. Rather than memorising entire essays ( we’ve talked about this before ) and regurgitating information from teachers, tutors, study guides and other resources - which can be labour intensive and actually detract from the originality of your essay - you’re approaching the essay with your own thoughts and opinions (which you can reuse over and over again across different essay topics).

Let’s look on the flip side. What happens when you don’t have your own interpretation?

When you don’t take the time to actively think for yourself - i.e. to think through your own interpretations (we’ve talked about the importance of THINK in the THINK and EXECUTE strategy here ) - when it finally comes to writing an essay, you may find it difficult:

a) to get started - formulating a contention in response to the essay topic is challenging because you have no strong opinion about the text ,

b) complete the essay - writing up arguments and using evidence in paragraphs becomes challenging because you have no strong opinion about the text ,

c) to score higher marks - ultimately, you end up regurgitating other people’s ideas (your teacher’s, tutor’s or from study guides) because you have (you guessed it) no strong opinion on the text .

Having your own interpretation means that you’ll eliminate issues a, b and c from above. Overall, you’ll have opinions (and therefore contentions) ready for any prompt when you go into your SACs or exams, which means it’ll be easier not only to write a full essay, but an original and insightful one as well.

To overcome the issues above, you need to be confident with your own interpretation of the text. This doesn’t come naturally to a lot of students, and it makes sense why. After all, so many subjects reward specific answers (2 + 2 = 4), whereas English is tricky because there’s so much more flexibility in what constitutes a ‘correct answer’. It’s scary treading the sea of different possible interpretations because you’ll ask yourself questions like:

• How do I know if my interpretation is correct?
• How do I know if my evidence actually backs up what I’m arguing?
• What if I disagree with my teacher, and they mark me down for a differing opinion?
• Or worse - I’m not smart enough to come up with my own interpretation!

Let me say that you are absolutely smart enough to develop your own interpretation, and I’ll show you how to do so in A Killer Comparative Guide: Stasiland & Never Let Me Go with LSG’s unique strategy - the BUBBLE TEA (BBT) strategy . By following our step-by-step framework, you can be confident that your interpretation is valid, that it backs up your argument, and that most importantly, you won’t lose marks for it!

 5. Sample Essay Questions

1. ‘To conform is to be safe and to survive.’ Compare how this idea is examined in both texts.

2. 'The earlier years…blur into each other as a kind of golden time' ( Never Let Me Go ) 'I don’t doubt this genuine nostalgia, but I think it has coloured a cheap and nasty world golden.' ( Stasiland ) Compare what the two texts say about the dangers of willful ignorance.

3. 'For Miriam, the past stopped when Charlie died.' ( Stasiland ) '…I’d see it was Tommy, and he’d wave, maybe even call…and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn’t sobbing…I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be.' ( Never Let Me Go ) What role do love and relationships play in helping people withstand persecution?

4. ‘It is impossible to be free when you are unaware of your confines.’ Compare how the two texts explore freedom and confinement.

4. ‘The past is always harder to access than we think’. Compare the ways in which Stasiland and Never Let Me Go depict the difficulties in uncovering the past.

As with all our essay topic breakdowns, we'll follow LSG's THINK and EXECUTE strategy , as taught in our How To Write A Killer Text Response study guide. The LSG's THINK and EXECUTE strategy follows three steps in the THINK phase - A nalyse, B rainstorm, and C reate a Plan. Learn more about this technique in this video:

'To remember or forget? Which is healthier? To demolish it or fence it off? To dig it up, or leave it to lie in the ground?' ( Stasiland ). 'What he wanted was not just to hear about Hailsham, but to remember Hailsham, just like it had been his own childhood' ( Never Let Me Go ). How does memory inform identity in Stasiland and Never Let Me Go ?

This quote-based prompt is constructed a bit like a theme-based prompt as it directs us to talk about memory’s role in forming identity. However, the quotes act as an additional hint in terms of what else we’re supposed to discuss. We need to identify where these quotes come from in the texts and why they might be significant. The Stasiland quote (from p. 52) comes from the question of what the nation should do with Hitler’s bunker. In the end the only decision was indecision, the mayor buried the bunker and hoped that people in 50 years might know what to do with it. Thus, this quote points to the difficulty countries have in creating a national identity when there is horror and trauma in their history. The Never Let Me Go quote (from p. 5) points towards an ill donor’s recreation of his identity using someone else’s memories. Therefore, this quote points to how memories, even false ones, can reconstruct individual identity.

Step 2: Brainstorm

Because of the direction of the two quotes, I am going to explore memory’s role in forming individual and group identity.

Individual identity:

• Kathy and Julia develop greater self-insight through sharing their memories in a structured, logical narrative.
• Kathy and Herr Koch fear that the loss of the physical presence of Hailsham and the Berlin Wall will undermine the significance of their memories of these places, which form a substantial part of their pasts and identities. They therefore pay much more attention to preserving their memories of these places to affirm their identity.

Group identity:

• East Germany’s rewriting and erasure of history meant that they no longer identified as the same Germans responsible for Hitler’s regime.
• The episode in which a distressed man sobs 'I don’t want to be German anymore!' reveals how difficult memories can generate confusion and internal conflict over an individual’s perception of their national identity.
• In NLMG , the country’s determined forgetting of the circumstances of the clones allows them to preserve their own interests and maintain an uncomplicated, guilt-free, but false, innocent national identity.

P1: Both texts show that the degree to which one’s memories have been investigated and illuminated impacts how well they understand their identity.

• Compare Kathy and Julia and the way they reconstruct their understanding of their identity by reflecting on their memories with the new information offered by hindsight.
• Conversely, the ill donor that Kathy cares for at the beginning of the novel sought to purposefully suppress his own identity by replacing his memories. This speaks to the same idea that memories can evolve and shape identity but shows how that can be misaligned with reality and truth (note: this discussion of the donor is your opportunity to use the quote from the prompt, which is a requirement of a quote-based topic).

P2: Sometimes people hold on tightly to particular memories as a way to affirm their identity as losing those memories is akin to erasing or denying the legitimacy of their experiences.

• Compare Hagen Koch’s obsession with the Berlin Wall and Kathy’s preoccupation with Hailsham.

P3: Choosing what gets remembered or forgotten in a nation’s ‘official history’ drastically impacts how their national identity is perceived and how well that identity aligns with reality.

• 'History was so quickly remade, and so successfully, that it can truly be said that the easterners did not feel then, and do not feel now, that they were the same Germans as those responsible for Hitler’s regime'
• 'I don’t want to be German anymore!'
• 'To remember or forget? Which is healthier?'
• 'The world didn’t want to be reminded how the donation program really worked.'
• 'They preferred to believe these organs appeared from nowhere.'

If you'd like to see the sample A+ essay we wrote up for this essay topic, then you might want to check out our A Killer Comparative Guide: Stasiland & Never Let Me Go study guide !

Stasiland and 1984 are studied as part of VCE English's Comparative. For one of most popular posts on Comparative (also known as Reading and Comparing), check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Comparative.

‍ 1. Introductions

Stasiland is a memoir-style recollection of the author Anna Funder’s encounters with people affected by the years of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), or when Germany was divided into east and west. It marries the author’s personal growth and development during her period of research with the personal histories of those who acted as both perpetrator and victim of the regime’s atrocities. The result is an emotional and deeply human perspective of this heavily-documented period of history which delves into the lasting yet often invisible marks the GDR left on those it touched.

1984 is on the surface the dystopian narrative of the struggles and ultimate downfall of a man named Winston who lives in the depressingly grungy and hopeless world of Big Brother and The Party. In a more profound sense, however, it is author George Orwell’s warning concerning the possibilities inherent in the development of totalitarianism and how these might come to damage the human race.

3. Character Analysis and Comparison

When comparing the characters presented in these two texts, it is important to remember that Orwell’s are fictional and Funder’s are her retellings of real people’s stories. Take care to avoid discussing Funder’s characters as constructions, and focus instead on how she has chosen to portray them.

4. Sample Paragraphs

Prompt: Discuss the different ways in which the authors of Stasiland and 1984 explore the intricacies of state power and knowledge.

Sample Introduction

When significant knowledge in any form is gained, it follows that it can be used in any way an individual or group sees fit. Stasiland and 1984 both show that the same piece of information can be used in drastically different ways to suit the purpose of that information’s owner. In both texts, we can observe this in many areas: mass surveillance for security or espionage purposes, recordkeeping to retain the truth or warp it, and medical or physiological advancements used to solve humanity’s problems or deliberately harm and deform people. Such examples force us to consider two well-known maxims, and to decide between the bliss of ignorance and the power of knowledge.

Sample Body Paragraph

In theory, mass surveillance has many benefits; it could be used to prevent criminal activity such as large-scale terrorist attacks and ensure the happiness and wellbeing of citizens. However, it is almost never associated with anything positive. In George Orwell’s 1984 , we are introduced to his hypothesis concerning what it would be like if it were to become developed to its full extent. The concept can be divided into three levels; firstly there is the obvious, external activities that we observe in both texts, which include mail screening, a military or gendarme presence in the streets and a network of informers. Secondly there is the introduction of the state into the home, which is achieved by The Party mainly through the telescreen, the most prominent and sinister instrument of mass surveillance in Oceania which gives total access to individual behaviour in the privacy of the home. While Winston seems to have found a loophole in this area by being ‘able to remain outside the range of the telescreen’, The Party carries its mass surveillance to the truest sense of the expression by extending it to a seemingly impossible third level, which introduces the state into ‘the few cubic centimetres inside [the] skull’. Interestingly, while the Thought Police cannot truly ‘see’ what is inside someone’s head, they can still control it; as long as people think that someone can see their thoughts, they will censor them themselves. This shows that the beauty of mass surveillance is that it does not actually have to be universal or all-encompassing to be successful. This is why the Stasi did not need to go to the lengths of The Party to achieve a similar result; the people merely need to believe that it is so on the basis of some evidence, and through this they can be controlled. Ultimately, mass surveillance can never be anything but destructive for this reason; it could put a complete halt to all terrorist plots and it would still act against the people by insidiously forcing them to censor their own thoughts out of fear.

Sample Conclusion

Both Stasiland and 1984 show absolutely that knowledge is a fundamental and intrinsic part of power, as it cannot exist without knowledge. While it is true that knowledge can be held without exercising it in some external display of power, it always shapes the person who holds it in ways both subtle and direct. Knowledge can therefore be seen as similar to Pandora’s Box; once it exists in a mind, it alters it, and the actions it prompts depend only on the desires and will of that mind .

In order to properly understand either of these texts, you’ll need to put on your history hat. Both of them are very firmly rooted in historical events, and to get a good grasp on what they really mean, you need to understand these events. You should research communism and socialism fairly extensively as well as the GDR, but you don’t need to sit for hours and write a book on the subject. All you need to do is trawl through Wikipedia for half an hour, or as long as it takes to get a sense of the subject. They key is to not ignore things that you don’t understand; if you see terms like ‘Eastern Bloc’ or ‘Marxism’ or ‘The Iron Curtain’ and you’ve got no idea what they are, research them! Even terms that you might believe you’re familiar with, like ‘Communism’ could also use a refresher.

The other main point is that 1984 particularly deals very heavily in ideological and philosophical argument. Orwell constructed the events of the plot as one giant hypothetical situation, so try and think to yourself – could that really happen? Is that really possible, or is this whole thing just plain silly? Remember that this text is much, much more than a simple narrative, and address it as such

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Whether you revel in the ideas and intricacies of poetry or could not think of anything more monotonous to read, grab a tea (or coffee if it’s one of those nights), your favourite late-night snack, and prepare to be amazed by just how simple it is to absolutely NAIL a poetry essay.

Don’t worry, I know that same overwhelming feeling when poetry can seem as if it’s not even in English, but I can ensure you, learning how to write a poetry essay is like learning to ride a bike…. Once you wrap your head around it you’ll be cruising!

To make these tips even more practical, we’ll be focusing on John Donne’s poetry in relation to the topic below: ‍

‘Donne’s poetry explores the many aspects of human experience.’ Discuss.

‍ 1. Start off with a bang!

I’m sure you’ve heard it before… your introduction sets the tone for your essay and this could not be more true. A shallow introduction is like missing the start of your running race, or even worse arriving at a party just before it ends! You’ll just have so much catching up to do! Without being overly hyperbolic, here are a four essential tips that will ensure your assessor sees you as a high-scoring student right from your first sentence.

- Answer the question in your first sentence (even if it is in a broad manner) and always link back to the essay topic – this will show the assessor that you are answering the question given rather than presenting them with a sneaky memorised essay!

- Utilise the right terminology when outlining the type of poet and era they wrote in (i.e. metaphysical poet, Renaissance era, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth)

‍ - Outline the main poetic techniques for which the poet is known for (i.e. playful wit, rich imagery, language, challenging intellectual argument) as well as the ideas and values they endorse (i.e. elevation of reciprocal love, belief in the resurrection of Christ, celebration of eternal life)

- Wow your assessor with unique vocab (i.e. illuminate, emanate, meditate)

And here’s a sample introduction to help you even more:

John Donne’s anthology, “Selected Poetry” illuminates the human condition and thus provides much commentary on life and death. A metaphysical poet of the Renaissance era, Donne combines a playful wit, rich imagery, and perhaps most importantly language, to challenge intellectual argument and celebrate various aspects of sexual desire, mutuality and faith. Immersed in the Christian traditions of his time, Donne’s exploration of Death emanates from the Elizabethan acute awareness of the brevity and vanity of human life; however, with his sensual elevation of reciprocal love and his deep spiritual belief in the resurrection of Christ, Donne meditates upon his belief and celebration of eternal life.

2. Strong topic sentences are Crucial (with a capital C)

Time and time again students fall into one of two traps. They either try to start each paragraph with a lengthy (and often beautiful) phrase trying to encapsulate every idea they plan to introduce in the paragraph. Or on other occasions, they have no introductory sentence and instead launch straight into their poetry analysis. Your assessor may be blown away with your A+ worthy introduction and then reach this weak opening to your paragraph and have to reconsider! Your topic sentence is the frame for the whole paragraph so please, keep it clear, succinct, and relevant to the essay question.

Here are three ‘DOs’ and ‘DON’Ts’ to consider when crafting one of the most important sentences of your essay (again, sorry about the drama!)

- DON’T mention the poem you will use as evidence in your topic sentence

- DO answer and link directly to the essay topic

- DO use linking words to link the ideas in different paragraphs

And here are three STRONG topic sentences for each paragraph of this essay (note how I always link back to the topic of human experiences and link ideas between paragraphs)

- Rewriting the conventional trope, Donne’s oeuvre explores the joy of erotic love and ones’ lustful desire to engage in these sexual experiences.

- While much of Donne’s oeuvre comments on the pleasure of carnal experiences, his more harmonious poems reveal the beauty of relationships in which one can experience a deep sense of mutuality and stability.

- Silhouetted against the backdrop of the Elizabethan reign, Donne’s more metaphysical poems demonstrate the struggle of the process of dying and individual corruption, and the manner in which it leads to the acquirement of God’s love and grace.

3. Organise paragraphs by IDEAS

What makes a poetry essay so unique is that your paragraphs are based on broad ideas rather than the motifs and behaviours of characters in novels. This means that when planning your essay you must ensure that each paragraph has only one idea and that each paragraph is based on a different idea. From there you can work out which poems best represent each concept to work out which poems you will use for each paragraph. This is why I love poetry essays as planning for them is so easy! All you have to do is think of three or four different ideas for the essay topic and then find your textual evidence by working out which poems best reflect these ideas…. Simple! Right?

Here are the three ideas that I plan to discuss in each of my paragraphs of this essay as well as the poems I would use:

- Sexual/physical human experiences

- ‘Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed’ & ‘The Flea’

- Mutuality and reciprocity as an experience/element of spiritual love

- ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’

- The innately human experience of dying and being embraced by God in heaven

- ‘Hymn to God My God in My Sickness’ ‍

4. Analyse, not summarise

If there was one thing that was playing in my head over and over while writing a poetry essay it was ‘analyse, not summarise’. It is so easy to fall into the trap of simply summarising the poetic techniques and language of the different poems rather than analysing their meaning and linking this directly to the essay question. Even if you have the best plan and ideas going for you, if an assessor notices you going into summary mode they’ll assume you’re just rewriting a memorised essay rather then answering the exact essay question given…. DISASTROUS! To prevent this utter catastrophe, I urge you to please, link to and answer the specific essay topic EVERYTIME you introduce a new poetic technique/piece of evidence. Verbs such as demonstrates, elucidates, illustrates, exemplifies, illuminates and augments are ‘must haves’ in your poetry tool-box as they will ensure that you are analysing not summarising.

Here is a sample paragraph for you to consider (notice how I always link back to the idea of mutual/reciprocal love and experiences every time I introduce a new poetic technique or quote)

While much of Donne’s oeuvre comments on the pleasure of carnal experiences, his more harmonious poems reveal the beauty of relationships in which one can experience a deep sense of mutuality and stability. The poem, ‘’A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’’ explores the sense of security and harmony which spiritual love and experiences permit. Adopting a hush, reverent tone manifested by the use of sibilance, through the enjambment of the phrase ‘’Dull sublunary lovers love, / (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit / Absence’’, Donne elevates mutual love to a higher plane, one that transcends the lines of poetry. When accompanied by the stability of the ABAB rhyme scheme that works to echo the couple’s settled love, this presents the experience of reciprocity and mutuality of love to be higher than the dull and earthbound nature of love that is solely physical. Hence, Donne reveals the bliss that mutual love permits mankind, given it eclipses the desire for any form of physicality. Further elucidating the strength of mutual love, Donne illuminates how when couples are separated it is ‘’not yet a breach, but an expansion’’, thus celebrating the manner in which deep, reciprocal love not only eclipses the divisions of the clock but how it expands ‘’like gold to airy thinness beat’’ when separated. By connoting spiritual love to the pure and malleable nature of gold, this simile characterizes mutual love to be the prime of human experiences and relationships. Intertwining the elegant conceit of a compass to represent the love that connects the speaker and his mistress, Donne garners the notion that no matter how far ‘’one doth roam’’ the intellectual bond between the couple will remain ‘’firm’’ and enable the pair to overcome any form of physical separation. Hence, Donne illuminates  the complex and impermeable bond that this serene form of human experience can foster.

