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The Great Gatsby Quote Analysis

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The Great Gatsby

Some people may look at an object and see it as meaningless, like a cross for example. Another person may look at that same object and it may represent God or a higher power, again using the cross as an example. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, where a man by the name of Jay Gatsby reunites with his long lost love Daisy Buchanan, but she is married. He hopes to steal her back through wealth and charm, but his dream doesn’t come true. In this book, the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, the eyes of an optometrist on a billboard, represent the eyes of God. The eyes witness dishonesty and corruption, they see people’s lives crumble and eventually they see death. They see everything.
The eyes see the corruption of the lives …show more content…

Eckleburg as he and Tom drive into the city with Tom’s mistress, Myrtle. They are extremely large and deep, and they are constantly …show more content…

“Over the ashheaps the giant eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg kept their vigil, but I perceived, after a moment, that other eyes were regarding us with peculiar intensity from less than twenty feet away.” (pg, 124.) In this passage, Tom, Nick and Jordan get gas in the valley of ashes. Nick notices the vigilant eyes once again. He notices how the eyes just peer over the heaps of ash, just watching. But he does notice the sad, less powerful eyes of another person, almost watching sadly from hell. The eyes see the lives of Myrtle and George Wilson falling apart. He has locked her away because he believes she is cheating, and she is. The mood for this scene is very tense, Tom is upset because Gatsby is with Daisy, and Myrtle is upset because she see’s Jordan with Tom. But, no secrets are hidden from the eyes. The tone of Fitzgerald during this scene is very unhappy. Through the eyes you can see that Fitzgerald doesn’t agree with Tom’s choices or anyone’s choices

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188 Words | 1 Pages

In The Great Gatsby written by F.Scott Fitzgerald symbolism is shown in more ways than one but one major form is the eyes of TJ.Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg is a billboard advertising an oculist that features a pair of giant blue eyes covered by yellow glasses that seem to watch over everything in the valley of ashes. First example The eyes witness the sin of adultery between Tom and Myrtle “I want to see you said Tom intently. Get on the next train.” (Fitzgerald 15)

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652 Words | 3 Pages

Philosopher William Shakespeare said, “The eyes are the windows to the soul.” He based this statement off of something Matthew said in the Bible. To summarize, Matthew said that healthy eyes suggest that the body is full of light and if your eyes are unhealthy, your body is full of darkness. Not just the eyes, but the appearance of a person can tell a lot about his or her innermost feelings. This can be seen in the characters in Nathaniel Hawthorne's book The Scarlet Letter.

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1062 Words | 5 Pages

Given that the world of The Great Gatsby lacks a moral center, characters rarely face repercussions past basic cause and effect, allowing them to continue there lives as ethically inept as there money will take them. The presence of the eyes throughout the novel was really the only outlet for recognizing the gravity of the fraudulence and treachery that took place. The glasses themselves stand for a corrected perspective, worthy of judging the corruption of both the characters and the world they live in. Additionally, the symbol is built upon in the quote, “They look out of no face”(Fitzgerald 23). The specification that the eyes aren't accompanied by a face, solidifies the signs inanimacy.

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916 Words | 4 Pages

Tom Buchanan is also a serial cheater on his wife Daisy, who is also Nick Carraway’s cousin, Tom is also characteristically very aggressive, and manipulative. Fitzgerald conveyed through direct and indirect characterization. George Wilson is an honest, and humble man

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769 Words | 4 Pages

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston uses speech as a tool to show the progression of the story. Janie Crawford, the main character of the novel, finds her true identity and ability to control her voice through many hardships. When Janie’s grandmother dies she is married off, to be taken care of. In each marriage that follows, she learns what it is to be a woman with a will and a voice. Throughout the book, Janie finds herself struggling against intimidating men who attempt to victimize her into a powerless role.

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1746 Words | 7 Pages

Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of how one man, Tea Cake, changes how a grown woman named Janie views life, opportunity, and happiness. Zora Neale Hurston employs parallelism in order to reveal the dynamic of this relationship between Janie and Tea Cake and writes, “He drifted off into sleep and Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place” (Hurston 128). At the very end of the book, Hurston writes again, “Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net.

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1198 Words | 5 Pages

The strangest feature on the eyes, the yellow spectacles, mimic the color of joy and wealth. Just as spectacles distort the sight of a person, wealth can be seen as distorting the view of God, the embodiment of morality. In essence, it shows the convolution of ethics in the quest for economic prosperity. At one point in the novel, the eyes of T. J. Eckleburg are explicitly mentioned as being the eyes of God.

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868 Words | 4 Pages

“Then as Doctor T.J. Eckleburg’s faded eyes came into sight down the road I remembered Gatsby’s caution about gasoline.” (pg. 129) This quote is all about how the eyes may give someone a warning or a sight that something bad is going to happen to them

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696 Words | 3 Pages

Throughout the book the eyes are referred to periodically, personified by the characters Nick, Tom, and Wilson. Through their respective perceptions, we are given insight into their views and judgments. Perceived through the eyes of Nick, a look at hedonism in the 1920s is shown to cultivate a moral decline. At the party in the Valley of Ashes, Nick condemns the debauchery of the time. At the beginning of his story, he comments “When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever” When Nick looks at the billboard he sees a critic of the world around him.

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239 Words | 1 Pages

The eyes could almost be the God of the valley, because they watch over every situation that occurs within the town. Immoral behaviors, focused on wealth building, created the ashes that lay upon the town, and Dr. T.J. Eckleburg’s eyes

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996 Words | 4 Pages

They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose ‘’ (Fitzgerald 23) : He personifies the T. J. Eckleberg's All-Seeing Eyes, which is a huge billboard in ‘’The Valley of The ashes’’ and ironically Unlike the super grey and monochrome environment, the eyes are blue and yellow. Where mostly things aren’t as this colorful in the valley, this brightness is surprising and connects the eyes to other blue and yellow objects. Also, the description has elements of horror. The “gigantic” eyes are disembodied, with “no face” and a “nonexistent nose.

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1585 Words | 7 Pages

In the Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby can not see how Daisy is careless and shallow, Tom can not see how he is being a hypocrite after breaking Myrtle’s nose, and most importantly Dr. Eckleberg’s eyes and how Wilson sees the eyes as a sign of judgment and God’s

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830 Words | 4 Pages

“God knows what you’ve been doing… T.J Eckleburg” (Fitzgerald 159-160). Wilson views the eyes as a godlike entity and uses the advertisement to justify his murder of Jay Gatsby. A central symbol of guilt, judgement, and God. It invests in the valley with a moral intensity. Throughout the novel, the mention of God and the eyes

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1047 Words | 5 Pages

The human eye was a part of the body that I had always been fascinated with. Eyes open us up to the beauty of the world: the beauty of nature, the beauty in family, as well as the beauty in person you love. When I learned

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610 Words | 3 Pages

“Seeing” in this chapter is the process of finding, understanding, and feeling. The “open eyes” in this context does not imply the physical state of the eyes, but it is widened as a state of consciousness to perceive and enjoy the world around us. For instance, when we look at a flight of swallows, we do not only recognize them as birds, but we notice them as a sign of spring, which brings warmth and hope. Looking at a thing can arouse feelings in us. Watching swallows evokes the feeling of freshness and energy to start a

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