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=Quotes & Motifs =



__The Sun Also Rises__  Loss || Hope || Gender Roles ||  Sexuality Aficion || Identity || Social Isolation Temporariness || Escapism || Dissolution Morality || Light versus Darkness ||  Faith

__The Great Gatsby__ Hope || Loss || Social Isolation <span class="wiki_link">Morality || <span class="wiki_link">New Beginning || <span class="wiki_link"> Isolation Temporariness<span class="wiki_link">



<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif">The Sun Also Rises
Loss <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">“This was Brett, that I had felt like crying about. Then I thought of her walking up the street and stepping into the car, as I had last seen her, and of course in a little I felt like hell again” (Hemingway 42).

<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">Brett and Jake have very strong emotions for each other, a love that they deny each other due to Jake’s handicap. This supports the theme of loss. Jake watches Brett depart from his apartment and becomes depressed, knowing that their love will never become more than a yearning. During times of depression, Jake feels like he can never have the one person he loves, but instead has to stand by and watch her live her life with other people. <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">(above quote)

<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)"> However, a few times during the novel, Jake and Brett have moments where they discuss their yearning for each other and embrace each other, giving a little hope that they are could be together, never the less. (below quote) Hope

//"'Oh, Jake,' Brett said, 'we could have had such a damned good time together'.....'Yes,' I said. 'Isn't it pretty to think so?'" (Hemingway 251)//

Gender Roles <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255)"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">"I though i had paid for everything. Not like the woman pays and pays and pays. No idea of retribution or punishment. Just exchange of values. You gave up something and got something else" (Hemingway 152). --he describes the different roles men and women pay and how they have to be partners. "Women made such swell friends. Awfully swell. In the first place, you had to be in love with a woman to have a basis of friendship. I had been having Brett for a friend" (Hemingway 152) --the woman's place was to be his friend or his lover, not a counterpart Sexuality <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255)"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">"I'm going to marry him" <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255)"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">Although this quote is just a statement made by Brett, it shows that she is very confused about her sexual encounter. Between Jake, Mike and Cohn, she is not sure of her sexuality and who it is she want's to be with, as much as she would like to say she is sure. Aficion

//"Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters." (Hemingway 18)//

Identity <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255)"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255)"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">"What do you know about Lady Brett Ashley, Jake?" <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255)"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255)"> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">"Her name's Lady Ashley. Brett's her own name. She's a nice girl," <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">I said." (Hemingway 46).  <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255)"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">-Jake and Cohn are referring to Brett. Brett seems to have a little trouble identifying herself throughout the novel.  Social Isolation "Tell me, Robert. Why do you follow Brett around like a poor bloody steer? Don't you know you're not wanted? I know when I'm not wanted. Why don't you know when you're not wanted?" (Hemingway 146) Mike isolates Robert once he finds out that he is in love with Brett by interrogating him "You tell him, Jake. Tell him either he must behave or get out" (Hemingway 148) Mike uses Jake to gang up against Robert to isolate him Temporariness Escapism "Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn't make any difference. I've tried all that. You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There's nothing to that" (Hemingway 19). --Robert is trying to move around because he is bored with his career and his girlfriend and his life. He thinks that his life is meaningless so he wants to leave. "You're an expatriate. Why don't you live in New York?...Nobody that ever left their own country ever wrote anything worth printing...You've lost touch with the soil...You spend all your time talking, not working" (Hemingway 120). --He is an expatriate because he left his home country. The decision to leave America changed his whole life and his attitude towards life. Dissolution <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255)"> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">"'This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don't want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste."(Hemingway 59)  <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255)"> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255)"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">This quotes represents the reoccurring theme of alcoholism in this novel. Although this quote states not to "mix emotions with wine" that is precisely what tends to happen through out the story, causing much conflict.  Morality

//"That was morality; things that made you disgusted afterward." (Hemingway 152)//

Light vs. Darkness "It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing" (Hemingway 42) --Jake is worried about being with Brett at night, everything becomes much harder to deal with once the nighttime comes Faith <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255)"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255)"> "I was a little ashamed, and regretted that I was such a rotten Catholic, but realized there was nothing I could do about it, at least for a while, and maybe never, but that anyway it was a grand religion, and I only wished I felt religious and maybe I would the next time...."<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255)"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255)"> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">(Hemingway <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">97) <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255)"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">- <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">Jake regrets his lack of good faith, and feels a bit embarassed by it.

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif">

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif">The Great Gatsby
Hope "he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way...involuntarily I glanced seaward-and distinguished nothing except a single green light" (Fitzgerald 26)"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter- to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther....And one fine morning--" (Fitzgerald 180). Loss "He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night" (Fitzgerald 180). Social Isolation '"This is an unusual party for me. I haven't even seen the host. I live over there-' I waved my hand at the invisible hedge in the distance, 'and this man Gatsby sent over his chauffeur with an invitation.' For a moment he looked at me as if he failed to understand. 'I'm Gatsby,' he suddenly said" (Fitzgerald 52). "a sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell" (Fitzgerald 60) Morality New Beginning Isolation Temporariness Identity 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 that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial"> <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51)">"It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life" (Fitzgerald 52) <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51)"> <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51)">"I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known" (Fitzgerald 64) Weather (Light vs. Darkness) "...the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face...then the glow faded, each light deserting her..." (Fitzgerald 18) "so i walked away and left him there in the moonlight-watching over nothing" (Fitzgerald 145)."at the enchanted metropolitan twilight i felt a haunting loneliness sometimes" (Fitzgerald 62) Commitment "'Going on for five years-and you didn't know.'...'You've been seeing this fellow for five years?' 'No we couldn't meet. But both of us loved each other all that time," Gender Roles "that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool" (Fitzgerald 21) "dishonestly in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply" (fitzgerald 63)