‍ 5. Vocab and metalanguage are the easiest ways to SHINE

To say it plainly, writing with unique and refreshing vocabulary is enough to send your grade SOARING. It will not only render your ideas and discussion ever more complex, but has the power to enlighten and stimulate your assessor (and this is something we all want to do… right?). Utilising the correct poetic metalanguage every time you introduce a new quote or line of poetry will ensure that your analysis remains both specific and detailed. As seen in the paragraph above, discussing the poetic techniques provided me with another form of evidence (rather than just the quotes from the poem) to elucidate how these different forms of human experience are illustrated in each of Donne’s poems.

To assist you further, here is some metalanguage for the poetic techniques and structures that frequent John Donne’s poetry:

- Sibilance, alliteration, imagery, paradox, conceit, metaphor, simile, personification, rhyme structure, tone, volta, enjambment, metre (i.e. iambic pentameter, trochaic tetrameter), monosyllabic phrasing

- Stanza, verse, quatrain, cinquain

6. Finish with a jaw-dropping conclusion

A mediocre conclusion is like leaving your assessor with an unpleasant aftertaste that unfortunately, will not go away. So please, finally give your conclusion the attention it deserves and follow these five tips to ensure you leave your assessor waiting for that mic to drop!

- Pan out to the broad, abstract ideas that the poet wrestled with

- Discuss the aspects of the poet that set them apart from other poets at the time (i.e. for John Donne that is his intellectual imagery, arresting voice, wit, fusion of passion and logic and the manner in which he challenged intellectual argument and strongly held societal conventions)

- Short and sweet not long and wordy!

- Reinforce the period and society in which the poet wrote

- You can include a secondary quote if you want, however only if it relevant to the essay topic and ideas you discussed

Here is a sample conclusion to assist you:

Railing against the societal value of religion prominent during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the originality of Donne’s ideas about love, death and God along with his strikingly intellectual imagery and rich language incite and interest his more religious readership of the joys of sexual, mutual and religious experiences. The poet and playwright Ben Jonson once wrote that John Donne ‘’was the first poet in the world in some things.’’ Hence, it is through his witty and authentic form of expression that Donne allows us to reflect on and celebrate precisely what it means to be human.

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Richard Marriott English

English Lecturing and Tutoring

The Great Gatsby Sample Essay

This sample essay demonstrates the full range of A-level skills needed to meet the assessment objectives at the highest level.

“They’re a rotten crowd.” I shouted across the lawn. “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.” How does Fitzgerald convey a “rotten crowd” in The Great Gatsby and to what effect?

“Rotten” describes a state of putrefaction. It is a word we apply to decomposing fruit, fruit that is over-ripe, decaying and which, close-up, stinks. What a brilliant word to convey the decaying civilisation of post-war Europe and America that surrounds Gatsby – and repulses his friend, Nick – shocking him into moral awareness.

It is primarily through the moral judgements of his narrator, Nick Carraway, – the character that goes East to make money only to retreat revolted by the moral, cultural and social rottenness that he finds among the moneyed classes he wished to join – that Fitzgerald presents his “rotten crowd.” Through Nick, Fitzgerald exercises his narrative art with extraordinary compression: cultural allusion and symbolic names and images are central to his method – underpinning the actions of his characters – so too a poet’s feel for the sound and connotations of words.

Fitzgerald’s allusive method brilliantly conveys the rottenness of Gatsby’s crowd. Names, and names of books allude to a rotten world. Relationships in the East are rotten and infect the outlying members of the great Carraway dynasty: Nick’s second cousin twice removed is married to a philanderer; already unfaithful on honeymoon, we find him in the second chapter introducing Nick to his mistress. Now, the great Gatsby himself has been no monk (he ‘knew women early’ (82) Nick tells us, momentarily picturing a proud and promiscuous young Gatsby), but in pursuing Daisy, he pursues more than sex: he wishes to attain a higher state of being – to ‘romp with the mind of God,’ to ‘gulp down the milk of wonder.’ Romping and gulping suggests a child’s wide-eyed amoral appetite for unbounded satisfaction. Tom’s rottenness, his sexual corruption, then is apparent by contrast with the sublime, high-minded aspirations of the man who would cuckold him. Taking then, Nick, to the apartment where he conducts his affair, Tom leaves Nick while he and Myrtle both disappear – presumably to the bedroom – before reappearing after Nick has had time to ‘read a chapter’ of Simon Called Peter . A chapter-read is an innovative way to measure the length of a human coupling and perhaps degrades (reveals the rottenness of) Tom’s relationship in its brevity (or in its longevity, reveals the rotter luxuriating in his sin) – but more importantly, it is through the title of the book that Fitzgerald reveals the rottenness of this crowd. Robert Keable’s 1922 best-seller records the career of an earnest young clergyman, Peter Graham who volunteers as an army chaplain in the First World War. His faith fails to sustain him on the path of righteousness and he abandons his nice middle class fiancée, Hilda, for the generous charms of a prostitute and a generation of young women whose sexual freedom is more aligned to the Myrtles of Gatsby than the prim propriety of Hilda and the Edwardian England Peter has left behind. However, Peter is not simply a lost cause to the church, he is disillusioned with its teachings and with human nature, the sexual freedoms and easy pleasures of the war generations seem to him more real, more essentially human than the morality he preached from the bible. The novel, condemned in his review as ‘immoral’ by Fitzgerald, is seriously concerned with what war reveals of essential human nature: its immorality, its pessimism lies in its disillusion with love. Fitzgerald’s Gatsby holds on to his aspirations, his faith in the possibility of transcendence through love, despite the hardships of his (quickly overcome!) poverty. It is perhaps only through the contrast with Keable’s response to war that we can appreciate the extraordinary hope implicit in Fitzgerald’s, in his faith in the higher callings and aspirations of the human heart. It would be interesting to know if Fitzgerald had a particular chapter in mind that “didn’t make any sense to [Nick].”

Thus, almost passing reference to a contemporary novel, is fraught with much meaning. The use of a character’s reading material to shape and create meaning is a familiar part of the novelist’s art: think Austen’s Catherine Morland, gently mocked by her author for her indulgence in The Mysteries of Udolfo and the power it has over her imagination. This allusive method is not surprising in Fitzgerald: it is the foundation of Eliot’s “The Waste Land” –a poem Fitzgerald knew by heart, written in the year he sets his Gatsby . In it, the morality, the spiritual condition, of one generation is measured against representative cultural fragments from earlier civilisations.

Fitzgerald is similarly wide-ranging in his frame of reference to convey his “rotten crowd,” alluding to contemporary novels and events as well as ancient texts. Take the casual naming of just one party-goer for example: Ismay. Ismay is collected up as part of a group: “the Ismays and the Christies.” Perhaps Fitzgerald has in mind Bruce Ismay, Managing Director, of the White Star Line and held to blame for the greatest shipping disaster of all time: the loss of the Titanic in 1912; he was J Brute Ismay to the press at the time. He was rumoured to have put pressure on the Chief Engineer to drive the ship faster for a record time for the Atlantic Crossing and was himself a survivor. Newspaper cartoons showed him watching the ship sink from the safety of a lifeboat whilst the true “women and children first” heroes stood facing death on the doomed ship. So, Ismay comes to represent the selfish, self-serving rottenness of Fitzgerald’s contemporary society and the inversion of its moral values.

Ismay is among the first of the East Eggers on Nick’s famous list that helpfully divides the party guests into two according to the Egg whence they arrive: East Egg is the old money (Jesmond) in our local terms; West Egg is new money (we think Darras Hall). The West Eggers are “all connected with the movies in one way or another.”  So one “controlled films Par Excellence” another is a “promoter” (and at the Chapter VI party we meet “the moving-picture director and his Star” (89)). In contemporary – and non-party political terms we find in West Egg the New Labour celebrity culture of film stars, pop stars, and fashion designers as well as the stalwart Old Labour of the Trade Union movement meeting at Blair’s parties: it would be a mistake to believe either group is any more free from corruption than Gatsby’s guests.  Fitzgerald’s crowd fills up the “empty spaces of a timetable” (52) that is now out of date. And their “gray” names assigns them to the ash heaps of The Valley of the Ashes – where the detritus of a dead civilisation is dumped.

The whole list in its conception is a brilliant tribute to writers of the past: “the Prince of something, whom we called Duke, and whose name, if ever I knew it, I have forgotten” concludes the roll with a wonderful contempt for empty title (“of something”) and undeserved respect (“whom we called”). The forgotten name that concludes his portrait echoes Chaucer’s final valediction on his Merchant:

For sothe (truly) he was a worthy man with alle, in every way But, sooth (truth) to seyn, I noot (= ne woot, don’t know )how men hym calle.

“I noot how men hym calle,” he is in other words unworthy of name or remembering. Of all writers, Chaucer is so especially concerned with a man’s worth, (the word is used ironically in the quotation above) his worthiness, the parity between the inner and the outer man. The choice of the Merchant is apt: he represents financial rottenness, self-serving material greed.

The last line of all in Nick’s guest list, “All these people came to Gatsby’s house in the summer,” in its obvious summing up of what we already knows echoes Homer’s method in the famous muster of the armies at the beginning of The Iliad , (e.g. “These were the men whom Amphimachus and Nastes brought.”). The very idea of remembering each with some anecdote of their deeds is again Homeric – but how unedifying their deeds: fighting with bums, drunk on the gravel, arriving with another’s wife, run over by Mrs. Ulysses Swett. The name Ulysses is enough to point us to our Homer. This “rotten crowd” is mocked in comparison to the Greek Heroes of the great ancient civilization of the past: the one at its heroic zenith, the other at its rotten nadir.

Plenty of food then for scholars wishing to track down all these names and associations. Ulysses Swett is in fact a real person (born 1868) and a member of the famous Swett family of Cape Cod who traced themselves back through thirteen generation. However, the names have an immediate, not just a scholarly impact. Swett (homophone for a squalid bodily function) is allied with Belcher (the, what, shamelessly, insolent expulsion of stomach gas through the mouth?– usually avoided because of the bad smell) and Smirke (the silent mocking laugh) – all aspects of our base corporeal rather than spiritual natures.

Worse are the animal names: Blackbuck, Roebuck, connoting both money (buck=dollar) and animal sexuality (a buck is a male deer – like the word ‘tup’ we make the gender distinction usually to refer to sexual behaviour). The name ‘Blackbuck’ perhaps evokes Tom’s fear of the Rise of the Colored Empires , of the sexual potency of black races according to popular myth and also a fear of the black dollar, of black wealth as a part of rising black supremacy. So the names have a resonance that goes beyond the animals and fish they denote (Beluga, Whitebait, Hammer Head – it is easy fit them into a taxonomical classification). It is fun to learn from Wikipedia that the Beluga whale has a ‘high-pitched twitter.’ Such information adds another dimension to our own imagined constructions of Gatsby’s party crowd. But the name itself seems ugly. Is it because it has the consonants of the word ‘ugly’ in it? Or because, as we search to make sense of an unfamiliar word, our brains try out the word ‘bulge’ through the association of sound and thus evoke some ungainly swollen creature, some ulcerous tumescence of money and immorality. Is there something belchy in the sudden release of air in the second vowel sound, Bel u ga? And that is before we think about the associations with caviar and the untouchable luxuries of the war-time rich.

And then there are the Hammerheads: another wonderfully evocative name. What rottenness does this conjure? A family of boneheads. The Hammerhead Shark has evolved an elongated and flattened skull perhaps for the manipulation of prey – nice associations there. It also contains the idea of the tool after which the shark is named, the hammer, blunt bludgeoning instrument. Picture it here in the hands of one of Gatsby’s bootlegging cronies, crushing the skull of some unfortunate prey. Hear in its sounds, the repeated glottal fricatives, (‘ Ha mmer hea d’) the heavy breathing of the hammer-wielder exerting himself in the act of skull-crushing.

There is a poetry in this carefully constructed mock epic that delights in the cultural allusion, in the connotative capacity and the phonological features of words to express the sheer rottenness of this crowd.

Fitzgerald offers a wide, but not comprehensive, survey of the animal kingdom to convey his rotten crowd: in all this verminous, predatory, bestial crowd there is not one airborne, flying creature. There are fish aplenty as well as the semi-aquatic rodent, Ernest Beaver and the tree dwelling Doctor Webster Civet , who despite his airy habitat “drowned last summer.” James B. (“Rot-Gut”) Ferret take his name from the domesticated earth-burrow dwelling carnivorous mammal. All three (beaver, civet, ferret) are noted for scent glands, genital or anal: in the wild, they pollute the air to mark territory; killed, they are used for perfume. The point is of course that Fitzgerald’s elemental imagery portrays Gatsby’s aspirations to transcend mortal bounds as an aspiration to fly. Daisy is associated with air, floating, fluttering, anchored like a balloon. Gatsby aspires to her airiness which lifts her among other things, ‘above the hot struggles of the poor.” (122) He is condemned, through Fitzgerald’s imagery to death by water: he is shot in a swimming pool, to be buried in “soggy ground” (142). The moment is foreshadowed at Nick’s tea-party reunion: Gatsby stands “in a puddle of water glaring tragically” (72). Fitzgerald’s rotten crowd is an earth-bound water-dwelling crowd and they drag Gatsby down to his watery death and earthy resting place. Their very names make the air he breathes stink.

This crowd perhaps constitutes the ‘funny fruits’ (103) of New York of a civilisation that has, in Spenglerian terms, (Oswald Spengler, The Decline of Civilization – the book Fitzgerald never recovered from when writing Gatsby) organically outgrown itself, lost touch with the nature that feeds it to produce the cities, and city folk, this ‘rotten crowd’ that are its fruit. And Fitzgerald’s judgement reveals Nick’s growth to moral understanding – he too will reject the wealth of the East, its money, machines and rottenness to nurture the reputation and aspirations of Jay Gatsby, seeking his flower, his Daisy Fay, who, in his imagination (according to Nick) represents the green breast of an earlier, rural America. For Nick, in Gatsby, found an incarnation of the Faustian legend (there was indeed a Faustina O’Brien –a diminutive and corrupt mini-Faust on that party-list (53)), of man’s desire to transcend the bounds of his mortality and the rottenness of his world.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, the 143 most important quotes in the great gatsby, analyzed.

Book Guides

Need to solidify your Great Gatsby essay with some evidence from the text? Want a refresher on the novel's style and sound? Curious how to go from a piece of text to a close reading and an analysis? Then check out this article featuring key Great Gatsby quotes!

We've rounded up a collection of important quotes by and about the main characters, quotes on the novel's major themes and symbols, and quotes from each of The Great Gatsby 's chapters. In turn, each of the Great Gatsby quotes is followed by some brief analysis and explanation of its significance.

Article Roadmap

• Using the quotes

Nick Carraway

Daisy buchanan, tom buchanan, jordan baker, myrtle wilson, george wilson, money and materialism, the american dream, love and relationships.

• The green light
• The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckelburg
• The valley of ashes
• Chapter quotes

Using These Great Gatsby Quotes

All of these are obviously presented outside of the full context of their chapters (if you're hazy on the plot, be sure to check out our chapter summaries! ). If you're going to use any of these quotes in an essay, you need to understand where each quote fits into the book, who's speaking, and why the line is important or significant. Or to put it more bluntly, don't just lift these for an essay without having read the book, or your essay won't be very strong!

We do some initial analysis here for each quote to get you thinking, but remember to close-read and bring your own interpretations and ideas to the text. It may be that you disagree with some of our analysis!

Quick Note on Our Citations

Our citation format in this guide is (chapter.paragraph). We're using this system since there are many editions of Gatsby, so using page numbers would only work for students with our copy of the book. To find a quotation we cite via chapter and paragraph in your book, you can either eyeball it (Paragraph 1-50: beginning of chapter; 50-100: middle of chapter; 100-on: end of chapter), or use the search function if you're using an online or eReader version of the text.

We will cover the characters in the following order, and also provide links to their character pages where you can check out their physical descriptions, backgrounds, action in the book, and common discussion topics.

Great Gatsby Character Quotes

Click on each character's name to read a detailed analysis!

Catchphrase: "old sport"

Gatsby adopts this catchphrase, which was used among wealthy people in England and America at the time, to help build up his image as a man from old money , which is related to his frequent insistence he is "an Oxford man." Note that both Jordan Baker and Tom Buchanan are immediately skeptical of both Gatsby's "old sport" phrase and his claim of being an Oxford man, indicating that despite Gatsby's efforts, it is incredibly difficult to pass yourself off as "old money" when you aren't.

He reached in his pocket and a piece of metal, slung on a ribbon, fell into my palm.

"That's the one from Montenegro."

To my astonishment, the thing had an authentic look.

Orderi di Danilo, ran the circular legend, Montenegro, Nicolas Rex.

Major Jay Gatsby, I read, For Valour Extraordinary. (4.34-39)

In this moment, Nick begins to believe and appreciate Gatsby, and not just see him as a puffed-up fraud. The medal, to Nick, is hard proof that Gatsby did, in fact, have a successful career as an officer during the war and therefore that some of Gatsby's other claims might be true.

