Jay Gatsby Quotes

Jay Gatsby- he is the protagonist who gives his name to the story. James Gatz is his real name. His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful parents. Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God. Gatsby had a past with Daisy. Gatsby tries to recover his love for Daisy so she can leave Tom Buchanan. "Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book" (pg.6) "or rather, as I didn't know Mr. Gatsby it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name." (pg.9) "he talked a lot about the past and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy." (pg.117) "your wife doesn't love you, said Gatsby quietly." "She's never loved you. She loves me." (pg.137)

Gatsby's speech is retold by Nick, who is the voice of the novel and the voice of the novelist. Nick is Daisy's second cousin. Nick relates the biography of Gatsby's youth. Nick lived in West Egg in a small house next to Gatsby's mansion. He graduated from New Haven in 1915. Nick retells Gatsby's account of falling in love with Daisy. "My house was at the tip of the Egg, only fifty yards from the sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season." (pg.9) "He told me all this very much later, but I've put it down here with the idea of exploding those first wild rumors about his antecedent, which warrant even faintly true." (pg.107) "just a quarter of a century after my father and a little late I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War." (pg.7) "he knew that when he kissed this girl and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath his mind would never romp again like the mind of God."