The Great Gatsby "Quotes"

--"'Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'"

This quote is directly from the narrator and one of the main characters of the book, Nick. The way the author opened the book up like this was strong and powerful, but misleading at the same time. I quoted this from chapter one, page one, the second sentence. Due to how effective the quote is, the background story behind it, and because I never seen a story open in this way, it really stuck out to me. After reading a few more chapters of the book, the fact the Nick said that this quote has came to be more of a habit that he lives by, seemed to be proven to me. He didn’t judge anything that anyone told him so far. He could have literally showed he had an opinion about Tom, Daisy, Gatsby or Jordan Baker and been a person who expresses his opinion and gets involved in everything , but instead he didn’t . You could tell how he feels since his narrating the book, but the quality of judging people doesn’t show in his interactions with others. The way there is such a powerful start to the book made me more interested in how the story line was going to go. The idea that the father puts out there to Nick is a very good lesson that I think everyone can relate to and should live by. Everyone at one point has judged someone without thinking of the other person’s situation. To me this quote allowed me to relate it to life on general, cheerleading, and my psychology class. In cheerleading, our beginning formation was so unique and out of the ordinary that it drew people in and had people wondering what we were going to do next, which is what this quote does for the book. Also, in psychology I recently learned the term for judging someone based on the generalized knowledge that they have programmed in their head. In brief, this opening to the story blew me away.

--“He smiled understandingly - much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternally 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 prestigious 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 , and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you, at your best , you hope to convey. “(Chapter 3, pg. 48)

This is another quote that came directly from the barraters mouth. At this point of the story, Nick was already well into the plot and was at a party a Gatsby’s house. We have yet to be introduced to the host of the party, or the main character of the story, Gatsby. This quote is the first set of descriptions that describe him .He already seemed mysterious and shady based on previous descriptions, but this quote doesn’t really allow the reader to get to know his true character. It only leads the reader to have mixed signals about whom and what he is all about. This is Nick’s first reactions about him because this is said as soon as Gatsby introduced himself to Nick. This quote can also be tired back to my first quote found in the first chapter because again Nick was not criticizing or judging Gatsby, but at the same time you can still see all different views that he was able to draw just from meeting him once. The way the author wrote this and the style he used when he italicized “you “and used dashes to stress certain phrases is another writing tool that made this part powerful and allowed it to stand out to me .