For the reader, the medal serves as questionable evidence that Gatsby really is an "extraordinary" man— isn't it a bit strange that Gatsby has to produce physical evidence to get Nick to buy his story? (Imagine how strange it would be to carry around a physical token to show to strangers to prove your biggest achievement.)

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 overwound clock. (5.114)

In Chapter 5, the dream Gatsby has been working towards for years—to meet and impress Daisy with his fabulous wealth—finally begins to come to fruition. And so, for the first time, we see Gatsby's genuine emotions, rather than his carefully-constructed persona. Nick finds these emotions almost as beautiful and transformative as Gatsby's smile, though there's also the sense that this love could quickly veer off the rails: Gatsby is running down "like an overwound clock." In that sense, this moment gently foreshadows the escalating tensions that lead to the novel's tragic climax.

"I wouldn't ask too much of her," I ventured. "You can't repeat the past."

"Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!"

He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.

"I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before," he said, nodding determinedly. "She'll see." (6.128-131)

This is probably Gatsby's single most famous quote. His insistence that he can repeat the past and recreate everything as it was in Louisville sums up his intense determination to win Daisy back at any cost. It also shows his naiveté and optimism, even delusion, about what is possible in his life —an attitude which are increasingly at odds with the cynical portrait of the world painted by Nick Carraway.

"Your wife doesn't love you," said Gatsby. "She's never loved you. She loves me." (7.238)

This is the moment Gatsby lays his cards out on the table , so to speak—he risks everything to try and win over Daisy. His insistence that Daisy never loved Tom also reveals how Gatsby refuses to acknowledge Daisy could have changed or loved anyone else since they were together in Louisville.

This declaration, along with his earlier insistence that he can "repeat the past," creates an image of an overly optimistic, naïve person, despite his experiences in the war and as a bootlegger. Especially since Daisy can't support this statement, saying that she loved both Tom and Gatsby, and Tom quickly seizes power over the situation by practically ordering Gatsby and Daisy to drive home together, Gatsby's confident insistence that Daisy has only ever loved him feels desperate, even delusional.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic 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. (9.153-154)

One of the most famous ending lines in modern literature, this quote is Nick's final analysis of Gatsby—someone who believed in "the green light, the orgastic future" that he could never really attain. Our last image of Gatsby is of a man who believed in a world (and a future) that was better than the one he found himself in—but you can read more about interpretations of the ending, both optimistic and pessimistic, in our guide to the end of the book

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." (1.1-2)

The first lines establish Nick as thoughtful, thorough, privileged, and judgmental . This line also sets the tone for the first few pages, where Nick tells us about his background and tries to encourage the reader to trust his judgment. While he comes off as thoughtful and observant, we also get the sense he is judgmental and a bit snobby.

To see more analysis of why the novel begins how it does, and what Nick's father's advice means for him as a character and as a narrator, read our article on the beginning of  The Great Gatsby .

When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. (1.4)

Another quote from the first few pages of the novel, this line sets up the novel's big question: why does Nick become so close to Gatsby, given that Gatsby represents everything he hates? It also hints to the reader that Nick will come to care about Gatsby deeply while everyone else will earn his "unaffected scorn." While this doesn't give away the plot, it does help the reader be a bit suspicious of everyone but Gatsby going into the story.

Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known. (3.171)

This is likely the moment when you start to suspect Nick doesn't always tell the truth —if everyone "suspects" themselves of one of the cardinal virtues (the implication being they aren't actually virtuous), if Nick says he's honest, perhaps he's not? Furthermore, if someone has to claim that they are honest, that often suggests that they do things that aren't exactly trustworthy.

Suddenly I wasn't thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more but of this clean, hard, limited person who dealt in universal skepticism and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm. A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: "There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired." (4.164)

Nick's interactions with Jordan are some of the only places where we get a sense of any vulnerability or emotion from Nick. In particular, Nick seems quite attracted to Jordan and being with her makes a phrase "beat" in his ears with "heady excitement." If there are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired, it would appear Nick is happy to be the pursuer at this particular moment.

"They're a rotten crowd," I shouted across the lawn. "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together." (8.45)

This line, which comes after Myrtle's death and Tom, Daisy, and Jordan's cold reaction to it, establishes that Nick has firmly come down on Gatsby's side in the conflict between the Buchanans and Gatsby . It also shows Nick's disenchantment with the whole wealthy east coast crowd and also that, at this point, he is devoted to Gatsby and determined to protect his legacy. This hints to us that our once seemingly impartial narrator is now seeing Gatsby more generously than he sees others.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic 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. (9.153-4)

This is Nick's conclusion to his story, which can be read as cynical, hopeful, or realistic , depending on how you interpret it. You can read in detail about these lines in our article about the novel's ending .

She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool." (1.118)

This deeply pessimistic comment is from the first time we meet Daisy in Chapter 1. She has just finished telling Nick about how when she gave birth to her daughter, she woke up alone—Tom was "god knows where." She asks for the baby's sex and cries when she hears it's a girl. So beneath her charming surface we can see Daisy is somewhat despondent about her role in the world and unhappily married to Tom. That said, right after this comment Nick describes her "smirking," which suggests that despite her pessimism, she doesn't seem eager to change her current state of affairs.

"Here, dearis." She groped around in a waste-basket she had with her on the bed and pulled out the string of pearls. "Take 'em downstairs and give 'em back to whoever they belong to. Tell 'em all Daisy's change' her mine. Say 'Daisy's change' her mine!'."

She began to cry—she cried and cried. I rushed out and found her mother's maid and we locked the door and got her into a cold bath. She wouldn't let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her and squeezed it up into a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the soap dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow.

But she didn't say another word. We gave her spirits of ammonia and put ice on her forehead and hooked her back into her dress and half an hour later when we walked out of the room the pearls were around her neck and the incident was over. Next day at five o'clock she married Tom Buchanan without so much as a shiver and started off on a three months' trip to the South Seas. (4.140-2)

In this flashback, narrated by Jordan, we learn all about Daisy's past and how she came to marry Tom, despite still being in love with Jay Gatsby. In fact, she seems to care about him enough that after receiving a letter from him, she threatens to call off her marriage to Tom. However, despite this brief rebellion, she is quickly put back together by Jordan and her maid—the dress and the pearls represent Daisy fitting back into her prescribed social role. And indeed, the next day she marries Tom "without so much as a shiver," showing her reluctance to question the place in society dictated by her family and social status .

"They're such beautiful shirts," she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. "It makes me sad because I've never seen such—such beautiful shirts before." (5.118)

During Daisy and Gatsby's reunion, she is delighted by Gatsby's mansion but falls to pieces after Gatsby giddily shows off his collection of shirts.

This scene is often confusing to students. Why does Daisy start crying at this particular display? The scene could speak to Daisy's materialism : that she only emotionally breaks down at this conspicuous proof of Gatsby's newfound wealth. But it also speaks to her strong feelings for Gatsby , and how touched she is at the lengths he went to to win her back.

"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon," cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?" (7.74)

In Chapter 7, as Daisy tries to work up the courage to tell Tom she wants to leave him, we get another instance of her struggling to find meaning and purpose in her life. Beneath Daisy's cheerful exterior, there is a deep sadness, even nihilism, in her outlook (compare this to Jordan's more optimistic response that life renews itself in autumn).

"Her voice is full of money," he said suddenly.

That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it. . . . High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl. . . . (7.105-6)

Gatsby explicitly ties Daisy and her magnetic voice to wealth. This particular line is really crucial, since it ties Gatsby's love for Daisy to his pursuit of wealth and status . It also allows Daisy herself to become a stand-in for the idea of the American Dream. We'll discuss even more about the implications of Daisy's voice below.

"Oh, you want too much!" she cried to Gatsby. "I love you now—isn't that enough? I can't help what's past." She began to sob helplessly. "I did love him once—but I loved you too." (7.264)

During the climactic confrontation in New York City, Daisy can't bring herself to admit she only loved Gatsby, because she did also love Tom at the beginning of their marriage. This moment is crushing for Gatsby, and some people who read the novel and end up disliking Daisy point to this moment as proof. "Why couldn't she get up the courage to just leave that awful Tom?" they ask.

However, I would argue that Daisy's problem isn't that she loves too little, but that she loves too much . She fell in love with Gatsby and was heartbroken when he went to war, and again when he reached out to her right before she was set to marry Tom. And then she fell deeply in love with Tom in the early days of their marriage, only to discover his cheating ways and become incredibly despondent (see her earlier comment about women being "beautiful little fools"). So by now she's been hurt by falling in love, twice, and is wary of risking another heartbreak.

Furthermore, we do see again her reluctance to part with her place in society . Being with Gatsby would mean giving up her status as old-money royalty and instead being the wife of a gangster. That's a huge jump for someone like Daisy, who was essentially raised to stay within her class. So it's hard to blame her for not giving up her entire life (not to mention her daughter!) to be with Jay.

"[Tom], among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax." (1.16)

Tom is established early on as restless and bored , with the threat of physical aggression lurking behind that restlessness. With his glory days on the Yale football team well behind him, he seems to constantly be searching for—and failing to find—the excitement of a college football game. Perhaps Tom, like Gatsby, is also trying, and failing, to repeat the past in his own way .

"Well, it's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved." (1.78)

In Chapter 1 , we learn Tom has been reading "profound" books lately, including racist ones that claim the white race is superior to all others and has to maintain control over society. This speaks to Tom's insecurity—even as someone born into incredible money and privilege, there's a fear it could be taken away by social climbers . That insecurity only translates into even more overt shows of his power—flaunting his relationship with Myrtle, revealing Gatsby as a bootlegger, and manipulating George to kill Gatsby—thus completely freeing the Buchanans from any consequences from the murders.

"Don't believe everything you hear, Nick," he advised me. (1.143)

Early in the book, Tom advises Nick not to believe rumors and gossip, but specifically what Daisy has been telling him about their marriage.

Nick certainly is wary of most people he meets, and, indeed, he sees through Daisy in Chapter 1 when he observes she has no intentions of leaving Tom despite her complaints: "Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head" (1.150). But as the book goes on, Nick drops some of his earlier skepticism as he comes to learn more about Gatsby and his life story, coming to admire him despite his status as a bootlegger and criminal.

This leaves us with an image of Tom as cynical and suspicious in comparison to the optimistic Gatsby—but perhaps also more clear-eyed than Nick is by the end of the novel.

"And what's more, I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time." (7.251-252)

After seeing Tom's liaisons with Myrtle and his generally boorish behavior, this claim to loving Daisy comes off as fake at best and manipulative at worst (especially since a spree is a euphemism for an affair!).

We also see Tom grossly underreporting his bad behavior (we have seen one of his "sprees" and it involved breaking Myrtle's nose after sleeping with her while Nick was in the next room) and either not realizing or ignoring how damaging his actions can be to others. He is explicit about his misbehavior and doesn't seem sorry at all —he feels like his "sprees" don't matter as long as he comes back to Daisy after they're over.

In short, this quote captures how the reader comes to understand Tom late in the novel—as a selfish rich man who breaks things and leaves others to clean up his mess.

"I found out what your 'drug-stores' were." He turned to us and spoke rapidly. "He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That's one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn't far wrong." (7.284)

Again, Tom's jealousy and anxiety about class are revealed. Though he immediately pegs Gatsby for a bootlegger rather than someone who inherited his money, Tom still makes a point of doing an investigation to figure out exactly where the money came from. This shows that he does feel a bit threatened by Gatsby , and wants to be sure he thoroughly knocks him down.

But at the same time, he's the only one in the room who sees Gatsby for who he actually is . This is also a moment where you, as a reader, can really see how clouded Nick's judgment of Gatsby has become.

"You two start on home, Daisy," said Tom. "In Mr. Gatsby's car."

She looked at Tom, alarmed now, but he insisted with magnanimous scorn.

"Go on. He won't annoy you. I think he realizes that his presumptuous little flirtation is over." (7.296-298)

A common question students have after reading Gatsby for the first time is this: why does Tom let Daisy and Gatsby ride back together? If he's so protective and jealous of Daisy, wouldn't he insist she come with him?

The answer is that he is demonstrating his power over both Daisy and Gatsby —he's no longer scared that Daisy will leave him for Gatsby, and he's basically rubbing that in Gatsby's face. He's saying that he doesn't even fear leaving them alone together, because he knows that nothing Gatsby says or does would convince Daisy to leave him. It's a subtle but crucial show of power—and of course ends up being a fatal choice.

"What if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him. He threw dust into your eyes just like he did in Daisy's but he was a tough one. He ran over Myrtle like you'd run over a dog and never even stopped his car." (9.143)

One of Tom's last lines in the novel, he coldly tells Nick that Gatsby was fooling both him and Daisy. Of course, since we know that Gatsby didn't actually run over Daisy, we can read this line in one of three ways:

• Maybe Daisy never actually admitted to Tom that she was the one driving the car that night, so he still has no idea that his wife killed his mistress.
• Or maybe the way Tom has made peace with what happened is by convincing himself that even if Daisy was technically driving, Gatsby is to blame for Myrtle's death anyway.
• Or maybe Tom is still scared of speaking the truth about Daisy's involvement to anyone, including Nick, on the off chance that the police will reopen the case with new evidence.

"And I like large parties. They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy." (3.29)

This is an early example of Jordan's unexpectedly clever observations —throughout the novel she reveals a quick wit and keen eye for detail in social situations. This comment also sets the stage for the novel's chief affair between Daisy and Gatsby, and how at the small party in Chapter 7 their secrets come out to disastrous effect.

Compare Jordan's comment to Daisy's general attitude of being too sucked into her own life to notice what's going on around her.

"You're a rotten driver," I protested. "Either you ought to be more careful or you oughtn't to drive at all."

"I am careful."

"No, you're not."

"Well, other people are," she said lightly.

"What's that got to do with it?"

"They'll keep out of my way," she insisted. "It takes two to make an accident."

"Suppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself."

"I hope I never will," she answered. "I hate careless people. That's why I like you." (3.162-169)

Here we get a sense of what draws Jordan and Nick together—he's attracted to her carefree, entitled attitude while she sees his cautiousness as a plus. After all, if it really does take two to make an accident, as long as she's with a careful person, Jordan can do whatever she wants!

We also see Jordan as someone who carefully calculates risks —both in driving and in relationships. This is why she brings up her car accident analogy again at the end of the book when she and Nick break up—Nick was, in fact, a "bad driver" as well, and she was surprised that she read him wrong.

"It's a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people." (4.144)

Another example of Jordan's observant wit , this quote (about Daisy) is Jordan's way of suggesting that perhaps Daisy's reputation is not so squeaky-clean as everyone else believes. After all, if Daisy were the only sober one in a crowd of partiers, it would be easy for her to hide less-than-flattering aspects about herself.

Suddenly I wasn't thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more but of this clean, hard, limited person who dealt in universal skepticism and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm. (4.164)

In this moment, Nick reveals what he finds attractive about Jordan—not just her appearance (though again, he describes her as pleasingly "jaunty" and "hard" here), but her attitude. She's skeptical without being fully cynical, and remains upbeat and witty despite her slightly pessimistic outlook. At this point in the story, Midwestern Nick probably still finds this exciting and attractive, though of course by the end he realizes that her attitude makes it hard for her to truly empathize with others, like Myrtle.

"Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall." (7.75)

In contrast to Daisy (who says just before this, rather despairingly, "What will we do today, and then tomorrow, and for the next thirty years?" (7.74)), Jordan is open to and excited about the possibilities still available to her in her life . As we'll discuss later, perhaps since she's still unmarried her life still has a freedom Daisy's does not, and the possibility to start over.

While she's not exactly a starry-eyed optimist, she does show a resilience, and an ability to start things over and move on, that allows her to escape the tragedy at the end relatively unscathed. It also fits how Jordan doesn't seem to let herself get too attached to people or places, which is why she's surprised by how much she felt for Nick.

"You threw me over on the telephone. I don't give a damn about you now but it was a new experience for me and I felt a little dizzy for a while." (9.130)

Jordan doesn't frequently showcase her emotions or show much vulnerability, so this moment is striking because we see that she did really care for Nick to at least some extent. Notice that she couches her confession with a pretty sassy remark ("I don't give a damn about you now") which feels hollow when you realize that being "thrown over" by Nick made her feel dizzy—sad, surprised, shaken—for a while.

Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time before and was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room. With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment and as she expanded the room grew smaller around her until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air. (2.56)

Here, we see Myrtle transformed from her more sensuous, physical persona into that of someone desperate to come off as richer than she actually is . Wielding power over her group of friends, she seems to revel in her own image.

Unlike Gatsby, who projects an elaborately rich and worldly character, Myrtle's persona is much more simplistic and transparent. (Notably Tom, who immediately sees Gatsby as a fake, doesn't seem to mind Myrtle's pretensions—perhaps because they are of no consequence to him, or any kind of a threat to his lifestyle.)

"Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!" shouted Mrs. Wilson. "I'll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai——"

Making a short deft movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand. (2.125-126)

Here we see Myrtle pushing her limits with Tom—and realizing that he is both violent and completely unwilling to be honest about his marriage.

While both characters are willful, impulsive, and driven by their desires, Tom is violently asserting here that his needs are more important than Myrtle's . After all, to Tom, Myrtle is just another mistress, and just as disposable as all the rest.

Also, this injury foreshadows Myrtle's death at the hands of Daisy, herself. While invoking Daisy's name here causes Tom to hurt Myrtle, Myrtle's actual encounter with Daisy later in the novel turns out to be deadly.

