The Great Gatsby Passage Analysis
Explain the significance of each of the following passages from The Great Gatsby. Follow the
format outlined below:

Introduce your paragraph by revealing the context of these words – i.e. at what point are
they spoken? By whom? To whom? (1-2 sentences)

Make intelligent and insightful comments that reveal an analytical understanding of the
passage and its significance in terms of symbolism, theme, motif, character
development etc. (4-6 sentences)
1. “Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction –
Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is
an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him,
some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life…it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a
romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which I shall never
find again. No – Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby…that
temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and shortwinded elations of
men.” (Chap 1)
2. “The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic…they look out of no face…his
eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun and rain, brood on over the
solemn dumping ground.” (Chap 2)
3. “Don’t do it today…You know old sport, I’ve never used that pool all summer.” (Chap 5)
4. “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.” (Chap 6)
5. “What I called about was a pair of shoes I left there. I wonder if it’d be too much trouble to
have the butler send them on…” (Chap 9)
6. “…gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors'
eyes - a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made
way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all
human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the
presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither
understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something
commensurate to his capacity for wonder.” (Chap 9)
7. “I can’t do it. – I can’t get mixed up in it…When a man gets killed I never like to get mixed
up in it in any way. I keep out…Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is
alive and not after he is dead.” (Chap 9)