The Great Gatsby Nick Carraway Quotes

Nick Carraway

Quote 55

"They're a rotten crowd," I shouted across the lawn. "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together." (8.44-45)

Finally, right before Gatsby dies, Nick realizes that all the people he's been hanging around with are no good. Gee, took you long enough, Nick.

Nick Carraway

Quote 56

I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made […]. (9.145)

Nick may understand Tom, but he's not happy about it: he's dissatisfied with the way Tom and Daisy are dealing with this tragedy, and it's enough to send him scurrying back West in search of something else to be dissatisfied about.

Nick Carraway

Quote 57

Why they came East I don't know. They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. (1.16-17)

Daisy and Tom's crowd may be "rich together," but this sounds an awful lot like loneliness to us.