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Epigraph Analysis: The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

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The novel The Great Gatsby is told from the perspective of Nick Carraway. Nick is Gatsby’s neighbor and Daisy’s cousin. Gatsby and Daisy were once madly in love, however after Gatsby went to go fight in the war Daisy and Gatsby lost touch. Five years after Gatsby comes back from the war he is determined to get Daisy to fall back in love with him. Nick’s connection to both Gatsby and Daisy allows him to observe Gatsby and Daisy’s love story unfold. The Great Gatsby opens with a quotation from This Side of Paradise. The quotation is “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!” I think that this epigraph is about wooing a girl with material objects and with success. In the first line of the epigraph I think the gold hat represents expensive material objects. I think bouncing high means to be successful. Over all I think that the epigraph means that if material objects make the girl of your dreams happy, then show her you have nice belongings. If you can be successful, be successful for the girl of your dreams. Then wait for the girl of your dreams to fall in love with you. …show more content…

With this quotation I think Fitzgerald alludes to what is going to happen in the novel, I think it is a very subtle form of foreshadowing. In the novel Gatsby throws extravagant parties in hope that one-day Daisy will stumble in to his party and fall madly in love with him. Gatsby has climbed his way up from poverty to extremely rich because he knew that he needed to be very wealthy in order to marry Daisy. Gatsby is madly and obsessively in love with Daisy, and I think the quotation shows the reader to what ends Gatsby is willing to go to win Daisy

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