1
Q
Love
A
The Great Gatsby portrays love as a complex and often painful experience, with characters experiencing unrequited love, conflicting feelings, and the harsh realities of relationships. These quotes from the book highlight the intensity and complexity of the love theme throughout the novel.
2
Q
‘They’re such beautiful shirts’.
A
- This symbolises through Daisy’s emotional response the excitement she carries that now, in her eyes, Gatsby has the wealth of a man she could marry unlike five years ago, when she rejected him due to his status and money.
- Through symbolism we see the character development of Daisy as it becomes clearer that she is vain.
- Wealth and stature are all that matter to her, we can also see this through the symbolism of the Eggs.
3
Q
‘Can’t repeat the past? He cried incredulously. Why of course you can!’.
A
- Gatsby is obsessed with going back to when he and Daisy were together and everything, to him, was perfect.
- He truly believes that they can go back, ignoring the time that has lapsed. Gatsby cannot fathom that Daisy’s feelings may have evolved and changed since the last time they met.
- This symbolises Gatsby’s main flaw, his inability to accept change. He allows no room in his vision for himself or others to grow, change or adapt.
- This is essentially why Daisy cannot live up to his expectations and why the persona that he has invented for himself cannot be sustained.
4
Q
‘Luckily the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously…caught it with his trembling fingers’
A
- Gatsby’s nervousness about how Daisy’s attitude to him may have changed causes him to knock over Nicks clock.
- This symbolises the clumsiness of his attempts to stop time and retrieve the past.
5
Q
‘your wife doesnt love you’ said gatsby. ‘shes never loved you she loves me’
A
- In his mind, Daisy has been pining for him as much as he has been longing for her, and he has been able to explain her marriage to himself simply by eliding any notion that she might have her own hopes, dreams, ambitions, and motivations. Gatsby has been propelled for the last five years by the idea that he has access to what is in Daisy’s heart. However, we can see that a dream built on this kind of shifting sand is at best wishful thinking and at worst willful self-delusion.
6
Q
“She had told him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw.”
A
- At the opening of the section in which Tom finds out about the affair, Nick joins Gatsby for lunch at the Buchanans.
- Tom is affable to Gatsby, and Daisy introduces her daughter Pammy to him.
- It’s very hot and Daisy starts to insist they go to town to escape the heat. At this point she says twice to Gatsby that he always looks so cool. Tom realizes as she states this that Daisy is saying that she loves Gatsby.
- Daisy wants Tom to know she is in love (or at least thinks she is) with Gatsby and knows how to communicate this to her husband.
7
Q
“Its full of-‘ I hestitated. “Its full of money” he said suddenly.
A
- Here we are getting to the root of what it is really that attracts Gatsby so much to Daisy.
- for Gatsby, Daisy’s voice does not hold this sexy allure, as much as it does the promise of wealth, which has been his overriding ambition and goal for most of his life.
- To him, her voice marks her as a prize to be collected.
- This impression is further underscored by the fairy tale imagery that follows the connection of Daisy’s voice to money.
- Much like princesses who is the end of fairy tales are given as a reward to plucky heroes, so too Daisy is Gatsby’s winnings, an indication that he has succeeded.
8
Q
“It excited him too that many men had already loved Daisy—it increased her value in his eyes.”
A
- from the very beginning what Gatsby most values about Daisy is that she belongs to that set of society that he is desperately trying to get into: the wealthy, upper echelon.
- Just like when he noted the Daisy’s voice has money in it, here Gatsby almost cannot separate Daisy herself from the beautiful house that he falls in love with.
- it’s almost like Gatsby’s love is operating in a market economy – the more demand there is for a particular good, the higher the worth of that good.
- Of course, thinking in this way makes it easy to understand why Gatsby is able to discard Daisy’s humanity and inner life when he idealizes her
9
Q
“Oh, you want too much!” she cried to Gatsby. “I love you now—isn’t that enough?
A
- For all Daisy’s evident weaknesses, it is a testament to her psychological strength that she is simply unwilling to recreate herself, her memories, and her emotions in Gatsby’s image.
- She could easily at this point say that she has never loved Tom, but this would not be true, and she does not want to give up her independence of mind.
- Unlike Gatsby, who against all evidence to the contrary believes that you can repeat the past, Daisy wants to know that there is a future.
- She wants Gatsby to be the solution to her worries about each successive future day, rather than an imprecation about the choices she has made to get to this point.
