— The Great Gatsby (1925), Chapter 9
About this quote
हिन्दी में
वे बेपरवाह लोग थे — टॉम और डेज़ी।
What it means
The sentence is a classification, not a complaint. Nick does not say they did a careless thing; he says they were careless people — a standing quality, in the past tense of a verdict already settled, with their names attached afterwards like a caption under a photograph. Careless is ordinarily a word for lost keys and broken glasses, and it is being made to carry ruined lives; the gap between the size of the word and the size of the damage is the whole effect.
It is worth keeping because it names a kind of harm that contains no villain and therefore usually escapes being called harm at all. It is often quoted as a line about the rich, and it is that, but the accusation is narrower: not that the Buchanans wanted anything bad to happen, but that what happened to other people was never quite real to them. The man delivering it also spent a season being entertained by these two, which keeps it from being a clean line to stand behind.
What it teaches you
After a plan of yours goes wrong — a trip, a hire, a party, a family arrangement — find out who did the clearing up, and whether that was the same person who chose the plan. Carelessness is almost never visible from the inside, because whoever caused the mess has usually already moved on to the next thing; the only reliable evidence is the hours and money someone else spent restoring the situation while you were not thinking about it.
अर्थ और सीख
यह वाक्य टॉम और डेज़ी के किसी एक काम पर नहीं, उनके स्वभाव पर मुहर लगाता है। जिस शब्द से आमतौर पर टूटा गिलास या खोई चाबी बताई जाती है, उसी से यहाँ उजड़ी हुई ज़िंदगियाँ बताई गई हैं — और यही बेमेल पूरी चोट है। सीख: अपनी किसी योजना के बिगड़ने के बाद देखिए कि मलबा समेटा किसने; बेपरवाही अपने भीतर से कभी नहीं दिखती, वह सिर्फ़ उस कीमत में दिखती है जो कोई और चुकाता है।
Where it comes from
Nick’s verdict on the Buchanans near the end. The full passage goes on to say that they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money.
What makes it land is the word chosen: not cruel, not wicked — careless. The novel’s argument is that indifference backed by enough money does the damage that malice would have to work at.
