The American dream in Gatsby

9 quotes, in the order they happen.

The quotes

an extraordinary gift for hope

This is what Nick cannot drop about Gatsby. Hope, not the parties.

there was something gorgeous about him

Nick scorns what Gatsby stands for. He still cannot look away.

a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock

Nick sees Gatsby reaching for a light across the water. It is Daisy's dock. Gatsby does not say her name yet.

Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself

James Gatz invented Jay Gatsby. He invented a man and then tried to become him.

Can't repeat the past? Why of course you can!

Nick says you cannot. Gatsby thinks you can. The book is about that fight.

He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it

The lawn is Daisy's. The dream is already behind him. He does not know.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us

The light was a dock lamp. Gatsby made it a future. The future keeps moving away.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past

The last line. We row forward. The water takes us back.

You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock

He tells Daisy he has been watching her light. She puts her arm through his. He is still looking at the light.