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This quote belongs in Chapter 6 of Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s famous novel, “The Great Gatsby.” To which Gatsby replies, “Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course, you can!” This conversation gives a hint about Gatsby’s intention to return Daisy Buchanan, his past love.
(Fitzgerald, 117). CONTEXT: Gatsby is talking to Nick about how his life was much better when he was with Daisy, and now he wants her back. Nick, in turns, tells Gatsby that he should move on, because the past cannot be repeated.
The past that Gatsby hopes to regain is irretrievable; Daisy is not only older, but she is now a mother and wife; Gatsby himself is not the young innocent that he was when he first met Daisy. For, he has worked for Dan Cody and has made such shady connections as Meyer Wolfscheim.
Gatsby's tragedy is that he can't accept that the passage of time changes circumstances. Daisy has a husband and child. She is not the person she was five years ago. Nevertheless, Gatsby, as the quote shows, persists in believing he can will a moment from the past back into being and bring it into the present.
“Can't repeat the past? Why, of course you can!” Jay Gatsby, the protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, said this to his friend Nick Carraway in order to convince both himself and Nick that he could recapture Daisy Buchanan, his former love.
This quote belongs in Chapter 6 of Francis Scott Fitzgerald's famous novel, “The Great Gatsby.” To which Gatsby replies, “Can't repeat the past? Why, of course, you can!” This conversation gives a hint about Gatsby's intention to return Daisy Buchanan, his past love.
Gatsby says of course you can repeat the past because he's living the past trying to gain daisy back the girl he loved and wanted to marry.
"Can't Repeat the Past?" If there's one statement that sums up Gatsby's entire philosophy, this is it. Throughout his adult life, Gatsby's goal has been to recapture the past. Specifically, he longs to recapture the past romance he had with Daisy.
When Nick told Gatsby, "You can't repeat the past," Gatsby replied, "Why of course you can!" Do you agree with Nick or Gatsby? I believe that you can do your best to duplicate something from the past, but it will not be exactly as it was before.
'My God, I believe [Gatsby is] coming,' said Tom . . . 'I wonder where in the devil he met Daisy. By God, I may be old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days to suit me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish. '
When Nick cautions Gatsby that "You can't repeat the past," Gatsby idealistically answers "Why of course you can!" words that strike Nick soundly because of their "appalling sentimentality," which both delights and disgusts him.
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” It is a reference to the futility of our attempts to escape the past, even as we look to the future, dreaming of how “tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther”.
No, you can't repeat the past. Simply, you can't repeat the past because you are not the same person you were in the past. As you grow and get older, your experiences start forming who you are and the decisions you make.
"Why of course you can!" He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand. This is probably Gatsby's single most famous quote.
Nick know that you can't and shouldn't repeat the past, but Gatsby thinks he can just erase the last five years and start over again. His opinion is unrealistic because it's been five years and both of them have changed.
Gatsby is not so much obsessed with repeating the past as reclaiming it. He wants to both return to that beautiful, perfect moment when he wedded all of his hopes and dreams to Daisy in Louisville, and also to make that past moment his present (and future!).
The plot tells the story of young Americans living in the West Egg and East Egg of upper-class Long Island. Fitzgerald masterfully depicts the glamorous and roaring twenties, with their thirst for life and hedonistic pleasures. The main plotline of the novel tells the readers about a love story. A mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby tries to win back a married young lady Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby lives in a massive palace on the banks of the river and throws fancy parties there to impress Daisy. But her bonds with her husband are quite strong. At the same time, she knows he is cheating with Myrtle Wilson. By the way, there is an unexpected turn of events. At the end of the story, Daisy hits Myrtle, who doesn’t survive in a car accident.
The novel explores themes of the American Dream, gender relations, and class inequality. Fitzgerald presents a vivid and panoramic picture of that time. And the book has become a classic of American literature, thanks to it.
“You can’t repeat the past,” says Nick Carraway to Jay Gatsby. This quote belongs in Chapter 6 of Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s famous novel, “The Great Gatsby.” To which Gatsby replies, “Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course, you can!” This conversation gives a hint about Gatsby’s intention to return Daisy Buchanan, his past love.
But her bonds with her husband are quite strong. At the same time, she knows he is cheating with Myrtle Wilson.
At the same time, she knows he is cheating with Myrtle Wilson. By the way, there is an unexpected turn of events. At the end of the story, Daisy hits Myrtle, who doesn’t survive in a car accident. The story is told by Nick Carraway, who meets Gatsby upon arriving in New York.
Gatsby is incredulous in part because of what Nick says , and in part because he had thought Nick was entirely on his wavelength in his plan to rekindle Daisy’s love. Gatsby does not want to repeat the entire past, only select moments of the past.
