The Immortalists

by

Chloe Benjamin

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Immortalists makes teaching easy.

Gertie Gold Character Analysis

Gertie is the Gold family matriarch. While Gertie’s life is long, it’s also full of loss; her mother, Klara Sr., died when she was six years old, and her husband Saul dies at the age of 45. Immediately afterwards, her youngest son Simon runs away and then dies four years later. Her next youngest, Klara, dies nine years after that. Following Klara’s death, Gertie moves in with her son Daniel and his wife Mira. After Daniel dies in 2006, Gertie has a stroke and she moves to an assisted living facility near her oldest child Varya in San Francisco. Gertie is often overbearing, but she loves bringing the family together whenever she can. She adores Ruby, particularly when Ruby performs her magic show in Gertie’s assisted living facility. Gertie helps Varya to understand that merely living to an advanced age does not make life meaningful; joy and fulfillment come from love, family, and feeling connected to others.

Gertie Gold Quotes in The Immortalists

The The Immortalists quotes below are all either spoken by Gertie Gold or refer to Gertie Gold. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Fate vs. Choice Theme Icon
).
Chapter 5 Quotes

What can Simon tell her? It’s mysterious to him, too, how something he thought nothing of before, something that makes him feel pain and exhaustion and quite frequently embarrassment, has turned out to be a gateway to another thing entirely. When he points his foot, his leg grows by inches. During leaps, he hovers midair for minutes, as if he’s sprouted wings.

Related Characters: Simon Gold, Gertie Gold
Page Number: 65
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

At dinner that evening, he told the story of the near-drowning with pomp, but inside, he glowed with renewed attachment to his family. For the rest of the vacation, he forgave Varya her most sustained sleep-babbling. He let Klara take the first shower when they returned from the beach, even though her showers took so long that Gertie once banged on the door to ask why, if she needed this much water, Klara did not bring a bar of soap into the ocean. Years later, when Simon and Klara left home—and after that, when even Varya pulled away from him—Daniel could not understand why they didn’t feel what he had: the regret of separation, and the bliss of being returned. He waited.

After all, what could he say? Don’t drift too far. You’ll miss us. But as the years passed and they did not, he became wounded and despairing, then bitter.

Related Characters: Simon Gold, Klara Gold, Daniel Gold, Varya Gold, Gertie Gold
Page Number: 189
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 36 Quotes

“l think I might like to teach,” she says. In graduate school, she taught undergrads in exchange for tuition remission. She hadn’t thought she could do such a thing—before her first class, she vomited in a sink in the women’s restroom, unable to reach the toilet—she soon found it invigorating: all those upturned faces, waiting to see what she had up her sleeve. Of course, some of the faces were not upturned but sleeping, and secretly, those were the ones she liked best. She was determined to wake them up.

Related Characters: Varya Gold (speaker), The Fortune Teller/Bruna Costello, Gertie Gold
Page Number: 339
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Immortalists LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Immortalists PDF

Gertie Gold Quotes in The Immortalists

The The Immortalists quotes below are all either spoken by Gertie Gold or refer to Gertie Gold. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Fate vs. Choice Theme Icon
).
Chapter 5 Quotes

What can Simon tell her? It’s mysterious to him, too, how something he thought nothing of before, something that makes him feel pain and exhaustion and quite frequently embarrassment, has turned out to be a gateway to another thing entirely. When he points his foot, his leg grows by inches. During leaps, he hovers midair for minutes, as if he’s sprouted wings.

Related Characters: Simon Gold, Gertie Gold
Page Number: 65
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

At dinner that evening, he told the story of the near-drowning with pomp, but inside, he glowed with renewed attachment to his family. For the rest of the vacation, he forgave Varya her most sustained sleep-babbling. He let Klara take the first shower when they returned from the beach, even though her showers took so long that Gertie once banged on the door to ask why, if she needed this much water, Klara did not bring a bar of soap into the ocean. Years later, when Simon and Klara left home—and after that, when even Varya pulled away from him—Daniel could not understand why they didn’t feel what he had: the regret of separation, and the bliss of being returned. He waited.

After all, what could he say? Don’t drift too far. You’ll miss us. But as the years passed and they did not, he became wounded and despairing, then bitter.

Related Characters: Simon Gold, Klara Gold, Daniel Gold, Varya Gold, Gertie Gold
Page Number: 189
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 36 Quotes

“l think I might like to teach,” she says. In graduate school, she taught undergrads in exchange for tuition remission. She hadn’t thought she could do such a thing—before her first class, she vomited in a sink in the women’s restroom, unable to reach the toilet—she soon found it invigorating: all those upturned faces, waiting to see what she had up her sleeve. Of course, some of the faces were not upturned but sleeping, and secretly, those were the ones she liked best. She was determined to wake them up.

Related Characters: Varya Gold (speaker), The Fortune Teller/Bruna Costello, Gertie Gold
Page Number: 339
Explanation and Analysis: