Just Some Critics For 'The Great Gatsby'

Critics of The Great Gatsby

Theme	Quote	Place
The book in general	“The Great Gatsby is somehow a commentary on that elusive phrase, the American dream”	Scott Fitzgerald’s critic of America, Marius Bewley, The Sewanee Review, p223
Gatsby	“the figure who control Gatsby’s mysterious wealth is a travesty of Rothstein”	New essays on the great Gatsby, Matthew J Bruccoli p8
Wealth, the American dream	“his fable of East and west is little concerned with twentieth century materialism and moral anarchy, for its theme is the unending quest for the romantic dream, which is forever betrayed in fact and yet redeemed in men’s minds”	Scott Fitzgerald’s fable of east and west, Robert Ornstein p139
Gatsby’s guests, drunkenness, status, wealth	“the Broadway people at Gatsby’s speak only one language. They are in a constant state of sincerity, running their mascara, falling over drunk, going hopelessly past the limits of style”	Great Gatsby and modern times, Ronald berman, p120
Owl eyes (appearing thrice)	“He is one of several repetitive devices with which Fitzgerald unifies the narrative; he relates immediately to the major symbol of the T.J. Eckleburg billboard with its huge yellow spectacles emblematizing eyes that do not see”	Owl eyes, Stoddard’s lectures and the great Gatsby, Patrick w. Shaw, p125
Corruption, Gatsby	“Gatsby’s criminal nature links him to the self –corruption of Tom, Jordan, and Daisy- representatives of the world he longs to conquer”	Equivocal Endings in classic American novels, Joyce A. Rowe, P113
Corruption, Gatsby, Tom, Daisy	“among the many parallels between Gatsby and the Buchanans, the most striking is that all three are killers. As Gatsby is said to have been responsible for killing someone, so , by the end of the story, are both daisy and tom”	Equivocal Endings in classic American novels, Joyce A. Rowe, P114
Gatsby, daisy, myrtle, cars, death,	“nothing so clearly delineates the quality of Gatsby’s amorally dissociated nature as his reaction to Myrtle Wilson’s death. Nick notes with surprise, and at first with disgust, that Gatsby shows no concern for the woman who was killed by Daisy’s reckless driving”.	Equivocal Endings in classic American novels, Joyce A. Rowe, p 114
Gatsby	“it is Gatsby’s unwavering focused on Daisy, and his concomitant lack of feeling for the dead woman, that is so chilling”	Equivocal Endings in classic American novels, Joyce A. Rowe, P114
Corruption, the American dream, the novel	“The corruption of the American Dream emerges in various ways throughout The Great Gatsby – extravagant parties, expensive cars and sprawling homes providing the backdrop for adulterous affairs, car crashes and, eventually, three deaths”	Say it ain’t so Jay: Fitzgerald’s use of Baseball in the great Gatsby, Robert Johnson Jr, p30
Cars	“reference to cars associate them with restlessness and also with power in all its manifestations and finally with death”	Kathleen Parkinson, Penguin critical studies the great Gatsby, p 41
Cars, wealth	“They are the emblem of consumer power, as well as of destructiveness and violence in modern society”	Kathleen Parkinson, Penguin critical studies the great Gatsby, p 41
Cars, wealth, love	“cars are seen as constructions of luxury and light, and romance too”	Kathleen Parkinson, Penguin critical studies the great Gatsby, p 41
Cars, wealth, the upper class, fragility of life	“In  significant conversation he [Nick] has with Jordan Baker – whose name is an amalgam of two America Makes of car – the car becomes a metaphor for the kind of imperviousness to the people that characterizes Tom and daisy and other such “careless people “ who are insulated by their wealth from the reality of others’ lives”	Kathleen Parkinson, Penguin critical studies the great Gatsby, p 41
Cars, myrtle, death, sexuality	“The impersonal death machine violates myrtle’s female identity and ravages her: it is a symbolic rape”	Kathleen Parkinson, Penguin critical studies the great Gatsby, p 42
Owl eyes	“owl eyes makes a reappearance in the narrative as the only other mourner at Gatsby’s funeral”	Kathleen Parkinson, Penguin critical studies the great Gatsby,p48
Owl eyes, upper class, drunkenness,	“in Gatsby’s library he made his insistent and triumphant discovery that the books… “were real””	Kathleen Parkinson, Penguin critical studies the great Gatsby,p48