Nick tries to warn him that this can't be done. Gatsby's response shows that he completely rejects Nick's commonsense warning. Gatsby's tragedy is that he can't accept that the passage of time changes circumstances. Daisy has a husband and child. She is not the person she was five years ago.
What Gatsby does not—or will not, or cannot—understand is that it was that anticipation and that hint of physical contact that made the moment so perfect for both of them. He tries to convince himself that he, Daisy, and Tom can meet socially as a way to get closer to her. The effect, of course, is to make her nervous and Tom jealous. His next step will be to stop socializing and have Daisy come to his house alone.
Jay Gatsby makes this response to Nick Carraway ’s statement, “You can’t repeat the past.” Their conversation occurs after Daisy and Tom Buchanan have left a party at Gatsby’s house. It is the first one they have attended, and Gatsby can tell that Daisy did not like it. Nick is...
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Gatsby does not want to repeat the entire past, only select moments of the past. He wants to believe he can pick and choose the best fragments of his shattered past and in doing so block out the unpleasant ones. Rather than the horrors of war, for example, he remembers the months he spent at Oxford. The focus of this selective reinvention is Daisy. While she has been his ideal, the corporeal aspect of their relationship centered on a single perfect kiss. The build up to that kiss has created an idyllic vision in his mind. It remains unfocused in his mind that it is part of himself that he is trying to recover. Nick says, “He wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy.”
It was indirectly due to Cody that Gatsby drank so little. Sometimes in the course of gay parties women used to rub champagne into his hair; for himself he formed the habit of letting liquor alone. And it was from Cody that he inherited money — a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars. He didn’t get it.
The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God — a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that — and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby ...
The arrangement lasted five years, during which the boat went three times around the Continent. It might have lasted indefinitely except for the fact that Ella Kaye came on board one night in Boston and a week later Dan Cody inhospitably died.
Gatsby indicated a gorgeous, scarcely human orchid of a woman who sat in state under a white plum tree. Tom and Daisy stared, with that peculiarly unreal feeling that accompanies the recognition of a hitherto ghostly celebrity of the movies. “She’s lovely,” said Daisy. “The man bending over her is her director.”.
The girl addressed was trying, unsuccessfully, to slump against my shoulder. At this inquiry she sat up and opened her eyes.
There were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same profusion of champagne, the same many-colored, many-keyed commotion, but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn’t been there before. Or perhaps I had merely grown used to it, grown to accept West Egg as a world complete in itself, with its own standards and its own great figures, second to nothing because it had no consciousness of being so, and now I was looking at it again, through Daisy’s eyes. It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment.
Use Bold and Italics only to distinguish between different singers in the same verse. About this time an ambitious young reporter from New York arrived one morning at Gatsby’s door and asked him if he had anything to say.
It was indirectly due to Cody that Gatsby drank so little. Sometimes in the course of gay parties women used to rub champagne into his hair; for himself he formed the habit of letting liquor alone. And it was from Cody that he inherited money—a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars. He didn't get it.
Gatsby indicated a gorgeous, scarcely human orchid of a woman who sat in state under a white plum tree. Tom and Daisy stared, with that peculiarly unreal feeling that accompanies the recognition of a hitherto ghostly celebrity of the movies. "She's lovely," said Daisy. "The man bending over her is her director.".
The arrangement lasted five years during which the boat went three times around the continent. It might have lasted indefinitely except for the fact that Ella Kaye came on board one night in Boston and a week later Dan Cody inhospitably died.
A few days later he took him to Duluth and bought him a blue coat, six pair of white duck trousers and a yachting cap.
Tom appeared from his oblivion as we were sitting down to supper together. "Do you mind if I eat with some people over here?" he said. "A fellow's getting off some funny stuff."
There were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same profusion of champagne, the same many-colored, many-keyed commotion, but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn't been there before. Or perhaps I had merely grown used to it, grown to accept West Egg as a world complete in itself, with its own standards and its own great figures, second to nothing because it had no consciousness of being so, and now I was looking at it again, through Daisy's eyes. It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment.
Gatsby's notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his hospitality and so become authorities on his past, had increased all summer until he fell just short of being news.
Nick, in turns, tells Gatsby that he should move on, because the past cannot be repeated. SIGNIFICANCE: Gatsby is the man that has all the glamour, the riches, the success - and also being the perfect bachelor, but the thing he wants the most is Daisy and he knows he cannot have her.
This is an example of the typical saying "Money cannot buy you love.". This is a point of character revelation, as Gatsby is naive thinking he would be able recreate the past and that Daisy would willing to give up her social class of "old money" to be with him, who is of new money.