Your Questions About Gardening

GardenersCardiff answers:

Love is a many splendid thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love!
~ from the movie Moulin Rouge ~

Other men said they have seen angels,
But I have seen thee
And thou art enough.
~ by G. Moore ~

I would fly you to the moon and back if you’ll be . . . If you’ll be my baby.
~ From a song by Savage Garden ~

I love you – those three words have my life in them.
~ by Alexandrea to Nicholas III ~

What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
~ by Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for their religion –
I have shudder’d at it.
I shudder no more.
I could be martyr’d for my religion
Love is my religion
And I could die for that.
I could die for you.
~ by John Keats ~

I’d like to run away
From you,
But if you didn’t come
And find me …
I would die.
~ by Shirley Bassey ~

GardenersCardiff answers:

Gatsby doesn’t love money for itself; he likes money only if it serves the purpose of securing him Daisy and following through on his dreams. He is not corrupt in the way your question implies.

He is, however, corrupt. He is a bootlegger and he makes money illegally, by serving people who themselves are corrupt. He perverts the American dream he pursues in the way he pursues it.

“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.” (Chapter VI. The religious allusion shows the way in which commercial practices corrupt the pure ideal.)

—-

“That drug-store business was just small change,” continued Tom slowly, “but you’ve got something on now that Walter’s afraid to tell me about.”

I glanced at Daisy, who was staring terrified between Gatsby and her husband, and at Jordan, who had begun to balance an invisible but absorbing object on the tip of her chin. Then I turned back to Gatsby—and was startled at his expression. He looked—and this is said in all contempt for the babbled slander of his garden—as if he had “killed a man.” For a moment the set of his face could be described in just that fantastic way. (Chapter VII_)

—–

Gatsby is at the end dealing in stolen securities. That makes his practices not very different from the gamblers and stock manipulators who come to his parties. However, they are corrupted by money; Gatsby remains untouched that way.

“Young Parke’s in trouble,” he said rapidly. “They picked him up when he handed the bonds over the counter. They got a circular from New York giving ’em the numbers just five minutes before. What d’you know about that, hey? You never can tell in these hick towns——” (Chapter IX)

GardenersCardiff answers:

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! (1.2.6)

For Hamlet, whose suicidal tendencies lead him to wish that his “flesh” would “melt” and dissolve, the issue of “self-slaughter” is a religious and moral dilemma that will haunt him throughout the play. Here, he laments that suicide is an unforgivable sin, an issue that will resurface after Ophelia’s mysterious drowning. Check out 5.1.2 below.

READ MORE: http://www.shmoop.com/hamlet/religion-quotes.html

HAMLET
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on’t! Ah fie! ’tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. (1.2.6)

At the play’s outset, Hamlet is clearly suicidal – he wishes his “flesh would melt” because his mother’s betrayal of his father has made the world seem like a completely corrupted place. Here, he laments that suicide or, “self slaughter” is a sin. Compare this passage to Hamlet’s infamous “to be, or not to be” speech in 3.1.1 below. (Check out “Symbols, Imagery, Allegory” if you want to know more about the “unweeded garden” reference)

HAMLET
No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with
modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as
thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried,
Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of
earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he
was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?
Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw! (5.1.30)

Hamlet is fascinated by the physical process of decay, but he is also intrigued by the commonality of death. Here, he seems to finally understand the philosophical implications of the fact that every human is mortal. Even Alexander the Great “died,” “was buried,” and “returneth into dust.” Hamlet has made a similar point earlier in the play when he mockingly jokes about Polonius’s dead body being food for “worms” (see 4.3.1 above). But here, the tone is quite different and this seems to be a whole new and more mature attitude for Hamlet.

HAMLET
Not a whit, we defy augury: there’s a special
providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,
’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he
leaves, what is’t to leave betimes? Let be. (5.2.37)

This is another major turning point for Prince Hamlet. After all his musings about his fascination with and horror of death, Hamlet ultimately accepts that he will die, and says that “the readiness is all.” His reference to the “fall of the sparrow” is from Matthew 10.29 – “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father” – which is taken to mean that God oversees and determines the life and death of every single creature, even the sparrow.

READ MORE: http://www.shmoop.com/hamlet/mortality-quotes.html

Also study quotes from:
http://classiclit.about.com/od/hamlet/a/aa_hamlet.htm
http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/hamlet/quotes.html

I hope I’ve helped you,
Angela!!!