"Beat me!" he heard her cry. "Throw me down and beat me, you dirty little coward!" (7.314)

When George confronts his wife about her affair, Myrtle is furious and needles at her husband—already insecure since he's been cheated on—by insinuating he's weak and less of a man than Tom. Also, their fight centers around her body and its treatment, while Tom and Daisy fought earlier in the same chapter about their feelings.

In this moment, we see that despite how dangerous and damaging Myrtle's relationship with Tom is, she seems to be asking George to treat her in the same way that Tom has been doing. Myrtle's disturbing acceptance of her role as a just a body—a piece of meat, basically—foreshadows the gruesome physicality of her death.

Michaelis and this man reached her first but when they had torn open her shirtwaist still damp with perspiration, they saw that her left breast was swinging loose like a flap and there was no need to listen for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide open and ripped at the corners as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long. (7.317)

Even in death, Myrtle's physicality and vitality are emphasized . In fact, the image is pretty overtly sexual—notice how it's Myrtle's breast that's torn open and swinging loose, and her mouth ripped open at the corners. This echoes Nick's view of Myrtle as a woman and mistress, nothing more—even in death she's objectified.

This moment is also much more violent than her earlier broken nose. While that moment cemented Tom as abusive in the eyes of the reader, this one truly shows the damage that Tom and Daisy leave in their wake, and shapes the tragic tone of the rest of the novel.

Generally he was one of these worn-out men: when he wasn't working he sat on a chair in the doorway and stared at the people and the cars that passed along the road. When any one spoke to him he invariably laughed in an agreeable, colorless way. He was his wife's man and not his own. (7.312)

After our first introduction to George, Nick emphasizes George's meekness and deference to his wife, very bluntly commenting he is not his own man . Although this comment reveals a bit of Nick's misogyny—his comment seems to think George being his "wife's man" as opposed to his own is his primary source of weakness—it also continues to underscore George's devotion to Myrtle.

George's apparent weakness may make him an unlikely choice for Gatsby's murderer, until you consider how much pent-up anxiety and anger he has about Myrtle, which culminates in his two final, violent acts: Gatsby's murder and his own suicide.

His description also continues to ground him in the Valley of Ashes . Unlike all the other main characters, who move freely between Long Island and Manhattan (or, in Myrtle's case, between Queens and Manhattan), George stays in Queens, contributing to his stuck, passive, image. This makes his final journey, on foot, to Long Island, feel especially eerie and desperate.

Some man was talking to him in a low voice and attempting from time to time to lay a hand on his shoulder, but Wilson neither heard nor saw. His eyes would drop slowly from the swinging light to the laden table by the wall and then jerk back to the light again and he gave out incessantly his high horrible call.

"O, my Ga-od! O, my Ga-od! Oh, Ga-od! Oh, my Ga-od!" (7.326-7)

George is completely devastated by the death of his wife, to the point of being inconsolable and unaware of reality. Although we hear he treated her roughly just before this, locking her up and insisting on moving her away from the city, he is completely devastated by her loss. This sharp break with his earlier passive persona prefigures his turn to violence at the end of the book.

"I spoke to her," he muttered, after a long silence. "I told her she might fool me but she couldn't fool God. I took her to the window—" With an effort he got up and walked to the rear window and leaned with his face pressed against it, "—and I said ‘God knows what you've been doing, everything you've been doing. You may fool me but you can't fool God!' "

Standing behind him Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg which had just emerged pale and enormous from the dissolving night.

"God sees everything," repeated Wilson.

"That's an advertisement," Michaelis assured him. Something made him turn away from the window and look back into the room. But Wilson stood there a long time, his face close to the window pane, nodding into the twilight. (8.102-105)

George is looking for comfort, salvation, and order where there is nothing but an advertisement. This speaks to the moral decay of New York City, the East Coast, and even America in general during the 1920s. It also speaks to how alone and powerless George is, and how violence becomes his only recourse to seek revenge.

In this moment, the reader is forced to wonder if there is any kind of morality the characters adhere to, or if the world really is cruel and utterly without justice—and with no God except the empty eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg .

Key Great Gatsby Theme Quotes

Click on the title of each theme for an article explaining how it fits into the novel, which character it's connected to, and how to write an essay about it.

Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!"

—THOMAS PARKE D'INVILLIERS

The epigraph of the novel immediately marks money and materialism as a key theme of the book—the listener is implored to "wear the gold hat" as a way to impress his lover. In other words, wealth is presented as the key to love—such an important key that the word "gold" is repeated twice. It's not enough to "bounce high" for someone, to win them over with your charm. You need wealth, the more the better, to win over the object of your desire.

"They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together." (1.17)

Our introduction to Tom and Daisy immediately describes them as rich, bored, and privileged . Tom's restlessness is likely one motivator for his affairs, while Daisy is weighed down by the knowledge of those affairs. This combination of restlessness and resentment puts them on the path to the tragedy at the end of the book.

"There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city, between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants including an extra gardener toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before…." (3.1—3.6)

The description of Gatsby's parties at the beginning of Chapter 3 is long and incredibly detailed, and thus highlights the extraordinary extent of Gatsby's wealth and materialism. In contrast to Tom and Daisy's expensive but not overly gaudy mansion , and the small dinner party Nick attends there in Chapter 1 , everything about Gatsby's new wealth is over-the-top and showy, from the crates of oranges brought in and juiced one-by-one by a butler, the "corps" of caterers to the full orchestra. Everyone who comes to the parties is attracted by Gatsby's money and wealth, making the culture of money-worship a society-wide trend in the novel, not just something our main characters fall victim to. After all, "People were not invited—they went there" (3.7). No one comes due to close personal friendship with Jay. Everyone is there for the spectacle alone.

He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher—shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange with monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.

"They're such beautiful shirts," she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. "It makes me sad because I've never seen such—such beautiful shirts before." (5.117-118)

Gatsby, like a peacock showing off its many-colored tail, flaunts his wealth to Daisy by showing off his many-colored shirts. And, fascinatingly, this is the first moment of the day Daisy fully breaks down emotionally—not when she first sees Gatsby, not after their first long conversation, not even at the initial sight of the mansion—but at this extremely conspicuous display of wealth . This speaks to her materialism and how, in her world, a certain amount of wealth is a barrier to entry for a relationship (friendship or more).

"She's got an indiscreet voice," I remarked. "It's full of——"

I hesitated.

That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it. . . . High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl. . . . (7.103-106)

Daisy herself is explicitly connected with money here, which allows the reader to see Gatsby's desire for her as desire for wealth, money, and status more generally. So while Daisy is materialistic and is drawn to Gatsby again due to his newly-acquired wealth, we see Gatsby is drawn to her as well due to the money and status she represents.

I couldn't forgive him or like him but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. 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. . . . (9.146)

Here, in the aftermath of the novel's carnage, Nick observes that while Myrtle, George, and Gatsby have all died, Tom and Daisy are not punished at all for their recklessness, they can simply retreat "back into their money or their vast carelessness… and let other people clean up the mess." So money here is more than just status—it's a shield against responsibility , which allows Tom and Daisy to behave recklessly while other characters suffer and die in pursuit of their dreams.

But I didn't call to him for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. (1.152)

In our first glimpse of Jay Gatsby, we see him reaching towards something far off, something in sight but definitely out of reach. This famous image of the green light is often understood as part of The Great Gatsby 's meditation on The American Dream—the idea that people are always reaching towards something greater than themselves that is just out of reach . You can read more about this in our post all about the green light . The fact that this yearning image is our introduction to Gatsby foreshadows his unhappy end and also marks him as a dreamer, rather than people like Tom or Daisy who were born with money and don't need to strive for anything so far off.

Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of non-olfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.

A dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms, followed by two carriages with drawn blinds and by more cheerful carriages for friends. The friends looked out at us with the tragic eyes and short upper lips of south-eastern Europe, and I was glad that the sight of Gatsby's splendid car was included in their somber holiday. As we crossed Blackwell's Island a limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish Negroes, two bucks and a girl. I laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry.

"Anything can happen now that we've slid over this bridge," I thought; "anything at all. . . ."

Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder. (4.55-8)

Early in the novel, we get this mostly optimistic illustration of the American Dream—we see people of different races and nationalities racing towards NYC, a city of unfathomable possibility. This moment has all the classic elements of the American Dream—economic possibility, racial and religious diversity, a carefree attitude. At this moment, it does feel like "anything can happen," even a happy ending.

However, this rosy view eventually gets undermined by the tragic events later in the novel. And even at this point, Nick's condescension towards the people in the other cars reinforces America's racial hierarchy that disrupts the idea of the American Dream . There is even a little competition at play, a "haughty rivalry" at play between Gatsby's car and the one bearing the "modish Negroes." Nick "laughs aloud" at this moment, suggesting he thinks it's amusing that the passengers in this other car see them as equals, or even rivals to be bested. In other words, he seems to firmly believe in the racial hierarchy Tom defends in Chapter 1, even if it doesn't admit it honestly.

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy's white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete. (6.134)

This moment explicitly ties Daisy to all of Gatsby's larger dreams for a better life —to his American Dream. This sets the stage for the novel's tragic ending, since Daisy cannot hold up under the weight of the dream Gatsby projects onto her. Instead, she stays with Tom Buchanan, despite her feelings for Gatsby. Thus when Gatsby fails to win over Daisy, he also fails to achieve his version of the American Dream. This is why so many people read the novel as a somber or pessimistic take on the American Dream, rather than an optimistic one.

...as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's 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, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night." (9.151-152)

The closing pages of the novel reflect at length on the American Dream, in an attitude that seems simultaneously mournful, appreciative, and pessimistic. It also ties back to our first glimpse of Gatsby, reaching out over the water towards the Buchanan's green light. Nick notes that Gatsby's dream was "already behind him" then, in other words, it was impossible to attain. But still, he finds something to admire in how Gatsby still hoped for a better life, and constantly reached out toward that brighter future.

For a full consideration of these last lines and what they could mean, see our analysis of the novel's ending .

Daisy and Tom Marriage Quotes

Why they came east I don't know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. (1.17)

Nick introduces Tom and Daisy as restless, rich, and as a singular unit: they. Despite all of the revelations about the affairs and other unhappiness in their marriage, and the events of the novel, it's important to note our first and last descriptions of Tom and Daisy describe them as a close, if bored, couple . In fact, Nick only doubles down on this observation later in Chapter 1.

Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."

"You see I think everything's terrible anyhow," she went on in a convinced way. "Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything." Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom's, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. "Sophisticated—God, I'm sophisticated!"

"The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged." (1.118-120)

In this passage, Daisy pulls Nick aside in Chapter 1 and claims, despite her outward happiness and luxurious lifestyle, she's quite depressed by her current situation. At first, it seems Daisy is revealing the cracks in her marriage —Tom was "God knows here" at the birth of their daughter, Pammy—as well as a general malaise about society in general ("everything's terrible anyhow").

However, right after this confession, Nick doubts her sincerity. And indeed, she follows up her apparently serious complaint with "an absolute smirk." What's going on here?

Well, Nick goes on to observe that the smirk "asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged." In other words, despite Daisy's performance, she seems content to remain with Tom, part of the "secret society" of the ultra-rich.

So the question is: can anyone—or anything—lift Daisy out of her complacency?

"I never loved him," she said, with perceptible reluctance.

"Not at Kapiolani?" demanded Tom suddenly.

From the ballroom beneath, muffled and suffocating chords were drifting up on hot waves of air.

"Not that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes dry?" There was a husky tenderness in his tone. ". . . Daisy?" (7.258-62)

Over the course of the novel, both Tom and Daisy enter or continue affairs, pulling away from each other instead of confronting the problems in their marriage.

However, Gatsby forces them to confront their feelings in the Plaza Hotel when he demands Daisy say she never loved Tom. Although she gets the words out, she immediately rescinds them—"I did love [Tom] once but I loved you too!"—after Tom questions her.

Here, Tom—usually presented as a swaggering, brutish, and unkind—breaks down, speaking with "husky tenderness" and recalling some of the few happy moments in his and Daisy's marriage. This is a key moment because it shows despite the dysfunction of their marriage, Tom and Daisy seem to both seek solace in happy early memories. Between those few happy memories and the fact that they both come from the same social class, their marriage ends up weathering multiple affairs.

Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table with a plate of cold fried chicken between them and two bottles of ale. He was talking intently across the table at her and in his earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her own. Once in a while she looked up at him and nodded in agreement.

They weren't happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale—and yet they weren't unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together. (7.409-10)

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. . . . (9.146)

By the end of the novel, after Daisy's murder of Myrtle as well as Gatsby's death, she and Tom are firmly back together, "conspiring" and "careless" once again, despite the deaths of their lovers.

As Nick notes, they "weren't happy…and yet they weren't unhappy either." Their marriage is important to both of them, since it reassures their status as old money aristocracy and brings stability to their lives. So the novel ends with them once again described as a unit, a "they," perhaps even more strongly bonded since they've survived not only another round of affairs but murder, as well.

Myrtle and George Marriage Quotes

I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a moment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice:

"Get some chairs, why don't you, so somebody can sit down."

"Oh, sure," agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom. (2.15-17)

As we discuss in our article on the symbolic valley of ashes , George is coated by the dust of despair and thus seems mired in the hopelessness and depression of that bleak place, while Myrtle is alluring and full of vitality. Her first action is to order her husband to get chairs, and the second is to move away from him, closer to Tom.

In contrast to Tom and Daisy, who are initially presented as a unit, our first introduction to George and Myrtle shows them fractured, with vastly different personalities and motivations. We get the sense right away that their marriage is in trouble, and conflict between the two is imminent.

"I married him because I thought he was a gentleman," she said finally. "I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn't fit to lick my shoe."

"You were crazy about him for a while," said Catherine.

"Crazy about him!" cried Myrtle incredulously. "Who said I was crazy about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there." (2.112-4)

Here we get a bit of back-story about George and Myrtle's marriage: like Daisy, Myrtle was crazy about her husband at first but the marriage has since soured. But while Daisy doesn't have any real desire to leave Tom, here we see Myrtle eager to leave, and very dismissive of her husband. Myrtle seems to suggest that even having her husband wait on her is unacceptable—it's clear she thinks she is finally headed for bigger and better things.

Again, in contrast to the strangely unshakeable partnership of Tom and Daisy, the co-conspirators, Michaelis (briefly taking over narrator duties) observes that George "was his wife's man," "worn out." Obviously, this situation gets turned on its head when George locks Myrtle up when he discovers the affair, but Michaelis's observation speaks to instability in the Wilson's marriage, in which each fights for control over the other . Rather than face the world as a unified front, the Wilsons each struggle for dominance within the marriage.

"Beat me!" he heard her cry. "Throw me down and beat me, you dirty little coward!"

A moment later she rushed out into the dusk, waving her hands and shouting; before he could move from his door the business was over. (7.314-5)

We don't know what happened in the fight before this crucial moment, but we do know George locked Myrtle in a room once he figured out she was having an affair. So despite the outward appearance of being ruled by his wife, he does, in fact, have the ability to physically control her. However, he apparently doesn't hit her, the way Tom does, and Myrtle taunts him for it—perhaps insinuating he's less a man than Tom.

This outbreak of both physical violence (George locking up Myrtle) and emotional abuse (probably on both sides) fulfills the earlier sense of the marriage being headed for conflict. Still, it's disturbing to witness the last few minutes of this fractured, unstable partnership.

Daisy and Gatsby Relationship Quotes

"You must know Gatsby."

"Gatsby?" demanded Daisy. "What Gatsby?" (1.60-1)

In the first chapter, we get a few mentions and glimpses of Gatsby, but one of the most interesting is Daisy immediately perking up at his name. She obviously still remembers him and perhaps even thinks about him, but her surprise suggests that she thinks he's long gone, buried deep in her past.

This is in sharp contrast to the image we get of Gatsby himself at the end of the Chapter, reaching actively across the bay to Daisy's house (1.152). While Daisy views Gatsby as a memory, Daisy is Gatsby's past, present, and future. It's clear even in Chapter 1 that Gatsby's love for Daisy is much more intense than her love for him.

"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. (4.151-2)

In Chapter 4, we learn Daisy and Gatsby's story from Jordan: specifically, how they dated in Louisville but it ended when Gatsby went to the front. She also explains how Daisy threatened to call off her marriage to Tom after receiving a letter from Gatsby, but of course ended up marrying him anyway (4.140).

Here we also learn that Gatsby's primary motivation is to get Daisy back, while Daisy is of course in the dark about all of this. This sets the stage for their affair being on unequal footing: while each has love and affection for the other, Gatsby has thought of little else but Daisy for five years while Daisy has created a whole other life for herself .

"We haven't met for many years," said Daisy, her voice as matter-of-fact as it could ever be.

"Five years next November." (5.69-70)

Daisy and Gatsby finally reunite in Chapter 5, the book's mid-point. The entire chapter is obviously important for understanding the Daisy/Gatsby relationship, since we actually see them interact for the first time. But this initial dialogue is fascinating, because we see that Daisy's memories of Gatsby are more abstract and clouded, while Gatsby has been so obsessed with her he knows the exact month they parted and has clearly been counting down the days until their reunion.

They were sitting at either end of the couch looking at each other as if some question had been asked or was in the air, and every vestige of embarrassment was gone. Daisy's face was smeared with tears and when I came in she jumped up and began wiping at it with her handkerchief before a mirror. But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room. (5.87)

After the initially awkward re-introduction, Nick leaves Daisy and Gatsby alone and comes back to find them talking candidly and emotionally. Gatsby has transformed—he is radiant and glowing. In contrast, we don't see Daisy as radically transformed except for her tears. Although our narrator, Nick, pays much closer attention to Gatsby than Daisy, these different reactions suggest Gatsby is much more intensely invested in the relationship.

