“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.
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“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.
"Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "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. "I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before," he said, nodding determinedly.
In response to Nick Gatsby say's "can't repeat the past? Why of course you can!" This truly highlights his inability to accept the truth, being that Daisy has moved on and is married with a child. It is not only foolish, it is delusional to think that you can turn back time.
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.
When Nick tells Gatsby that you can't repeat the past, Gatsby says "Why of course you can!" Gatsby has dedicated his entire life to recapturing a golden, perfect past with Daisy. Gatsby believes that money can recreate the past.
The flashback serves to show the past of Daisy and Tom, so that we can better understand their relationship now. During the flashback, Daisy receives a letter that we infer is from Gatsby, which causes Daisy to cry.
Nick observes that as Gatsby gives a tour of his house to Daisy he, "revalued everything in his house according to the measure of the response it drew from her well-loved eyes" exhibiting his desire for the perfect life with her.
"I wouldn't ask too much of her," I ventured. "You can't repeat the past." "Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously.
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.
The moral of The Great Gatsby is that the American Dream is ultimately unattainable. Jay Gatsby had attained great wealth and status as a socialite; however, Gatsby's dream was to have a future with his one true love, Daisy.
The novel is set in the fictional town of West Egg on Long Island in the early 1920s. Indeed, Fitzgerald was inspired to write the book by the grand parties he attended on prosperous Long Island, where he got a front-row view of the elite, moneyed class of the 1920s, a culture he longed to join but never could.
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...
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.
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.”