Great Gatsby Religion Quotes

But above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg.
The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic – their irises are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 2, the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg is an ad that gazes down at the characters and all that happens in the valley of ashes. It symbolizes God looking down at the characters and the moral decay of the 1920s.

‘You see,’ cried Catherine triumphantly. She lowered her voice again. ‘It’s really his wife that’s keeping them apart. She’s a Catholic, and they don’t believe in divorce.’
Daisy was not a Catholic, and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 2, Tom has invented this elaborate lie to to cover over the real reason he won’t divorce Daisy to marry Myrtle – class difference. Myrtle is not of his social class so he strings her along with lies.

‘I’ll tell you God’s truth.’ His right hand suddenly ordered divine retribution to stand by. ‘I am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West all dead now. I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years. It is a family tradition.’

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 4. Jay Gatsby raises his right hand and invokes God’s retribution if he is lying. Which is course he is, having invented the illusion of coming from old money and being a highly educated Oxford man.

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.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 6, Describing Gatsby’s early history, Nick makes the comparison between Gatsby and Jesus to illuminate Gatsby’s creation of his own identity. In the eyes of all Jay Gatsby may be a deception, but Gatsby believed he remained true to this reinvention of himself.

‘Have you got a church you go to sometimes, George? Maybe even if you haven’t been there for a long time? Maybe I could call up the church and get a priest to come over and he could talk to you, see?’
‘Don’t belong to any.’
‘You ought to have a church, George, for times like this. You must have gone to church once. Didn’t you get married in a church? Listen, George, listen to me. Didn’t you get married in a church?’
‘That was a long time ago.’

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 8, Michaelis talks to a distressed George, who has little time for institutionalized religion, which he sees as a relic of an older age.

‘I spoke to her,’ he muttered, after a long silence. ‘I told her she might fool me but she couldn’t fool God. I took her to the window’ – with an effort he got up and walked to the rear window and leaned with his face pressed against it – ‘and I said ‘God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but you can’t fool God!’
Standing behind him, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and enormous, from the dissolving night.
‘God sees everything,’ repeated Wilson.
‘That’s an advertisement,’ Michaelis assured him. Something made him turn away from the window and look back into the room. But Wilson stood there a long time, his face close to the window pane, nodding into the twilight.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 8, George Wilson is talking about his dead wife Myrtle, whom he found out had been cheating on him. Wilson believes that God, the source of ultimate knowledge and justice, sees everything. He confuses the eyes of Doctor Eckleburg with the eyes of God, but they are the remains of an old billboard advert for a company that no longer exists.

A little before three the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing, and I began to look involuntarily out the windows for other cars. So did Gatsby’s father. And as the time passed and the servants came in and stood waiting in the hall, his eyes began to blink anxiously, and he spoke of the rain in a worried, uncertain way. The minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn’t any use. Nobody came.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 9, we all die alone. Some of are buried alone, none more so than the great man Gatsby, for whom nobody besides the owl-eyed man, Nick and Gatsby’s dad turns up for his funeral. In this material world where money reigns there are no spiritual values. God and religion are dead, and the American dream corrupted. When Gatsby is stripped of his material possessions in death, those who flocked to his parties in life don’t bother to attend his funeral.

The poor son-of-a-bitch.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 9, Owl Eyes at Gatsby’s funeral, the only party-goer there. He is the one person who seems to feel sorry for Gatsby, aside from his father and Nick. The Owl-Eyed Man in The Great Gatsby has been compared to the Dr. T. J. Eckleburg billboard with its ‘all-seeing’ eyes. Both are symbols of a spectator god. His attendance as one of the few to attend Gatsby’s funeral could be seen as meaning that God is watching when humans are laid to rest and Gatsby was worthy of his presence at his funeral.

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.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 9, Nick’s moral indictment of the Buchanans, who are corrupted by their wealth and perception of things. Ignorant to what is going on in the world around them, they refuse to have any guilt for their reckless behavior. While Myrtle, George and Gatsby have all died, Nick observes that the Buchanans are not punished at all for their recklesness and can simply retreat back into their money. They are portrayed at people with no morals or religion or God.
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