A Literary Analysis

of The Great Gatsby

By: Shakari Paige
Lost Love in The Great Gatsby
● I chose lost love in the Great Gatsby because there is a lot of love being
forgotten or being departed with throughout the book, taking place with
many of the characters and sometimes taking place in the past and
attempted to be brought to the present.
 ● “I looked around. Most of the
remaining women were now
having fights with men said
to be their husbands.” pg.51
● The author’s choice to
[Characterization] characterize the remaining
couples at Gatsby’s party this
way starts off the story with
the feeling of lost love
surrounding Gatsby in his
house.
 ● “Some time toward midnight
Tom Buchanan and Mrs.
Wilson stood face to face,
discussing in impassioned
voices weather Mrs. Wilson
has any right to mention
Daisy’s name.” pg.37
[Characterization] ● The author's choice to
characterize Myrtle this way
also plays a role in his way of
describing how lost love
impacts us all, Myrtle’s lost
love is Tom to his wife Daisy
and dwelling on it in
Fitzgerald’s writing led to
Tom hitting her.
 ● “As I went over to say good-by I saw that the
expression of bewilderment had come back
into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt
had occurred to him as to the quality of his
present happiness. Almost five years! There
must have been moments even that
afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his
dreams-not through her own fault, but
[Symbolism] because of the colossal vitality of his
illusion. pg.95
● Fitzgerald including this choice of
symbolism in his story further pushes the
topic of lost love and how dwelling in the
past for it isn’t always a good thing like
Gatsby was doing with connected Daisy’s
green light with his hope and want to
recreate that past.
 ● "He talked a lot about the
past, and I gathered that he
wanted to recover
something, some idea of
himself perhaps that had
gone in to loving Daisy.”
[Characterization] pg.110
● This characteristic choice
Fitzgerald chose to give
Gatsby shows how dwelling
in the past is not good for
Gatsby because of the
reasons he’s doing it for
 ● “About Gatsby! No I haven’t. I
said I’d been making a small
investigation of his past.”
pg.122
● When Fitzgerald made this
[Characterization] choice of characterizing Tom
as a person who would dig
into the past he was also
making a choice to show
how it is so easy for us to be
wrapped up in it and how it
ultimately does us no good
when Tom gets questioned
by Nick and Jordan.
 ● “So we beat on, boats against
the current, borne back
ceaselessly into the past.”
pg.180
● This quotes shows through
[Unique Diction] unique diction how dwelling
in the past can be endless no
matter if you’ve had a new
revelation of thinking it
always comes back to the
past without end.
[When love is lost,
dwelling in the past isn’t
always a good thing.]
A Final Word...
We read The Great Gatsby to better our thinking and
understanding of really analyzing a text and thinking
about the underlying meaning behind things the author
may have chosen to include in their book.