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Description
A vision of a lost generation.
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis
Summary
N ick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn about the bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated by the new rich, a group who have made their fortunes too recently to have... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)
Cast of Characters/Important People
Memorable Quotes
-
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
-
“And it occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.”
Nick Carraway -
“He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.”
Nick Carraway about Gatsby -
“That’s my Middle West . . . the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark. . . . I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.”
Nick Carraway -
“Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.”
Nick on himself -
“With every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room.”
Nick about Gatsby and Daisy
First Sentence
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
Table of Contents
Glossary
- Ectoplasm: A gel-like material which supposedly helps to summon spirits.
- Denizen: Inhabitant.
- Meritricious: Tawdry, gaudy.
Errata
Dan Cody's yacht could not have been threatened by tides from Lake Superior.
There is mention of a news-stand on the lower level and the cold waiting room on the lower level of the Pennsylvania Station. There isn't any lower level at that station.
At one place has the character driving under the elevated at Astoria, which isn't Astoria, but Long Island City.
Authors & Contributors
- F. Scott Fitzgerald (Author)
Awards
- Modern Library 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century (#2)
- BBC The Big Read (100 Best Loved Novels, #43)
- Time 100 All-Time Novels
- Waterstone's Top 100 Books of the 20th Century (#12)
Popular Tags
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Books with Additional Background Information
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