"They're such beautiful shirts," she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. "It makes me sad because I've never seen such—such beautiful shirts before." (5.118).

Gatsby gets the chance to show off his mansion and enormous wealthy to Daisy, and she breaks down after a very conspicuous display of Gatsby's wealth, through his many-colored shirts.

In Daisy's tears, you might sense a bit of guilt—that Gatsby attained so much just for her—or perhaps regret, that she might have been able to be with him had she had the strength to walk away from her marriage with Tom.

Still, unlike Gatsby, whose motivations are laid bare, it's hard to know what Daisy is thinking and how invested she is in their relationship, despite how openly emotional she is during this reunion. Perhaps she's just overcome with emotion due to reliving the emotions of their first encounters.

In flashback, we hear about Daisy and Gatsby's first kiss, through Gatsby's point of view. We see explicitly in this scene that, for Gatsby, Daisy has come to represent all of his larger hopes and dreams about wealth and a better life—she is literally the incarnation of his dreams . There is no analogous passage on Daisy's behalf, because we actually don't know that much of Daisy's inner life, or certainly not much compared to Gatsby.

So we see, again, the relationship is very uneven—Gatsby has literally poured his heart and soul into it, while Daisy, though she obviously has love and affection for Gatsby, hasn't idolized him in the same way. It becomes clear here that Daisy—who is human and fallible—can never live up to Gatsby's huge projection of her .

"Oh, you want too much!" she cried to Gatsby. "I love you now—isn't that enough? I can't help what's past." She began to sob helplessly. "I did love him once—but I loved you too."

Gatsby's eyes opened and closed.

"You loved me too?" he repeated. (7.264-66)

Here we finally get a glimpse at Daisy's real feelings— she loved Gatsby, but also Tom, and to her those were equal loves . She hasn't put that initial love with Gatsby on a pedestal the way Gatsby has. Gatsby's obsession with her appears shockingly one-sided at this point, and it's clear to the reader she will not leave Tom for him. You can also see why this confession is such a blow to Gatsby: he's been dreaming about Daisy for years and sees her as his one true love, while she can't even rank her love for Gatsby above her love for Tom.

"Was Daisy driving?"

"Yes," he said after a moment, "but of course I'll say I was." (7.397-8)

Despite Daisy's rejection of Gatsby back at the Plaza Hotel, he refuses to believe that it was real and is sure that he can still get her back. His devotion is so intense he doesn't think twice about covering for her and taking the blame for Myrtle's death. In fact, his obsession is so strong he barely seems to register that there's been a death, or to feel any guilt at all. This moment further underscores how much Daisy means to Gatsby, and how comparatively little he means to her.

She was the first "nice" girl he had ever known. In various unrevealed capacities he had come in contact with such people but always with indiscernible barbed wire between. He found her excitingly desirable. He went to her house, at first with other officers from Camp Taylor, then alone. It amazed him—he had never been in such a beautiful house before. But what gave it an air of breathless intensity was that Daisy lived there—it was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at camp was to him. There was a ripe mystery about it, a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through its corridors and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year's shining motor cars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered. It excited him too that many men had already loved Daisy—it increased her value in his eyes. He felt their presence all about the house, pervading the air with the shades and echoes of still vibrant emotions. (8.10, emphasis added)

In Chapter 8, when we get the rest of Gatsby's backstory, we learn more about what drew him to Daisy—her wealth, and specifically the world that opened up to Gatsby as he got to know her. Interestingly, we also learn that her "value increased" in Gatsby's eyes when it became clear that many other men had also loved her. We see then how Daisy got all tied up in Gatsby's ambitions for a better, wealthier life.

You also know, as a reader, that Daisy obviously is human and fallible and can never realistically live up to Gatsby's inflated images of her and what she represents to him. So in these last pages, before Gatsby's death as we learn the rest of Gatsby's story, we sense that his obsessive longing for Daisy was as much about his longing for another, better life, than it was about a single woman.

Tom and Myrtle Relationship Quotes

"I think it's cute," said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. "How much is it?"

"That dog?" He looked at it admiringly. "That dog will cost you ten dollars."

The airedale—undoubtedly there was an airedale concerned in it somewhere though its feet were startlingly white—changed hands and settled down into Mrs. Wilson's lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" she asked delicately.

"That dog? That dog's a boy."

"It's a bitch," said Tom decisively. "Here's your money. Go and buy ten more dogs with it." (2.38-43)

This passage is great because it neatly displays Tom and Myrtle's different attitudes toward the affair . Myrtle thinks that Tom is spoiling her specifically, and that he cares about her more than he really does—after all, he stops to by her a dog just because she says it's cute and insists she wants one on a whim.

But to Tom, the money isn't a big deal. He casually throws away the 10 dollars, aware he's being scammed but not caring, since he has so much money at his disposal. He also insists that he knows more than the dog seller and Myrtle, showing how he looks down at people below his own class—but Myrtle misses this because she's infatuated with both the new puppy and Tom himself.

Myrtle pulled her chair close to mine, and suddenly her warm breath poured over me the story of her first meeting with Tom.

"It was on the two little seats facing each other that are always the last ones left on the train. I was going up to New York to see my sister and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes and I couldn't keep my eyes off him but every time he looked at me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head. When we came into the station he was next to me and his white shirt-front pressed against my arm—and so I told him I'd have to call a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited that when I got into a taxi with him I didn't hardly know I wasn't getting into a subway train. All I kept thinking about, over and over, was 'You can't live forever, you can't live forever.' " (2.119-20)

Myrtle, twelve years into a marriage she's unhappy in, sees her affair with Tom as a romantic escape. She tells the story of how she and Tom met like it's the beginning of a love story. In reality, it's pretty creepy —Tom sees a woman he finds attractive on a train and immediately goes and presses up to her like and convinces her to go sleep with him immediately. Not exactly the stuff of classic romance!

Combined with the fact Myrtle believes Daisy's Catholicism (a lie) is what keeps her and Tom apart, you see that despite Myrtle's pretensions of worldliness, she actually knows very little about Tom or the upper classes, and is a poor judge of character. She is an easy person for Tom to take advantage of.

Some time toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face discussing in impassioned voices whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy's name.

Making a short deft movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand. (2.124-6)

In case the reader was still wondering that perhaps Myrtle's take on the relationship had some basis in truth, this is a cold hard dose of reality. Tom's vicious treatment of Myrtle reminds the reader of his brutality and the fact that, to him, Myrtle is just another affair, and he would never in a million years leave Daisy for her.

Despite the violence of this scene, the affair continues. Myrtle is either so desperate to escape her marriage or so self-deluded about what Tom thinks of her (or both) that she stays with Tom after this ugly scene.

There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind, and as we drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic. His wife and his mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping precipitately from his control. (7.164)

Chapter 2 gives us lots of insight into Myrtle's character and how she sees her affair with Tom. But other than Tom's physical attraction to Myrtle, we don't get as clear of a view of his motivations until later on. In Chapter 7, Tom panics once he finds out George knows about his wife's affair. We learn here that control is incredibly important to Tom—control of his wife, control of his mistress, and control of society more generally (see his rant in Chapter 1 about the "Rise of the Colored Empires" ).

So just as he passionately rants and raves against the "colored races," he also gets panicked and angry when he sees that he is losing control both over Myrtle and Daisy. This speaks to Tom's entitlement —both as a wealthy person, as a man, and as a white person—and shows how his relationship with Myrtle is just another display of power. It has very little to do with his feelings for Myrtle herself. So as the relationship begins to slip from his fingers, he panics—not because he's scared of losing Myrtle, but because he's scared of losing a possession.

"And if you think I didn't have my share of suffering—look here, when I went to give up that flat and saw that damn box of dog biscuits sitting there on the sideboard I sat down and cried like a baby. By God it was awful——" (9.145)

Despite Tom's abhorrent behavior throughout the novel, at the very end, Nick leaves us with an image of Tom confessing to crying over Myrtle. This complicates the reader's desire to see Tom as a straightforward villain. This confession of emotion certainly doesn't redeem Tom, but it does prevent you from seeing him as a complete monster.

Nick and Jordan Relationship Quotes

I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before. (1.57)

As Nick eyes Jordan in Chapter 1, we see his immediate physical attraction to her , though it's not as potent as Tom's to Myrtle. And similarly to Gatsby's attraction to Daisy being to her money and voice, Nick is pulled in by Jordan's posture, her "wan, charming discontented face"— her attitude and status are more alluring than her looks alone . So Nick's attraction to Jordan gives us a bit of insight both in how Tom sees Myrtle and how Gatsby sees Daisy.

"Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon."

"Of course you will," confirmed Daisy. "In fact I think I'll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I'll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing——" (1.131-2)

Throughout the novel, we see Nick avoiding getting caught up in relationships—the woman he mentions back home, the woman he dates briefly in his office, Myrtle's sister—though he doesn't protest to being "flung together" with Jordan. Perhaps this is because Jordan would be a step up for Nick in terms of money and class, which speaks to Nick's ambition and class-consciousness , despite the way he paints himself as an everyman. Furthermore, unlike these other women, Jordan isn't clingy—she lets Nick come to her. Nick sees attracted to how detached and cool she is.

"I hope I never will," she answered. "I hate careless people. That's why I like you."

Her grey, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her. (3.162-70)

Here, Nick is attracted to Jordan's blasé attitude and her confidence that others will avoid her careless behavior—an attitude she can afford because of her money. In other words, Nick seems fascinated by the world of the super-wealthy and the privilege it grants its members.

So just as Gatsby falls in love with Daisy and her wealthy status, Nick also seems attracted to Jordan for similar reasons. However, this conversation not only foreshadows the tragic car accident later in the novel, but it also hints at what Nick will come to find repulsive about Jordan: her callous disregard for everyone but herself .

It was dark now, and as we dipped under a little bridge I put my arm around Jordan's golden shoulder and drew her toward me and asked her to dinner. Suddenly I wasn't thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more but of this clean, hard, limited person who dealt in universal skepticism and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm. A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: "There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired." (4.164)

Nick, again with Jordan, seems exhilarated to be with someone who is a step above him in terms of social class, exhilarated to be a "pursuing" person, rather than just busy or tired . Seeing the usually level-headed Nick this enthralled gives us some insight into Gatsby's infatuation with Daisy, and also allows us to glimpse Nick-the-person, rather than Nick-the-narrator.

And again, we get a sense of what attracts him to Jordan—her clean, hard, limited self, her skepticism, and jaunty attitude. It's interesting to see these qualities become repulsive to Nick just a few chapters later.

Just before noon the phone woke me and I started up with sweat breaking out on my forehead. It was Jordan Baker; she often called me up at this hour because the uncertainty of her own movements between hotels and clubs and private houses made her hard to find in any other way. Usually her voice came over the wire as something fresh and cool as if a divot from a green golf links had come sailing in at the office window but this morning it seemed harsh and dry.

"I've left Daisy's house," she said. "I'm at Hempstead and I'm going down to Southampton this afternoon."

Probably it had been tactful to leave Daisy's house, but the act annoyed me and her next remark made me rigid.

"You weren't so nice to me last night."

"How could it have mattered then?" (8.49-53)

Later in the novel, after Myrtle's tragic death, Jordan's casual, devil-may-care attitude is no longer cute—in fact, Nick finds it disgusting . How can Jordan care so little about the fact that someone died, and instead be most concerned with Nick acting cold and distant right after the accident?

In this brief phone conversation, we thus see Nick's infatuation with Jordan ending, replaced with the realization that Jordan's casual attitude is indicative of everything Nick hates about the rich, old money group . So by extension, Nick's relationship with Jordan represents how his feelings about the wealthy have evolved—at first he was drawn in by their cool, detached attitudes, but eventually found himself repulsed by their carelessness and cruelty.

She was dressed to play golf and I remember thinking she looked like a good illustration, her chin raised a little, jauntily, her hair the color of an autumn leaf, her face the same brown tint as the fingerless glove on her knee. When I had finished she told me without comment that she was engaged to another man. I doubted that though there were several she could have married at a nod of her head but I pretended to be surprised. For just a minute I wondered if I wasn't making a mistake, then I thought it all over again quickly and got up to say goodbye.

"Nevertheless you did throw me over," said Jordan suddenly. "You threw me over on the telephone. I don't give a damn about you now but it was a new experience for me and I felt a little dizzy for a while."

We shook hands.

"Oh, and do you remember—" she added, "——a conversation we had once about driving a car?"

"Why—not exactly."

"You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride."

"I'm thirty," I said. "I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor." (9.129-135)

In their official break-up, Jordan calls out Nick for claiming to be honest and straightforward but in fact being prone to lying himself . So even as Nick is disappointed in Jordan's behavior, Jordan is disappointed to find just another "bad driver" in Nick, and both seem to mutually agree they would never work as a couple. It's interesting to see Nick called out for dishonest behavior for once. For all of his judging of others, he's clearly not a paragon of virtue, and Jordan clearly recognizes that.

This break-up is also interesting because it's the only time we see a relationship end because the two members choose to walk away from each other —all the other failed relationships (Daisy/Gatsby, Tom/Myrtle, Myrtle/George) ended because one or both members died. So perhaps there is a safe way out of a bad relationship in Gatsby—to walk away early, even if it's difficult and you're still "half in love" with the other person (9.136).

If only Gatsby could have realized the same thing.

Key Great Gatsby Symbol Quotes

Click on each symbol to see how it relates to the novel's characters and themes and to get ideas for essay topics!

The Green Light

...a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor's mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.

...he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness. (1.151-152)

One thing in particular is interesting about the introduction of the green light: it's very mysterious . Nick seems not to be quite sure where the light is, or what its function might be:

• Although physically bounded by the width of the bay, the light is described as impossibly small ("minute" means "tiny enough to be almost insignificant") and confusingly distant.
• Even though we find out later that the light never turns off, here Nick only seems to be able to see the light when Gatsby is reaching out towards it. As soon as Gatsby disappears, Nick is in "darkness."
• This vagueness and mystery is a good way for the novel to underscore the fact that this light is a symbol —it stands not just for the physical object that it describes, but for an idea within the book. What's the idea? I'll talk all about it in the next section of this article.

"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. (5.117-118)

This appearance of the green light is just as vitally important as the first one, mostly because the way the light is presented now is totally different than when we first saw it. Instead of the "enchanted" magical object we first saw, now the light has had its "colossal significance," or its symbolic meaning, removed from it. This is because Gatsby is now actually standing there and touching Daisy herself, so he no longer needs to stretch his arms out towards the light or worry that it's shrouded in mist.

However, this separation of the green light from its symbolic meaning is somehow sad and troubling . Gatsby seemingly ignores Daisy putting her arm through his because he is "absorbed" in the thought that the green light is now just a regular thing. Nick's observation that Gatsby's "enchanted objects" are down one sounds like a lament—how many enchanted objects are there in anyone's life?

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's 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, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. (9.152-154)

Now the light has totally ceased being an observable object. Nick is not in Long Island any more, Gatsby is dead, Daisy is gone for good, and the only way the green light exists is in Nick's memories and philosophical observations. This means that the light is now just a symbol and nothing else .

But it is not the same deeply personal symbol it was in the first chapter. Check out the way Nick transitions from describing the green light as something "Gatsby believed in" to using it as something that motivates "us." Gatsby is no longer the only one reaching for this symbol—we all, universally, "stretch out our arms" toward it , hoping to reach it tomorrow or the next day.

You can read more in-depth analysis of the end of the novel in our article on the last paragraphs and last line of the novel .

The Eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckelburg

But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic - their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground… I followed [Tom] over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg's persistent stare... "Terrible place, isn't it," said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg. (2.1-20)

Just like the quasi-mysterious and unreal-sounding green light in Chapter 1 , the eyes of Doctor Eckleburg are presented in a confusing and seemingly surreal way :

Instead of simply saying that there is a giant billboard, Nick first spends several sentences describing seemingly living giant eyes that are hovering in mid-air.

Unlike the very gray, drab, and monochrome surroundings, the eyes are blue and yellow. In a novel that is methodically color-coded, this brightness is a little surreal and connects the eyes to other blue and yellow objects.

Moreover, the description has elements of horror. The "gigantic" eyes are disembodied, with "no face" and a "nonexistent nose."

Adding to this creepy feel is the fact that even after we learn that the eyes are actually part of an advertisement, they are given agency and emotions. They don't simply exist in space, but "look out" and "persistently stare," the miserable landscape causes them to "brood," and they are even able to "exchange a frown" with Tom despite the fact that they have no mouth.

It's clear from this personification of an inanimate object that these eyes stand for something else—a huge, displeased watcher.

We were all irritable now with the fading ale and, aware of it, we drove for a while in silence. Then as Doctor T. J. Eckleburg's faded eyes came into sight down the road, I remembered Gatsby's caution about gasoline….That locality was always vaguely disquieting, even in the broad glare of afternoon, and now I turned my head as though I had been warned of something behind. Over the ashheaps the giant eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg kept their vigil but I perceived, after a moment, that other eyes were regarding us with peculiar intensity from less than twenty feet away.

In one of the windows over the garage the curtains had been moved aside a little and Myrtle Wilson was peering down at the car. (7.136-163)

This time, the eyes are a warning to Nick that something is wrong . He thinks the problem is that the car is low on gas, but as we learn, the real problem at the garage is that George Wilson has found out that Myrtle is having an affair.

