critics

• class/race 


  'Nick and Irene are obsessed with passing in part because they also are passing in order to enjoy economic and social mobility' - Charles Lewis
• Gatsby and optimism 


  'his mistake was to accept life at its face value' - Isabel Patterson
• appearance v reality


  'the reality that such dreams are inevitably elusive and illusory because they are part of the past' - Susan Resneck
• appearance v reality on Daisy 


  she 'deliberately chooses to embrace certain illusions and play certain roles as a way of creating for herself a sense of meaning and purpose' - Susan Resneck
• reflection 


  'no more than a glorified anecdote' - H.L. Mencken
• Tom Buchanan


  'tom's restlessness is an arrogant assertiveness seeking to evade in bluster the deep uneasiness of self-knowledge' - A.E. Dyson
• Daisy Buchanan


  'vulgar and inhuman' - Alfred Kazin
• male characters use of Daisy

  'daisy represents a blank canvas that men can project their desires onto' - Darren Morton
• Myrtle 


  'a pathetic figure desperate to escape her conflicted circumstances' - Tony Cavender
• Gatsby 


  Gatsby 'always seems alone despite hordes of guests' - Stephanie Forward
• Nick and women


  Nick's 'critical view of the women is clear but it is complicated by his unreliability as a narrator' - Tony Cavender
• Nick's desires in society 


  'Nick is a spectator in search of a performer' - Tony Tanner