The Great Gatsby - Chapter 8

“He had intended, probably, to take what he could and go – but now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail.” Page 156 (in my book) Where Nick is narrating on Gatsby falling for Daisy when he met her.
When Gatsby found Daisy, he was poor and had nothing to his name. Daisy on the other hand had everything and more. When they met, he was completely amazed by what she had materially and how she acted; he fell in love with her. When he went to the war, he lost essentially what he had dreamed of, and then spent a great deal of time dreaming of and searching for what he could no longer have. I chose this quote because I think a lot of people are this way, they have no intention of doing anything, or falling in love with something, then when it disappears they spend their lives looking for it again.

The second quote I really like is a few paragraphs on page 167 in my book, it starts: “Wilson’s glazed eyes turned out to the ash heaps, where small grey clouds took on fantastic shape and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind…” and continues ending with: “ ‘God sees everything,’ repeated Wilson. ‘That’s an advertisement,’ Michaelis assured him.”
Wilson is probably insane just from being himself and what had happened to him in the past few days, but I think this quote is pretty meaningful in general. Wilson is commenting that God sees everything, everything Myrtle had done as he looks at the billboard of Dr. Ekleburg. Michaelis thinks Wilson is saying that the advertisement is God. I’m not sure if Wilson actually thinks that, but its kind of easy to assume that Michaelis is thinking Wilson is a little off the deep end after this comment.
I chose this quote because I think it shows that everyone believes in something different as a higher power or God, and others are sometimes critical of peoples beliefs even when they try not to be.