Of course, Nick is quickly distracted from the billboard's "vigil" by the fact that Myrtle is staring at the car from the room where George has imprisoned her. She is holding her own "vigil" of sorts, staring out the window at what she thinks is the yellow car of Tom, her would-be savior, and also giving Jordan a death stare under the misguided impression that Jordan is Daisy.

The word "vigil" is important here. It refers to staying awake for a religious purpose, or to keep watch over a stressful and significant time. Here, though, both of those meanings don't quite apply, and the word is used sarcastically.

The billboard eyes can't interact with the characters, but they do point to—or stand in for—a potential higher authority whose "brooding" and "caution" could also be accompanied by judgment. Their useless vigil is echoed by Myrtle's mistaken one—she is vigilant enough to spot Tom driving, but she is wrong to put her trust in him. Later, this trust in Tom and the yellow car is what gets her killed.

"Have you got a church you go to sometimes, George? Maybe even if you haven't been there for a long time? Maybe I could call up the church and get a priest to come over and he could talk to you, see?"

"Don't belong to any." ...

Wilson's glazed eyes turned out to the ashheaps, where small grey clouds took on fantastic shape and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind.

"I spoke to her," he muttered, after a long silence. "I told her she might fool me but she couldn't fool God. I took her to the window—" With an effort he got up and walked to the rear window and leaned with his face pressed against it, "—and I said 'God knows what you've been doing, everything you've been doing. You may fool me but you can't fool God!' "

"That's an advertisement," Michaelis assured him. Something made him turn away from the window and look back into the room. But Wilson stood there a long time, his face close to the window pane, nodding into the twilight. (8.72-105)

Here, finally, the true meaning of the odd billboard that everyone finds so disquieting is revealed.

To the unhinged George Wilson , first totally distraught over Myrtle's affair and then driven past his breaking point by her death, the billboard's eyes are a watchful God . Wilson doesn't go to church, and thus doesn't have access to the moral instruction that will help him control his darker impulses. Still, it seems that Wilson wants God, or at least a God-like influence, in his life—based on him trying to convert the watching eyes of the billboard into a God that will make Myrtle feel bad about "everything [she's] been doing."

In the way George stares "into the twilight" by himself, there is an echo of what we've often seen Gatsby doing—staring at the green light on Daisy's dock . Both men want something unreachable, and both imbue ordinary objects with overwhelming amounts of meaning.

So in the same way Myrtle couldn't see the truth above, this lack of a larger moral compass here guides George (or at least leave him vulnerable) to committing the murder/suicide . Even when characters reach out for a guiding truth in their lives, not only are they denied one, but they are also led instead toward tragedy.

The Valley of Ashes

About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. 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 grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight…

The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour. There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan's mistress. (2.1-3)

After telling us about the "fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air" (1.12) of West Egg in Chapter 1 , Nick shows us just how the glittering wealth of the nouveau riche who live there is accumulated. Much of it comes from industry: factories that pollute the area around them into a "grotesque" and "ghastly" version of a beautiful countryside.

Instead of the bucolic, green image of a regular farm, here we have a "fantastic farm" (fantastic here means "something out of the realm of fantasy") that grows ash instead of wheat and where pollution makes the water "foul" and the air "powdery."

This imagery of growth serves two purposes.

• First, it's disturbing, as it's clearly meant to be. The beauty of the natural world has been transformed into a horrible hellscape of gray ashes. Not only that, but it is turning regular humans into "ash-grey men" who "swarm" like insects around the factories and cargo trains (that's the "line of grey cars"). These are the people who do not get to enjoy either the luxury of life out on Long Island, or the faster-paced anonymous fun that Nick finds himself enjoying in Manhattan. In the novel's world of haves and have-nots , these are the have-nots.
• Second, the passage shows how disconnected the rich are from the source of their wealth . Nick is annoyed when he is a train passenger who has to wait for the drawbridge to lead barges through. But the barges are carrying the building products of the factories. Nick is a bond trader, and bonds are basically loans people give to companies (companies sell bond shares, use that money to grow, and then have to pay back that money to the people who bought the bonds). In the 1920s, the bond market was fueling the construction of skyscrapers, particularly in New York. In other words, the same construction boom that is making Queens into a valley of ashes is also buoying up the new moneyed class that populates West Egg .

"Oh, sure," agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom. (2.17)

In the valley, there is such a thick coating gray dust that it looks like everything is made out of this ashy substance . It's important to note that from a general description of people as "ash-grey men" we now see that ashy description applied specifically to George Wilson . He is covered in a "veil" of desolation, sadness, hopelessness, and everything else associated with the ash.

Also, we see that Myrtle Wilson is the only thing that isn't covered by ash . She visually stands out from her surroundings since she doesn't blend into the "cement color" around her. This makes sense since she is an ambitious character who is eager to escape her life. Notice that she literally steps towards Tom, allying herself with a rich man who is only passing through the ash heaps on his way from somewhere better to somewhere better.

"I'm going to make a big request of you today," he said, pocketing his souvenirs with satisfaction, "so I thought you ought to know something about me. I didn't want you to think I was just some nobody."...

Then the valley of ashes opened out on both sides of us, and I had a glimpse of Mrs. Wilson straining at the garage pump with panting vitality as we went by.

With fenders spread like wings we scattered light through half Astoria—only half, for as we twisted among the pillars of the elevated I heard the familiar "jug—jug—spat!" of a motor cycle, and a frantic policeman rode alongside.

"All right, old sport," called Gatsby. We slowed down. Taking a white card from his wallet he waved it before the man's eyes.

"Right you are," agreed the policeman, tipping his cap. "Know you next time, Mr. Gatsby. Excuse me!"

"What was that?" I inquired. "The picture of Oxford?"

"I was able to do the commissioner a favor once, and he sends me a Christmas card every year." (4.43-54)

While West and East Egg are the settings for the ridiculously extravagance of both the old and new money crowd, and Manhattan the setting for business and organized crime , the valley of ashes tends to be where the novel situates the grubby and underhanded manipulations that show the darker side of the surrounding glamor.

Check out just how many unethical things are going on here:

• Gatsby wants Nick to set him up with Daisy so they can have an affair.
• Mrs. Wilson's "panting vitality" reminds us of her thoroughly unpleasant relationship with Tom.
• A policeman lets Gatsby off the hook for speeding because of Gatsby's connections.
• Nick jokes about Gatsby's shady-sounding story about being an Oxford man.
• Gatsby hints at doing something probably illegal for the police commissioner (possibly supplying him with alcohol?) that makes the commissioner be permanently in his pocket.

Wilson's glazed eyes turned out to the ashheaps, where small grey clouds took on fantastic shape and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind. (8.101)

This brief mention of the ashheaps sets up the chapter's shocking conclusion, once again positioning Wilson as a man who is coming out of the gray world of ashy pollution and factory dust . Notice how the word "fantastic" comes back. The twisted, macabre world of the valley of ashes is spreading. No longer just on the buildings, roads, and people, it is what Wilson's sky is now made out of as well. At the same time, in combination with Wilson's "glazed" eyes, the word "fantastic" seems to point to his deteriorating mental state.

No telephone message arrived but the butler went without his sleep and waited for it until four o'clock—until long after there was any one to give it to if it came. I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn't believe it would come and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about . . . like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees. (8.110)

The final reference to the ashheaps is at the moment of the murder-suicide, as George skulks towards Gatsby floating in his pool. Again, the ashy world is "fantastic"—a word that smacks of scary fairy tales and ghost stories, particularly when combined with the eerie description of Wilson as a "gliding figure" and the oddly shapeless and out of focus ("amorphous") trees.

It's significant that what threatens the fancy world of the Eggs is the creeping encroachment of the ash that they so look down on and are so disgusted by.

Key Quotes From Each Great Gatsby Chapter

Click on the chapter number to read a summary, important character beats, and the themes and symbols the chapter connects with!

Chapter 1 Quotes

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." (1.1-2)

The opening lines of the book color how we understand Nick's description of everything that happens in the novel. Nick wants to present himself as a wise, objective, nonjudgmental observer, but in the course of the novel, as we learn more and more about him, we realize that he is snobby and prejudiced . In fact, it is probably because he knows this about himself that he is so eager to start the story he is telling with a long explanation of what makes him the best possible narrator.

Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men. (1.4)

This is how Nick sums up Gatsby before we have even met him, before we've heard anything about his life. As you read the book, think about how this information informs the way you're responding to Gatsby's actions. How much of what we see about Gatsby is colored by Nick's predetermined conviction that Gatsby is a victim whose "dreams" were "preyed on"? It often feels like Nick is relying on the reader's implicit trust of the narrator to spin Gatsby, make him come across as very sympathetic, and gloss over his flaws.

"Well, it's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved."

"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 have control of things." (1.78-80)

Tom says this at dinner about a book he's really into. Tom is introduced as a bully and a bigot from the very beginning , and his casual racism here is a good indicator of his callous disregard for human life. We will see that his affinity for being "dominant" comes into play whenever he interacts with other people. At the same time, however, Tom tends to surround himself with those who are weaker and less powerful—probably the better to lord his physical, economic, and class power over them.

"I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool." (1.118)

Daisy tells Nick that these are the first words she said after giving birth to her daughter.

This funny and depressing take on what it takes to succeed as a woman in Daisy's world is a good lens into why she acts the way she does. Because she has never had to struggle for anything, because of her material wealth and the fact that she has no ambitions or goals, her life feels empty and meaningless to her. In a way, this wish for her daughter to be a "fool" is coming from a good place. Based on her own experiences, she assumes that a woman who is too stupid to realize that her life is pointless will be happier than one (like Daisy herself) who is restless and filled with existential ennui (which is a fancy way of describing being bored of one's existence).

The first time Nick sees him, Gatsby is making this half-prayerful gesture to the green light at the end of Daisy's dock . This is our first glimpse of his obsession and his quest for the unobtainable. Gatsby makes this reaching movement several times throughout the book , each time because something he has strived for is just out of his grasp.

Chapter 2 Quotes

About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. 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. (2.1)

Every time anyone goes from Long Island to Manhattan or back, they go through this depressing industrial area in the middle of Queens. The factories located here pollute the air and land around them—their detritus is what makes the "ash" dust that covers everything and everyone. This is the place where those who cannot succeed in the rat race end up, hopeless and lacking any way to escape . Check out our focused article for a much more in-depth analysis of what the crucial symbol of "the valley of ashes" stands for in this novel.

The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground. (2.2)

There is no God in the novel. None of the characters seems to be religious, no one wonders about the moral or ethical implications of any actions, and in the end, there are no punishments doled out to the bad or rewards given to the good. This lack of religious feeling is partly what makes Tom's lie to Myrtle about Daisy being a Catholic particularly egregious. This lack of even a basic moral framework is underscored by the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg , a giant billboard that is as close as this world gets to having a watchful authoritative presence.

This chapter is our main exposure to Myrtle Wilson, Tom's mistress . Here, we see the main points of her personality—or at least the way that she comes across to Nick. First, it's interesting to note that aside from Tom, whose hulkish physique Nick really pays a lot of attention to, Myrtle is the only character whose physicality is dwelt on at length. We hear a lot about her body and the way she moves in space—here, we not only get her "sweeping" across the room, "expanding," and "revolving," but also the sense that her "gestures" are somehow "violent." It makes sense that for Nick, who is into the cool and detached Jordan, Myrtle's overenthusiastic affect is a little off-putting. But remember this focus on Myrtle's body when you read Chapter 7 , where this body will be exposed in a shocking way.

Making a short deft movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand. (2.124-126)

This bit of violence succinctly encapsulates Tom's brutality , how little he thinks of Myrtle, and it also speaks volumes about their vastly unequal and disturbing relationship . Two things to think about:

#1: Why doesn't Tom want Myrtle to mention Daisy? It could be a way of maintaining discretion—to keep secret her identity in order to hide the affair. But, considering everyone in town apparently knows about Myrtle, this doesn't seem to be the reason. More likely is the fact that Tom does actually hold Daisy in much higher regard than Myrtle, and he refuses to let the lower class woman "degrade" his high-class wife by talking about her freely. This is yet again an example of his extreme snobbery.

#2: Tom is a person who uses his body to get what he wants. Sometimes this is within socially acceptable boundaries—for example, on the football field at Yale—and sometimes it is to browbeat everyone around him into compliance. It's also interesting that both Tom and Myrtle are such physically present characters in the novel—in this moment, Myrtle is the only character that actually stands up to Tom. In a way, they are a perfect match.

Chapter 3 Quotes

I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited—they went there. They got into automobiles which bore them out to Long Island and somehow they ended up at Gatsby's door. Once there they were introduced by somebody who knew Gatsby and after that they conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with amusement parks. Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission. (3.7)

Gatsby's parties are the epitome of anonymous, meaningless excess—so much so that people treat his house as a kind of public, or at least commercial, space rather than a private home. This is connected to the vulgarity of new money —you can't imagine Tom and Daisy throwing a party like this. Or Nick for that matter. The random and meaningless indulgence of his parties further highlights Gatsby's isolation from true friends . As Jordan says later, large parties are great because they provide privacy/intimacy, so Gatsby stands alone in a sea of strangers having their own intimate moments.

A stout, middle-aged man with enormous owl-eyed spectacles was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with unsteady concentration at the shelves of books. …He waved his hand toward the book-shelves.

"About that. As a matter of fact you needn't bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They're real…."Absolutely real—have pages and everything. I thought they'd be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they're absolutely real. Pages and—Here! Lemme show you."

Taking our skepticism for granted, he rushed to the bookcases and returned with Volume One of the "Stoddard Lectures."

"See!" he cried triumphantly. "It's a bona fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella's a regular Belasco. It's a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop too—didn't cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?" (3.41-50)

Belasco was a renowned theatrical producer, so comparing Gatsby to him here is a way of describing the library as a stage set for a play—in other words, as a magnificent and convincing fake. This sea of unread books is either yet more tremendous waste of resources, or a kind of miniature example of the fact that a person's core identity remains the same no matter how many layers of disguise are placed on top.

Gatsby has the money to buy these books, but he lacks the interest, depth, time, or ambition to read and understand them , which is similar to how he regards his quest to get Daisy.

He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. 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 external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so 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. Precisely at that point it vanished—and I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he introduced himself I'd got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care. (3.76)

Lots of Gatsby's appeal lies in his ability to instantly connect with the person he is speaking to , to make that person feel important and valued. This is probably what makes him a great front man for Wolfsheim's bootlegging enterprise, and connects him with Daisy, who also has a preternaturally appealing quality— her voice .

Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply—I was casually sorry, and then I forgot. (3.161)

The offhanded misogyny of this remark that Nick makes about Jordan is telling in a novel where women are generally treated as objects at worst or lesser beings at best. Even our narrator, ostensibly a tolerant and nonjudgmental observer, here reveals a core of patriarchal assumptions that run deep.

There are layers of meaning and humor here.

First, the humor:

While in Christian tradition there is the concept of cardinal virtues, honesty is not one of them. So here, since the phrase "cardinal sin" is the more familiar concept, there is a small joke that Nick's honesty is actually a negative quality, a burden.

Nick is telling us about his scrupulous honesty a second after he's revealed that he's been writing love letters to a girl back home every week despite wanting to end their relationship, and despite dating a girl at his office, and then dating Jordan in the meantime. So honesty to Nick doesn't really mean what it might to most people.

Second, the meaning:

What does it mean to have our narrator tell us in one breath that he is honest to a fault, and that he doesn't think that most other people are honest? This sounds like a humblebrag kind of observation. But also, we need to question Nick's ability to understand/empathize with other people if he thinks he is on such a removed plane of existence from them. And of course since he just showed us that he is not actually all that honest only a paragraph ago, we need to realize that his narration is probably not completely factual/accurate/truthful. Plus, this observation comes at the end of the third chapter, after we've met all the major players finally—so it's like the board has been set, and now we finally have enough information to distrust our narrator.

Chapter 4 Quotes

"I'm going to make a big request of you today," he said, pocketing his souvenirs with satisfaction, "so I thought you ought to know something about me. I didn't want you to think I was just some nobody. You see, I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad thing that happened to me." (4.43)

The more Gatsby seems to reveal about himself, the more he deepens the mystery —it's amazing how clichéd and yet how intriguing the "sad thing" he mentions immediately is. It's also interesting that Gatsby uses his origin story as a transaction —he's not sharing his past with Nick to form a connection, but as advance payment for a favor. At the same time, there's a lot of humor in this scene. Imagine any time you told anyone something about yourself, you then had to whip out some physical object to prove it was true!

Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder. (4.56-58)

In a novel so concerned with fitting in, with rising through social ranks, and with having the correct origins, it's always interesting to see where those who fall outside this ranking system are mentioned. Just he earlier described loving the anonymity of Manhattan , here Nick finds himself enjoying a similar melting-pot quality as he sees an indistinctly ethnic funeral procession ("south-eastern Europe" most likely means the people are Greek) and a car with both black and white people in it.

What is now racist terminology is here used pejoratively, but not necessarily with the same kind of blind hatred that Tom demonstrates. Instead, Nick can see that within the black community there are also social ranks and delineations—he distinguishes between the way the five black men in the car are dressed, and notes that they feel ready to challenge him and Gatsby in some car-related way. Do they want to race? To compare clothing? It's unclear, but it adds to the sense of possibility that the drive to Manhattan always represents in the book.

"Meyer Wolfshiem? No, he's a gambler." Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly: "He's the man who fixed the World's Series back in 1919."

"Fixed the World's Series?" I repeated.

The idea staggered me. I remembered of course that the World's Series had been fixed in 1919 but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people—with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.

"How did he happen to do that?" I asked after a minute.

"He just saw the opportunity."

"Why isn't he in jail?"

