The Great Gatsby Quote Analysis

Clara Yang English 10 Glick 05 June 2024.

The Great Gatsby and the Past Theres always the urge to crack open someones skull and unspool their brain to answer one question. Why do you do the things you do? I want to see every single character in The Great Gatsby’s brains on the ground. F. Scott Fitzgerald writes characters in The Great Gatsby that have complex motives and actions explained by their past relationship with money using compare and contrast. To read into their brain, there must be an analysis of societal and personal histories that contributes to a message of the effects of past relationships with wealth on the present and moving away to the future. Gatsby’s past relationship with Daisy changed his activities by allowing him to

This quote illustrates his mental perspective of Daisy as a light in his life, even prior to the dock light. This shows the depth of his love for her. This affects his activities later because after the war he is still in love with Daisy, and he’s convinced she’s still in love with him. He throws parties hoping she shows up at one, he gets rich to impress her, and he enters an extramarital affair with her because he’s convinced she also wants to return to their previous relationship. The many characters of The Great Gatsby show how money and one’s past with money changes their values and attitudes. The characters who grew up in wealth, such as Daisy, are self-interested, hedonistic, and reckless. Daisy takes

Put that in contrast to the poorest characters such as Wilson, who could not pay out of grief and heartbreak after finding out his wife cheated on him. He literally grew sick after finding out about Myrtle’s infidelity. Gatsby, Tom, Daisy, and Wilson all had different relationships with each other. This contributes to the novel’s critique of materialism and how we’re all shaped by our material conditions. Because we understand Daisy’s past of being indulgent and reckless, we understand why she didn’t stop driving after she hit Myrtle. Because Fitzgerald showed Gatsby’s infatuation with her (and her wealth), we understand why he’s obsessed with money and expensive things. Wilson’s breakdown and motives for shooting Gatsby show the effects of his past of poverty. When Tom finds out his wife is cheating, he’s angry, but he can always move to a different city. When Wilson finds out Myrtle is cheating, he is described as sick and hollow eyed. Nick observes, “I stared at him [Wilson] and 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