Identity, Reinvention and Performance Flashcards
(8 cards)
What does Nick reveal about Gatsby’s real identity?
“His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people.”
What quote shows Gatsby’s construction of a new persona?
“The truth was that Jay Gatsby… sprang from his Platonic conception of himself.”
How does Gatsby describe his ideal self in contrast to his origins?
“He invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent.”
What does the narrator say about Gatsby’s performative charm?
“This is my friend Mr. Wolfsheim, a very famous man.”
What quote shows Gatsby’s detachment from his own myth?
“He had changed it at the age of seventeen… and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career.”
How is Gatsby’s backstory gradually unmasked?
“I suppose he’d had the name ready for a long time.”
What moment reveals Gatsby’s desperation to maintain the illusion of his image?
“He revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes.”
What symbol represents the grandeur and performance of Gatsby’s reinvention?
“His mansion, ‘a colossal affair by any standard,’… a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy.”