"They can't get him, old sport. He's a smart man."

(4.113-119)

Nick's amazement at the idea of one man being behind an enormous event like the fixed World Series is telling. For one thing, the powerful gangster as a prototype of pulling-himself-up-by-his-bootstraps, self-starting man, which the American Dream holds up as a paragon of achievement, mocks this individualist ideal .

It also connects Gatsby to the world of crime, swindling, and the underhanded methods necessary to effect enormous change. In a smaller, less criminal way, watching Wolfshiem maneuver has clearly rubbed off on Gatsby and his convolutedly large-scale scheme to get Daisy's attention by buying an enormous mansion nearby.

Nick thinks this about Jordan while they are kissing. Two things to ponder:

• Which one does he think he is: the pursued or the pursuing? The busy or the tired? Perhaps we are meant to match these adjectives up to the two people involved in the main love story, in which case Gatsby is both the pursuing and the busy, while Daisy is the pursued and the tired.
• If Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby are locked into a romantic triangle (or square, if we include Myrtle), then Jordan and Nick are vying for the position of narrator . Nick presents himself as the objective, nonjudgmental observer—the confidant of everyone he meets. So it's interesting that here we get his perspective on Jordan's narrative style—"universal skepticism"—right after she gets to take over telling the story for a huge chunk of the chapter. Which is the better approach, we are being asked, the overly credulous or the jaded and disbelieving? Are we more likely to believe Jordan when she says something positive about someone since she is so quick to find fault? For example, it seems important that she be the one to state that Daisy hasn't had any affairs, not Nick.

Chapter 5 Quotes

"You're selling bonds, aren't you, old sport?"..."Well, this would interest you. It wouldn't take up much of your time and you might pick up a nice bit of money. It happens to be a rather confidential sort of thing."

I realize now that under different circumstances that conversation might have been one of the crises of my life. But, because the offer was obviously and tactlessly for a service to be rendered, I had no choice except to cut him off there. (5.22-25)

Nick recognizes that what he quickly dismissed in the moment could easily have been the moral quandary that altered his whole future. It seems that Nick thinks this was his chance to enter the world of crime—if we assume that what Gatsby was proposing is some kind of insider trading or similarly illegal speculative activity—and be thus trapped on the East Coast rather than retreating to the Midwest.

It's striking that Nick recognizes that his ultimate weakness—the thing that can actually tempt him—is money . In this way, he is different from Gatsby, whose temptation is love, and Tom, whose temptation is sex —and of course, he is also different because he resists the temptation rather than going all-in. Although Nick's refusal could be spun as a sign of his honesty, it instead underscores how much he adheres to rules of politeness. After all, he only rejects the idea because he feels he "had no choice" about the proposal because it was "tactless." Who knows what shenanigans Nick would have been on board with if only Gatsby were a little smoother in his approach?

On the one hand, the depth of Gatsby's feelings for Daisy is romantic . He's living the hyperbole of every love sonnet and torch song ever written. After all, this is the first time we see Gatsby lose control of himself and his extremely careful self-presentation. But on the other hand, does he actually know anything about Daisy as a human being? Notice that it's "the idea" that he's consumed with, not so much the reality. The word "wonder" makes it sound like he's having a religious experience in Daisy's presence. The pedestal that he has put her on is so incredibly high there's nothing for her to do but prove disappointing.

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. (5.121)

Almost immediately when he's finally got her, Daisy starts to fade from an ideal object of desire into a real life human being . It doesn't even matter how potentially wonderful a person she may be—she could never live up to the idea of an "enchanted object" since she is neither magical nor a thing. There is also a question here of "what's next?" for Gatsby. If you have only one goal in life, and you end up reaching that goal, what is your life's purpose now?

Chapter 6 Quotes

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. (6.7)

Here is the clearest connection of Gatsby and the ideal of the independent, individualistic, self-made man —the ultimate symbol of the American Dream . It's telling that in describing Gatsby this way, Nick also links him to other ideas of perfection.

• First, he references Plato's philosophical construct of the ideal form—a completely inaccessible perfect object that exists outside of our real existence.
• Second, Nick references various Biblical luminaries like Adam and Jesus who are called "son of God" in the New Testament—again, linking Gatsby to mythic and larger than life beings who are far removed from lived experience. Gatsby's self-mythologizing is in this way part of a grander tradition of myth-making.

Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy's running around alone, for on the following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby's party. Perhaps his presence gave the evening its peculiar quality of oppressiveness—it stands out in my memory from Gatsby's other parties that summer. There were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same profusion of champagne, the same many-colored, many-keyed commotion, but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn't been there before. Or perhaps I had merely grown used to it, grown to accept West Egg as a world complete in itself, with its own standards and its own great figures, second to nothing because it had no consciousness of being so, and now I was looking at it again, through Daisy's eyes. It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment. (6.60)

What for Nick had been a center of excitement, celebrity, and luxury is now suddenly a depressing spectacle. It's interesting that partly this is because Daisy and Tom are in some sense invaders—their presence disturbs the enclosed world of West Egg because it reminds Nick of West Egg's lower social standing. It's also key to see that having Tom and Daisy there makes Nick self-aware of the psychic work he has had to do to "adjust" to the vulgarity and different "standards" of behavior he's been around. Remember that he entered the novel on a social footing similar to that of Tom and Daisy. Now he's suddenly reminded that by hanging around with Gatsby, he has debased himself.

But the rest offended her—and inarguably, because it wasn't a gesture but an emotion. She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented "place" that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village—appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short cut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand. (6.96)

Just as earlier we were treated to Jordan as a narrator stand-in , now we have a new set of eyes through which to view the story—Daisy's. Her snobbery is deeply ingrained, and she doesn't do anything to hide it or overcome it (unlike Nick, for example). Like Jordan, Daisy is judgmental and critical. Unlike Jordan , Daisy expresses this through "emotion" rather than cynical mockery. Either way, what Daisy doesn't like is that the nouveau riche haven't learned to hide their wealth under a veneer of gentility —full of the "raw vigor" that has very recently gotten them to this station in life, they are too obviously materialistic. Their "simplicity" is their single-minded devotion to money and status, which in her mind makes the journey from birth to death ("from nothing to nothing") meaningless.

He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: "I never loved you." (6.125)

Hang on to this piece of information—it will be important later. This is really symptomatic of Gatsby's absolutist feelings towards Daisy . It's not enough for her to leave Tom. Instead, Gatsby expects Daisy to repudiate her entire relationship with Tom in order to show that she has always been just as monomaniacally obsessed with him as he has been with her. The problem is that this robs her of her humanity and personhood—she is not exactly like him, and it's unhealthy that he demands for her to be an identical reflection of his mindset.

"I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before," he said, nodding determinedly. "She'll see."

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. . . (6.128-132)

This is one of the most famous quotations from the novel. Gatsby's blind faith in his ability to recreate some quasi-fictional past that he's been dwelling on for five years is both a tribute to his romantic and idealistic nature ( the thing that Nick eventually decides makes him "great" ) and a clear indication that he just might be a completely delusional fantasist. So far in his life, everything that he's fantasized about when he first imagined himself as Jay Gatsby has come true. But in that transformation, Gatsby now feels like he has lost a fundamental piece of himself—the thing he "wanted to recover."

Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something—an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man's, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever. (6.135)

Just as Gatsby is searching for an unrecoverable piece of himself, so Nick also has a moment of wanting to connect with something that seems familiar but is out of reach . In a nice bit of subtle snobbery, Nick dismisses Gatsby's description of his love for Daisy as treacly nonsense ("appalling sentimentality"), but finds his own attempt to remember a snippet of a love song or poem as a mystically tragic bit of disconnection. This gives us a quick glimpse into Nick the character—a pragmatic man who is quick to judge others (much quicker than his self-assessment as an objective observer would have us believe) and who is far more self-centered than he realizes.

Chapter 7 Quotes

Then she remembered the heat and sat down guiltily on the couch just as a freshly laundered nurse leading a little girl came into the room.

"Bles-sed pre-cious," she crooned, holding out her arms. "Come to your own mother that loves you."

The child, relinquished by the nurse, rushed across the room and rooted shyly into her mother's dress.

"The Bles-sed pre-cious! Did mother get powder on your old yellowy hair? Stand up now, and say How-de-do."

Gatsby and I in turn leaned down and took the small reluctant hand. Afterward he kept looking at the child with surprise. I don't think he had ever really believed in its existence before. (7.48-52)

This is our first and only chance to see Daisy performing motherhood . And "performing" is the right word, since everything about Daisy's actions here rings a little false and her cutesy sing song a little bit like an act. The presence of the nurse makes it clear that, like many upper-class women of the time, Daisy does not actually do any child rearing .

At the same time, this is the moment when Gatsby's delusional dreams start breaking down . The shock and surprise that he experiences when he realizes that Daisy really does have a daughter with Tom show how little he has thought about the fact the Daisy has had a life of her own outside of him for the last five years. The existence of the child is proof of Daisy's separate life, and Gatsby simply cannot handle then she is not exactly as he has pictured her to be.

Finally, here we can see how Pammy is being bred for her life as a future "beautiful little fool", as Daisy put it . As Daisy's makeup rubs onto Pammy's hair, Daisy prompts her reluctant daughter to be friendly to two strange men.

"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon," cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?"

"Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."(7.74-75)

Comparing and contrasting Daisy and Jordan ) is one of the most common assignments that you will get when studying this novel. This very famous quotation is a great place to start.

Daisy's attempt at a joke reveals her fundamental boredom and restlessness. Despite the fact that she has social standing, wealth, and whatever material possessions she could want, she is not happy in her endlessly monotonous and repetitive life. This existential ennui goes a long way to helping explain why she seizes on Gatsby as an escape from routine.

On the other hand, Jordan is a pragmatic and realistic person, who grabs opportunities and who sees possibilities and even repetitive cyclical moments of change. For example here, although fall and winter are most often linked to sleep and death, whereas it is spring that is usually seen as the season of rebirth, for Jordan any change brings with it the chance for reinvention and new beginnings.

Here we are getting to the root of what it is really that attracts Gatsby so much to Daisy.

Nick notes that the way Daisy speaks to Gatsby is enough to reveal their relationship to Tom. Once again we see the powerful attraction of Daisy's voice. For Nick, this voice is full of "indiscretion," an interesting word that at the same time brings to mind the revelation of secrets and the disclosure of illicit sexual activity. Nick has used this word in this connotation before—when describing Myrtle in Chapter 2 he uses the word "discreet" several times to explain the precautions she takes to hide her affair with Tom.

But for Gatsby, Daisy's voice does not hold this sexy allure, as much as it does the promise of wealth , which has been his overriding ambition and goal for most of his life. To him, her voice marks her as a prize to be collected. This impression is further underscored by the fairy tale imagery that follows the connection of Daisy's voice to money. Much like princesses who is the end of fairy tales are given as a reward to plucky heroes, so too Daisy is Gatsby's winnings, an indication that he has succeeded.

"You think I'm pretty dumb, don't you?" he suggested. "Perhaps I am, but I have a—almost a second sight, sometimes, that tells me what to do. Maybe you don't believe that, but science——" (7.123)

Nick never sees Tom as anything other than a villain ; however, it is interesting that only Tom immediately sees Gatsby for the fraud that he turns out to be . Almost from the get-go, Tom calls it that Gatsby's money comes from bootlegging or some other criminal activity. It is almost as though Tom's life of lies gives him special insight into detecting the lies of others.

The relentless beating heat was beginning to confuse me and I had a bad moment there before I realized that so far his suspicions hadn't alighted on Tom. He had discovered that Myrtle had some sort of life apart from him in another world and the shock had made him physically sick. I stared at him and then at Tom, who had made a parallel discovery less than an hour before—and it occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well. Wilson was so sick that he looked guilty, unforgivably guilty—as if he had just got some poor girl with child. (7.160)

You will also often be asked to compare Tom and Wilson , two characters who share some plot details in common.This passage, which explicitly contrasts these two men's reactions to finding out their wives are having affairs , is a great place to start.

• Tom's response to Daisy and Gatsby's relationship is to immediately do everything to display his power. He forces a trip to Manhattan, demands that Gatsby explain himself, systematically dismantles the careful image and mythology that Gatsby has created, and finally makes Gatsby drive Daisy home to demonstrate how little he has to fear from them being alone together.
• Wilson also tries to display power. But he is so unused to wielding it that his best effort is to lock Myrtle up and then to listen to her emasculating insults and provocations. Moreover, rather than relaxing under this power trip, Wilson becomes physically ill, feeling guilty both about his part in driving his wife away and about manhandling her into submission.
• Finally, it is interesting that Nick renders these reactions as health-related. Whose response does Nick view as "sick" and whose as "well"? It is tempting to connect Wilson's bodily response to the word "sick," but the ambiguity is purposeful. Is it sicker in this situation to take a power-hungry delight in eviscerating a rival, Tom-style, or to be overcome on a psychosomatic level, like Wilson?

"Self control!" repeated Tom incredulously. "I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that's the idea you can count me out. . . . Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions and next they'll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white."

Flushed with his impassioned gibberish he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization.

"We're all white here," murmured Jordan.

"I know I'm not very popular. I don't give big parties. I suppose you've got to make your house into a pigsty in order to have any friends—in the modern world."

Angry as I was, as we all were, I was tempted to laugh whenever he opened his mouth. The transition from libertine to prig was so complete. (7.229-233)

Nick is happy whenever he gets to demonstrate how undereducated and dumb Tom actually is . Here, Tom's anger at Daisy and Gatsby is somehow transformed into a self-pitying and faux righteous rant about miscegenation, loose morals, and the decay of stalwart institutions. We see the connection between Jordan and Nick when both of them puncture Tom's pompous balloon : Jordan points out that race isn't really at issue at the moment, and Nick laughs at the hypocrisy of a womanizer like Tom suddenly lamenting his wife's lack of prim propriety.

"She never loved you, do you hear?" he cried. "She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. It was a terrible mistake, but in her heart she never loved any one except me!" (7.241)

Gatsby throws caution to the wind and reveals the story that he has been telling himself about Daisy all this time. In his mind, Daisy has been pining for him as much as he has been longing for her, and he has been able to explain her marriage to himself simply by eliding any notion that she might have her own hopes, dreams, ambitions, and motivations. Gatsby has been propelled for the last five years by the idea that he has access to what is in Daisy's heart. However, we can see that a dream built on this kind of shifting sand is at best wishful thinking and at worst willful self-delusion.

"Daisy, that's all over now," he said earnestly. "It doesn't matter any more. Just tell him the truth—that you never loved him—and it's all wiped out forever." ...

She hesitated. Her eyes fell on Jordan and me with a sort of appeal, as though she realized 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….

"You loved me too?" he repeated. (7.254-266)

Gatsby wants nothing less than that Daisy erase the last five years of her life. He is unwilling to accept the idea that Daisy has had feelings for someone other than him, that she has had a history that does not involve him, and that she has not spent every single second of every day wondering when he would come back into her life. His absolutism is a form of emotional blackmail.

For all Daisy's evident weaknesses, it is a testament to her psychological strength that she is simply unwilling to recreate herself, her memories, and her emotions in Gatsby's image. She could easily at this point say that she has never loved Tom, but this would not be true, and she does not want to give up her independence of mind. Unlike Gatsby, who against all evidence to the contrary believes that you can repeat the past, Daisy wants to know that there is a future. She wants Gatsby to be the solution to her worries about each successive future day, rather than an imprecation about the choices she has made to get to this point.

At the same time, it's key to note Nick's realization that Daisy "had never intended on doing anything at all." Daisy has never planned to leave Tom. We've known this ever since the first time we saw them at the end of Chapter 1 , when he realized that they were cemented together in their dysfunction.

It passed, and he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything, defending his name against accusations that had not been made. But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room. (7.292)

The appearance of Daisy's daughter and Daisy's declaration that at some point in her life she loved Tom have both helped to crush Gatsby's obsession with his dream. In just the same way, Tom's explanations about who Gatsby really is and what is behind his facade have broken Daisy's infatuation. Take note of the language here— as Daisy is withdrawing from Gatsby, we come back to the image of Gatsby with his arms outstretched, trying to grab something that is just out of reach . In this case it's not just Daisy herself, but also his dream of being with her inside his perfect memory.

Myrtle fights by provoking and taunting . Here, she is pointing out Wilson's weak and timid nature by egging him on to treat her the way that Tom did when he punched her earlier in the novel.

However, before we draw whatever conclusions we can about Myrtle from this exclamation, it's worthwhile to think about the context of this remark.

• First, we are getting this speech third-hand. This is Nick telling us what Michaelis described overhearing, so Myrtle's words have gone through a double male filter.
• Second, Myrtle's words stand in isolation. We have no idea what Wilson has been saying to her to provoke this attack. What we do know is that however "powerless" Wilson might be, he still has power enough to imprison his wife in their house and to unilaterally uproot and move her several states away against her will. Neither Nick nor Michaelis remarks on whether either of these exercises of unilateral power over Myrtle is appropriate or fair—it is simply expected that this is what a husband can do to a wife.

So what do we make of the fact that Myrtle was trying to verbally emasculate her husband? Maybe yelling at him is her only recourse in a life where she has no actual ability to control her life or bodily integrity.

The "death car" as the newspapers called it, didn't stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment and then disappeared around the next bend. Michaelis wasn't even sure of its color—he told the first policeman that it was light green. The other car, the one going toward New York, came to rest a hundred yards beyond, and its driver hurried back to where Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick, dark blood with the dust.

