Quotes From ' The Great Gatsby '

Quotes:

Commentary:

STAGE ONE

1. “As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them..., my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters… From the character and turn of the inscription…” (1).

Pip is a little boy. He still lets his imagination run wild. I’m not sure how he managed to picture his parents with the face of the tombstone, but

2. “A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me...” (2).

3. “I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn’t, and held tighter to the tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep myself upon it; partly, to keep myself from crying” (3).

4. “You fail, or you go from my words in any partickler, no matter how small it is, and your heart and your liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate” (4).

5. “At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his arms - clasping himself, as if to hold himself together - and limped towards the low church wall. As I saw him go… he looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in” (4-5).

6. “ ‘Yes, Pip,’ said Joe; ‘and what’s worse, she’s got Tickler with her.’ At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my waistcoat round and round, and looked in great depression at the ...

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...ocals cannot sit well in Pip’s mind. I am almost afraid for Pip, for how can such a notorious man become a guardian for a future gentleman?

12. “I had stopped to look at the house as I passed; and its seared red brick walls, blocked windows, and strong green ivy clasping even the stacks of chimneys with its twigs and tendons, as if with sinewy old arms, had made up a rich attractive mystery…” (137).

12. This passage, describing the Satis House, is one of many sections of Dickens’ writing that forms a vivid image in my head. The way the house is illustrated, with ivy crawling over the brick walls, makes me fear the Manor House. It reminds me of a castle a fairytale princess might live in, trapped inside the walls of a high tower. For Pip, this may well be true, with Estella being trapped inside the great house, needing to be rescued by a prince, who Pip hopes to be.