"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. This is probably Gatsby's single most famous quote.
Since Gatsby feels the most familiar with Nick, he says “old sport” most often to Nick. Some of Gatsby's “old sports” do not have familiarity. He says “old sport” to Tom five times (GG 99, 101, 102, 104, 105) during the confrontation scene in Chapter 7.
The opening lines of The Great Gatsby are: 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."
Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is especially famous for its final line: "And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
What is ironic about Gatsby's death? Gatsby's death is a moment of irony because he is still waiting for Daisy to call him so they can be together, but he does not realize that Daisy and her husband have already reconciled with one another.
Nick Carraway: Gatsby's real name was James Gatz. His parents were dirt-poor farmers from North Dakota, but he never accepted them as his parents at all. In his own imagination, he was a son of God, destined for future glory.
“He looked at her the way all women want to be looked at by a man.” “If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him.” “Do you ever wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it!”
And Gatsby describes his love for Daisy himself in this quote: “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.”
There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything.
”He was never quite still; there was always a tapping foot somewhere or the impatient opening and closing of a handle. “ Nick describes Gatsby as somewhat restless, showing how he is constantly doing something, and can't stay still. Nick could possibly be suggesting Gatsby has qualities retaining to ADHD.
Eventually, Gatsby won Daisy's heart, and they made love before Gatsby left to fight in the war. Daisy promised to wait for Gatsby, but in 1919 she chose instead to marry Tom Buchanan, a young man from a solid, aristocratic family who could promise her a wealthy lifestyle and who had the support of her parents.
“Her voice is full of money,” [Gatsby] 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.
Gatsby's obsession for money, “the instrument which will enable him to fulfil his dream”, is closely related to his dream of regaining “the peace Daisy once gave him”, and with this desire goes the obsession to repeat the past.
Fitzgerald uses symbols to suggest the life of Gatsby. He uses the green light to represent the hopes and dreams of Gatsby, Dr T.J Eckleburg's eyes to represent the eyes of God, the Valley of Ashes to show the effects of capitalism and the symbol of time is also repeated throughout the novel.
The moral of The Great Gatsby is that the American Dream is illusory. Gatsby's dream was to be with Daisy, but even after he attained her lifestyle, he was unable to be with her. Meanwhile, the people that had money, like Daisy and Tom, could not achieve happiness either.
To Gatsby, the innocent and naive Daisy comes to embody the American dream, in other words wealth and social status, a goal he will have reached by winning her hand.
Though Gatsby has always wanted to be rich, his main motivation in acquiring his fortune was his love for Daisy Buchanan, whom he met as a young military officer in Louisville before leaving to fight in World War I in 1917.
Their love affair makes Gatsby optimistic that Daisy is his true love, but he really only sees and loves an idealized version of her that he has carried for years. In the end, Daisy chooses to stay with her husband even when knowing he had also had an affair.
He had 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.
In the opening pages Nick says that “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.” The reader may take the first proclamation as proof that Gatsby ...
This quote belongs in Chapter 6 of Francis Scott Fitzgerald's famous novel, “The Great Gatsby.” To which Gatsby replies, “Can't repeat the past? Why, of course, you can!” This conversation gives a hint about Gatsby's intention to return Daisy Buchanan, his past love.
Jay Gatsby (originally named James Gatz) is the titular fictional character of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby.
By the same token, the title of the novel refers to the theatrical skill with which Gatsby makes this illusion seem real: the moniker “ the Great Gatsby ” suggests the sort of vaudeville billing that would have been given to an acrobat, an escape artist, or a magician.
A while after the funeral, Nick saw Tom. Tom said that he told Wilson, the man who killed Gatsby, that it was Gatsby's car that hit Wilson's wife, Myrtle. Nick did not like living in the East anymore, and he decided to leave the city and move back west.