Michaelis and this man reached her first but when they had torn open her shirtwaist still damp with perspiration, they saw that her left breast was swinging loose like a flap and there was no need to listen for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide open and ripped at the corners as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long. (7.316-317)

The stark contrast here between the oddly ghostly nature of the car that hits Myrtle and the visceral, gruesome, explicit imagery of what happens to her body after it is hit is very striking. The car almost doesn't seem real—it comes out of the darkness like an avenging spirit and disappears, Michaelis cannot tell what color it is. Meanwhile, Myrtle's corpse is described in detail and is palpably physical and present.

This treatment of Myrtle's body might be one place to go when you are asked to compare Daisy and Myrtle in class . Daisy's body is never even described, beyond a gentle indication that she prefers white dresses that are flouncy and loose. On the other hand, every time that we see Myrtle in the novel, her body is physically assaulted or appropriated. Tom initially picks her up by pressing his body inappropriately into hers on the train station platform. Before her party, Tom has sex with her while Nick (a man who is a stranger to Myrtle) waits in the next room, and then Tom ends the night by punching her in the face. Finally, she is restrained by her husband inside her house and then run over.

They weren't happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale—and yet they weren't unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together. (7.409-410)

And so, the promise that Daisy and Tom are a dysfunctional couple that somehow makes it work (Nick saw this at the end of Chapter 1 ) is fulfilled. For careful readers of the novel, this conclusion should have been clear from the get-go. Daisy complains about Tom, and Tom serially cheats on Daisy, but at the end of the day, they are unwilling to forgo the privileges their life entitles them to.

This moment of truth has stripped Daisy and Tom down to the basics. They are in the least showy room of their mansion, sitting with simple and unpretentious food, and they have been stripped of their veneer. Their honesty makes what they are doing—conspiring to get away with murder, basically—completely transparent. And it is the fact that they can tolerate this level of honesty in each other besides each being kind of a terrible person that keeps them together.

Compare their readiness to forgive each other anything—even murder!—with Gatsby's insistence that it's his way or no way.

Chapter 8 Quotes

She was the first "nice" girl he had ever known. In various unrevealed capacities he had come in contact with such people but always with indiscernible barbed wire between. He found her excitingly desirable. He went to her house, at first with other officers from Camp Taylor, then alone. It amazed him—he had never been in such a beautiful house before. But what gave it an air of breathless intensity was that Daisy lived there—it was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at camp was to him. There was a ripe mystery about it, a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through its corridors and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year's shining motor cars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered. It excited him too that many men had already loved Daisy—it increased her value in his eyes. He felt their presence all about the house, pervading the air with the shades and echoes of still vibrant emotions. (8.10)

The reason the word "nice" is in quotation marks is that Gatsby does not mean that Daisy is the first pleasant or amiable girl that he has met. Instead, the word "nice" here means refined, having elegant and elevated taste, picky and fastidious. In other words, from the very beginning what Gatsby most values about Daisy is that she belongs to that set of society that he is desperately trying to get into: the wealthy, upper echelon. Just like when he noted the Daisy's voice has money in it, here Gatsby almost cannot separate Daisy herself from the beautiful house that he falls in love with.

Notice also how much he values quantity of any kind —it's wonderful that the house has many bedrooms and corridors, and it's also wonderful that many men want Daisy. Either way, it's the quantity itself that "increases value." It's almost like Gatsby's love is operating in a market economy —the more demand there is for a particular good, the higher the worth of that good. Of course, thinking in this way makes it easy to understand why Gatsby is able to discard Daisy's humanity and inner life when he idealizes her.

For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of the year, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new tunes. All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the "Beale Street Blues" while a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the grey tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor.

Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the season; suddenly she was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with half a dozen men and drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor beside her bed. And all the time something within her was crying for a decision. She wanted her life shaped now, immediately - and the decision must be made by some force - of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality - that was close at hand. (8.18-19)

This description of Daisy's life apart from Gatsby clarifies why she picks Tom in the end and goes back to her hopeless ennui and passive boredom: this is what she has grown up doing and is used to. Daisy's life seems fancy. After all, there are orchids and orchestras and golden shoes.

But already, even for the young people of high society, death and decay loom large . In this passage for example, not only is the orchestra's rhythm full of sadness, but the orchids are dying, and the people themselves look like flowers past their prime. In the midst of this stagnation, Daisy longs for stability, financial security, and routine. Tom offered that then, and he continues to offer it now.

"Of course she might have loved him, just for a minute, when they were first married—and loved me more even then, do you see?"

Suddenly he came out with a curious remark:

"In any case," he said, "it was just personal."

What could you make of that, except to suspect some intensity in his conception of the affair that couldn't be measured? (8.24-27)

Even though he can now no longer be an absolutist about Daisy's love, Gatsby is still trying to think about her feelings on his own terms . After admitting that the fact that many men loved Daisy before him is a positive, Gatsby is willing to admit that maybe Daisy had feelings for Tom after all, just as long as her love for Gatsby was supreme.

Gatsby is ambiguous admission that "it was just personal" carries several potential meanings:

• Nick assumes that the word "it" refers to Gatsby's love, which Gatsby is describing as "personal" as a way of emphasizing how deep and inexplicable his feelings for Daisy are.
• But of course, the word "it" could just as easily be referring to Daisy's decision to marry Tom. In this case, what is "personal" are Daisy's reasons (the desire for status and money), which are hers alone, and have no bearing on the love that she and Gatsby feel for each other.

He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever. (8.30)

Once again Gatsby is trying to reach something that is just out of grasp , a gestural motif that recurs frequently in this novel. Here already, even as a young man, he is trying to grab hold of an ephemeral memory.

"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. His gorgeous pink rag of a suit made a bright spot of color against the white steps and I thought of the night when I first came to his ancestral home three months before. The lawn and drive had been crowded with the faces of those who guessed at his corruption—and he had stood on those steps, concealing his incorruptible dream, as he waved them goodbye. (8.45-46)

It's interesting that here Nick suddenly tells us that he disapproves of Gatsby. One way to interpret this is that during that fateful summer, Nick did indeed disapprove of what he saw, but has since come to admire and respect Gatsby , and it is that respect and admiration that come through in the way he tells the story most of the time.

It's also telling that Nick sees the comment he makes to Gatsby as a compliment. At best, it is a backhanded one—he is saying that Gatsby is better than a rotten crowd, but that is a bar set very low (if you think about it, it's like saying "you're so much smarter than that chipmunk!" and calling that high praise). Nick's description of Gatsby's outfit as both "gorgeous" and a "rag" underscores this sense of condescension. The reason Nick thinks that he is praising Gatsby by saying this is that suddenly, in this moment, Nick is able to look past his deeply and sincerely held snobbery, and to admit that Jordan, Tom, and Daisy are all horrible people despite being upper crust.

Still, backhanded as it is, this compliment also meant to genuinely make Gatsby feel a bit better. Since Gatsby cares so, so much about entering the old money world, it makes Nick glad to be able to tell Gatsby that he is so much better than the crowd he's desperate to join.

Usually her voice came over the wire as something fresh and cool as if a divot from a green golf links had come sailing in at the office window but this morning it seemed harsh and dry.

Jordan's pragmatic opportunism , which has so far been a positive foil to Daisy's listless inactivity , is suddenly revealed to be an amoral and self-involved way of going through life . Instead of being affected one way or another by Myrtle's horrible death, Jordan's takeaway from the previous day is that Nick simply wasn't as attentive to her as she would like.

Nick is staggered by the revelation that the cool aloofness that he liked so much throughout the summer—possibly because it was a nice contrast to the girl back home that Nick thought was overly attached to their non-engagement—is not actually an act. Jordan really doesn't care about other people, and she really can just shrug off seeing Myrtle's mutilated corpse and focus on whether Nick was treating her right. Nick, who has been trying to assimilate this kind of thinking all summer long, finds himself shocked back into his Middle West morality here.

Clearly Wilson has been psychologically shaken first by Myrtle's affair and then by her death—he is seeing the giant eyes of the optometrist billboard as a stand-in for God. But this delusion underlines the absence of any higher power in the novel. In the lawless, materialistic East, there is no moral center which could rein in people's darker, immoral impulses. The motif of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg's eyes runs through the novel, as Nick notes them watching whatever goes on in the ashheaps . Here, that motif comes to a crescendo. Arguably, when Michaelis dispels Wilson's delusion about the eyes, he takes away the final barrier to Wilson's unhinged revenge plot. If there is no moral authority watching, anything goes.

Nick tries to imagine what it might be like to be Gatsby, but a Gatsby without the activating dream that has spurred him throughout his life . For Nick, this would be the loss of the aesthetic sense—an inability to perceive beauty in roses or sunlight. The idea of fall as a new, but horrifying, world of ghosts and unreal material contrasts nicely with Jordan's earlier idea that fall brings with it rebirth .

Chapter 9 Quotes

I found myself on Gatsby's side, and alone. From the moment I telephoned news of the catastrophe to West Egg village, every surmise about him, and every practical question, was referred to me. At first I was surprised and confused; then, as he lay in his house and didn't move or breathe or speak hour upon hour it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no one else was interested—interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to which every one has some vague right at the end. (9.3)

Just like during his life, after his death, rumors swirl around Gatsby. Usually, death makes people treat even the most ambiguous figures with the respect that's supposedly owed to the dead. But Gatsby's death only invites more speculation, gawking, and a circus-like atmosphere . Note that even here, Nick still does not acknowledge his feelings of friendship and admiration for Gatsby. Instead, he claims to be the point person for Gatsby is funeral because of a general sense that "everyone" deserves someone to take a personal interest. But of course, there is no such right, as evidenced by the fact that Nick is the only person who cares about Gatsby as a human being rather than a sideshow.

After a little while Mr. Gatz opened the door and came out, his mouth ajar, his face flushed slightly, his eyes leaking isolated and unpunctual tears. He had reached an age where death no longer has the quality of ghastly surprise, and when he looked around him now for the first time and saw the height and splendor of the hall and the great rooms opening out from it into other rooms his grief began to be mixed with an awed pride. (9.43)

Gatsby's father is the only person who has the kind of response to this mansion that Gatsby could have hoped for. Everyone else has found it either gaudy, vulgar, or fake. Perhaps this shows that for all his attempts to cultivate himself, Gatsby could never escape the tastes and ambitions of a Midwestern farm boy.

After that I felt a certain shame for Gatsby—one gentleman to whom I telephoned implied that he had got what he deserved. However, that was my fault, for he was one of those who used to sneer most bitterly at Gatsby on the courage of Gatsby's liquor and I should have known better than to call him. (9.69)

Gatsby was unable to parlay his hospitality into any genuine connection with anyone besides Nick, who seems to have liked him despite the parties rather than because of them. This highlights a clash of values between the new, anything-goes East and the older, more traditionally correct West . The East is a place where someone could come to a party and then insult the host—and then imply that a murdered man had it coming! Compare this to the moment when Gatsby feels uneasy making a scene when having lunch with Tom and Daisy because "I can't say anything in his house, old sport." (7.102).

"When a man gets killed I never like to get mixed up in it in any way. I keep out. When I was a young man it was different—if a friend of mine died, no matter how, I stuck with them to the end. You may think that's sentimental but I mean it—to the bitter end….Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead," he suggested. "After that my own rule is to let everything alone." (9.95-99)

Wolfshiem's refusal to come to Gatsby's funeral is extremely self-serving. He is using this quasi-philosophical excuse in order to protect himself from being anywhere near a crime scene. However, in a novel which is at least partly concerned with how morality can be generated in a place devoid of religion, Wolfshiem's explanation of his behavior confirms that the culmination of this kind of thinking is treating people as disposable .

It also plays into the novel's overriding idea that the American Dream is based on a willful desire to forget and ignore the past , instead straining for a potentially more exciting or more lucrative future. Part of forgetting the past is forgetting the people that are no longer here, so for Wolfshiem, even a close relationship like the one he had with Gatsby has to immediately be pushed to the side once Gatsby is no longer alive.

I tried to think about Gatsby then for a moment but he was already too far away and I could only remember, without resentment, that Daisy hadn't sent a message or a flower. Dimly I heard someone murmur "Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on," and then the owl-eyed man said "Amen to that," in a brave voice. (9.116)

The theme of forgetting continues here. For Nick, Gatsby the man is already "too far away" to remember distinctly. Perhaps it is this kind of forgetting that allows Nick to think about Daisy without anger. On the one hand, in order to continue through life, you need to be able to separate yourself from the tragedies that have befallen. But on the other hand, this easy letting go of painful memories in the past leads to the kind of abandonment that follows Gatsby's death .

When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour before we melted indistinguishably into it again.

That's my middle west—not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns but the thrilling, returning trains of my youth and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family's name. I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life. (9.124-125)

All along, the novel has juxtaposed the values and attitudes of the rich to those of the lower classes. However here, in this chapter, as Nick is starting to pull away from New York, the contrast shifts to comparing the values of the Midwest to those of the East. Here, the dim lights, the realness, and the snow are natural foils for the bright lights and extremely hot weather associated in the novel with Long Island and the party scene.

Nick's summary judgment of Tom and Daisy seems harsh but fair. They are people who do not have to answer for their actions and are free to ignore the consequences of what they do . This is one of the ways in which their marriage, dysfunctional as it is, works well. They both understand that they just don't need to worry about anything that happens in the same way that everyone else does. It is interesting to consider how this cycle will perpetuate itself with Pammy, their daughter.

On the last night, with my trunk packed and my car sold to the grocer, I went over and looked at that huge incoherent failure of a house once more. On the white steps an obscene word, scrawled by some boy with a piece of brick, stood out clearly in the moonlight and I erased it, drawing my shoe raspingly along the stone. Then I wandered down to the beach and sprawled out on the sand. (9.150)

It's fitting that Nick feels responsible for erasing the bad word. His whole project in this book has been to protect Gatsby's reputation and to establish his legacy. Otherwise, without someone to notice and remark on Gatsby's achievement, nothing would remain to indicate that this man had managed to elevate himself from a Midwestern farm to glittering luxury.

Check out our very in-depth analysis of this extremely famous last sentence, last paragraphs, and last section of the book .

What's Next?

Want to show off your love of The Great Gatsby with a poster or t-shirt? Check out our list of the best Gatsby-themed decor and apparel .

Writing an essay about The Great Gatsby ? We've got articles to help you compare and contrast the most common character pairings , show you how to do an in-depth character analysis , help you write about a theme , and teach you how to best analyze a symbol .

Digging into the plot? Check out our summary of the novel , explore the meaning of the title , get a sense of how the novel's beginning sets up the story , and why the last line of the novel has become one of the most famous in Western literature.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — The Great Gatsby — Analysis of the American Dream in The Great Gatsby

Analysis of The American Dream in The Great Gatsby

• Categories: American Dream The Great Gatsby

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Words: 532 |

Published: Mar 8, 2024

Words: 532 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

The great gatsby and the american dream, what is the american dream, gatsby's story and the american dream, the tragic fate of gatsby, failure of other characters to achieve the american dream.

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Cover Art Symbolism in the Great Gatsby

This essay about the symbolism depicted in the cover art of “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It explores how the artwork, created by Francis Cugat, encapsulates the themes of illusion, aspiration, and the American Dream. The essay discusses the vibrant imagery, such as the disembodied face with piercing eyes, and how it symbolizes Gatsby’s yearning for the unattainable. Additionally, it analyzes the use of light and shadow to represent the dichotomy between appearance and reality within the novel. Overall, the cover art serves as a visual representation of the complex themes and characters in “The Great Gatsby,” inviting readers to interpret its symbolic significance.

How it works

The cover art of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal work, “The Great Gatsby,” serves as a visual gateway into the thematic complexities woven throughout the novel. Rendered by artist Francis Cugat, the cover encapsulates the essence of the Jazz Age while harboring deeper symbolic layers that resonate with the narrative’s central themes of illusion, aspiration, and the American Dream.

At first glance, the cover’s vibrant hues and surreal imagery captivate the viewer, evoking the opulence and hedonism characteristic of the Roaring Twenties.

The piercing eyes hovering over a cityscape draped in celestial drapery immediately draw attention, hinting at the omnipresence of societal scrutiny and the elusive pursuit of the unattainable. This juxtaposition of the mundane and the ethereal sets the stage for the exploration of Gatsby’s enigmatic persona and the elusive nature of his aspirations.

The central motif of the cover, a disembodied face adorned with a pair of melancholic eyes, serves as a poignant symbol of Gatsby’s yearning for the unattainable. The eyes, reminiscent of the bespectacled gaze of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg within the novel, symbolize both the omniscient presence of societal judgment and Gatsby’s relentless pursuit of Daisy Buchanan. Positioned against a backdrop of vivid hues and swirling clouds, the face epitomizes the illusory nature of Gatsby’s dreams, forever shrouded in mystery and unattainable perfection.

Moreover, the juxtaposition of light and shadow within the cover art underscores the duality of Gatsby’s character and the underlying tensions within the narrative. The interplay of light and shadow accentuates the dichotomy between appearance and reality, mirroring Gatsby’s façade of opulence and the hidden truths lurking beneath the surface. This visual dichotomy not only mirrors the thematic complexities of the novel but also invites readers to delve deeper into the intricacies of Gatsby’s persona and the society he inhabits.

In conclusion, the cover art of “The Great Gatsby” serves as a multi-layered tableau that encapsulates the novel’s thematic preoccupations with illusion, aspiration, and the ephemeral nature of the American Dream. Through its vivid imagery and symbolic motifs, the cover art not only captures the essence of the Jazz Age but also invites readers to embark on a journey of introspection and interpretation. Just as Gatsby’s dreams remain forever elusive, so too does the cover art continue to intrigue and beguile, inviting readers to decipher its enigmatic symbolism for generations to come.

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