Nick Carraway

Daisy Buchanan

Tom Buchanan

the narrator of the story

from a “prominent, well-to-do people in this middle-western city” (7) who fought in “that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War” (7)… then went East to learn the “bond business”

will be discussed

(Nick’s next door neighbor; Daisy’s old love)

“Daisy was my second cousin once removed” (10)

“[Daisy’s] husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterwards savours of anti-climax. His family were enormously wealthy…it was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that” (10)

Physical Descriptions

N/A (narrator)

“…I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd… I’d got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care” (53)

her laugh: “an absurd, charming little laugh” (13)

“it was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth—but there was an excitement in her voice…a singing compulsion, a whispered ‘Listen,’ a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour” (14)

“a sturdy, straw haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of his body…” (11)

“his speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it…” (11)

Outlook/

Attitude

“life is more successfully looked at from a single window, after all” (9)

“I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known” (64)

“It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expanded your own powers of adjustment” (111)

“…there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life…it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again.” (6)

“Then came the war, old sport. It was a great relief and I tried very hard to die but I seemed to bear an enchanted life” (70)

“He was a son of God… and he must be about His Father’s Business, the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty” (104)

“’Can’t repeat the past?’ he cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can!’” (116)

“Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything” (21)

“the best thing a girl can be in this world…a beautiful little fool” (21)

“Her voice is full of money” (127)

“High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl…” (127)

“I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrevocable football game” (10)

“I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things” (17)

“Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart” (25)

Effects

on Others

“It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it… It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so 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 that, at your best, you hoped to convey” (52)

“she laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see” (13)

“[he] compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square” (16)