The Great Gatsby Flashcards Preview

English Literature > The Great Gatsby > Flashcards

Flashcards in The Great Gatsby Deck (62)
Loading flashcards...
1
Q

what were the working titles for the Great Gatsby?

A

‘Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires’ and ‘Under the Red, White and Blue’

2
Q

Nick after returning from the east (after WW1) “wanted…”

A

“I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; [I wanted no more riotous excursions]”

3
Q

Tom and Daisy -as representatives for Old Money- “drifted…”

A

“drifted here and there unrestfully, wherever people played polo and were rich together”

4
Q

Indicating Tom’s control, “Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room”

A

“as though he were moving a checker to another square”.

5
Q

Daisy and Jordan Baker “talked at once…”

A

“unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter”

6
Q

the phone call at “The Tom Buchanan’s”

A

“Tom’s got some woman in New York”

7
Q

Daisy and her daughter. Chapter 1

A

“that’s the best a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool”

8
Q

the area where George and Myrtle Wilson live

A

“[This is] a valley of ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat”

9
Q

description of Myrtle

A

“She carried her flesh sensuously … as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering”

10
Q

Description of Myrtle at the gathering

A

‘Her laughter, her gestures, her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment … until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air.’

11
Q

Tom’s silencing of Myrtle

A

“I’ll say it when I want to! Daisy! Dai-“ Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.’

12
Q

Nick’s ‘double vision’ view on the Gathering at Tom’s and Myrtle’s apartment

A

“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life”.

13
Q

people came and went to Gatsby’s party quote

A

“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whispering and the champagne and the stars”.

14
Q

mechanisation links to “little button” quote

A

“If a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler’s thumb”

15
Q

description of Gatsby’s party- food focus

A

“Turkeys bewitched into a dark gold”

16
Q

nature of relationships in the 1920s, where introductions are easily forgotten

A

“Casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot [and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names]”

17
Q

Nick’s view on women that significantly links to the view held by ‘New York’ in the Age of Innocence. Honesty

A

“Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply”

18
Q

in spite of the 19th Amendment and the superficial freedoms gained by women, still presented as having a reliance on men

A

“Girls were putting their heads on men’s shoulders in a puppyish convivial way, girls were swooning backwards playfully into men’s arms, [even into groups, knowing that someone would arrest their fall]”

19
Q

Description of a woman indicates what women are valued for in society

A

“Like an angry diamond”

20
Q

description of Gatsby at the end of his first party in chapter 3

A

“(end of Gatsby’s first party) A sudden emptiness seemed to flow from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host”

21
Q

Nick’s description of New York

A

“I began to like New York, the racy adventurous feel of it at night … At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, [and I felt it in others] …young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.”

22
Q

continuation of Nick’s views on New York?

A

“[When the dark lanes …were lived five deep with throbbing taxicabs] … I felt a sinking in my heart”

23
Q

Nick’s view on women that significantly links to the view held by ‘New York’ in the Age of Innocence. Honesty

A

“Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply”

24
Q

Quote demonstrating the new culture of America in the 1920s and decreasing importance of religion to many

A

“On Sunday morning while church bells rang … the world and its mistress [returned to Gatsby’s house]”

25
Q

Indicates the gossip culture of 1920s America, a piece of gossip relating to Gatsby

A

“One time he killed a man who found out that he was nephew to Von Hindenburg and second cousin to the devil.”

26
Q

After Jordan tells Nick about Gatsby’s and Daisy’s past together (follows the passage from Jordan’s point of view), Gatsby “came alive…”

A

“He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendour”

27
Q

the strength of Gatsby’s dream exceeding the reality of Daisy being there

A

“There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams … because of the colossal vitality of the illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything.”

28
Q

reality’s inability to match Gatsby’s dream

A

“No amount of fire and freshness can challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart.”

29
Q

Daisy “blossomed” for Gatsby quote

A

“She blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”

30
Q

description of Dan Cody

A

“(Dan Cody) the pioneer debauchee, who during one phase of American life brought back to the Eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon”

31
Q

Michaelis on George Wilson

A

‘Generally he was one of these worn-out men’

32
Q

Daisy and Jordan speaking together again and their description at the start of chapter 7

A

“Daisy and Jordan lay upon an enormous couch, like silver idols weighing down their own white dresses against the singing breeze of the fans. ‘We can’t move,’ they said together.”

33
Q

Daisy quote, indicating the possible lack of meaning and goals in her life. Links to chapter 1 quote on “drifting”

A

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

34
Q

Tom’s statement to Gatsby on stables and garages, possibly highlights his different status to those of New Money

A

“I’ve heard of making a garage out of a stable,” Tom was saying to Gatsby, “but I’m the first man who ever made a stable out of a garage.”

35
Q

Tom’s views on Gatsby, relating to his suit

A

“An Oxford man!” He was incredulous. “Like hell he is! He wears a pink suit.”

36
Q

Tom’s views on current attitudes to “family life” as well as criticisms of Gatsby, further indications that he will never be accepted by Old Money

A

“I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. … 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 civilisation.’

37
Q

Tom’s criticisms of Gatsby in relation to an inability to understand how Gatbsy could have even got near to Daisy

A

“I’ll be damned if I see how you got within half a mile of her unless you brought the groceries to the back door.”

38
Q

Tom’s descriptions of his affairs

A

“Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back.”

39
Q

Tom’s view on Gatsby, which indicates that, despite his significant wealth, Gatsby will never be truly accepted by those of Old Money status

A

“She’s not leaving me!” Tom’s words suddenly leaned down over Gatsby. “Certainly not for a common swindler who’d have to steal the ring he put on her finger.”

40
Q

description of Gatsby’s dream in chapter 7

A

‘only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away.’

41
Q

Nick’s views on his 30th birthday

A

“Thirty – the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair.”

42
Q

after Gatsby and Daisy leave separately, Jordan, Tom and Nick drive home

A

‘So we drove on towards death in the cooling twilight.’

43
Q

the description of Myrtle’s death, feminist critics see it as an attack on women’s bodies

A

‘Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick dark blood with the dust … 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 a little at the corners.’

44
Q

The reason why ‘Jay Gatsby’ told the truth of he was to Nick

A

‘It was that night that he told me the strange story of his youth with Dan Cody … because ‘Jay Gatsby’ had broken up like glass against Tom’s hard malice.’

45
Q

Gatsby had “committed himself” to his dream

A

“He found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail”.

46
Q

Daisy and significant links to wealth, separting her from the struggles of those below her

A

“Her porch was bright with the bought luxury of star-shine … Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.”

47
Q

Daisy’s life to be shaped quote

A

She wanted her life shaped now, immediately … by some force - of love, of money … That force took shape in the middle of spring with the arrival of Tom Buchanan.

48
Q

similar to Gatsby reaching out for the Green light at the end of Daisy’s dock

A

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.

49
Q

Nick’s only compliment to Gatsby, despite supposedly not being a judgemental character

A

“They’re a rotten crowd. 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’

50
Q

difference between Gatsby’s dream and the rumours & gossip of his possible corruption

A

‘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.’

51
Q

description before Gatsby’s death, which focuses on the harsh aspects of nature

A

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.

52
Q

Gatsby’s death and the description of George Wilson

A

A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about … like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding towards him through the amorphous trees.

53
Q

description fo Daisy and Tom in relation to their careless nature

A

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.

54
Q

Nick’s description of Gatsby’s house

A

That huge incoherent failure of a house

55
Q

Description of the New World

A

As the moon rose higher, the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island that had flowered once for Dutch sailor’s eyes – a fresh, green breast of the new world …

56
Q

the day of the funeral

A

When I left his office the sky had turned dark

57
Q

Mr Gatz -Gatsby’s father- quote

A

“He told me I et like a hog once, and I beat him for it.”

58
Q

description of the people at Gatsby’s funeral

A

Nobody came.

59
Q

Owl-eyes at the rainy funeral

A

“The poor son-of-a-bitch”

60
Q

Nick remembering coming back home from school at Christmas

A

When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out … a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air …. Unutterably aware of our identity with this country … before we melted indistinguishably into it again. That’s my Middle West’

61
Q

Nick’s description of the East (America)

A

it had always for me a quality of distortion. West Egg especially still figures in my more fantastic dreams. I see it as a night scene by El Greco … In the foreground four solemn men in dress suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand … sparkles cold with jewels … no one knows the woman’s name, and no one cares.’

62
Q

Nick sees Jordan for the last time

A

I remember thinking that she looked like a good illustration