On the last night, with my trunk packed and my car sold to the grocer, I went over and looked at that huge incoherent failure of a house once more. On the white steps an obscene word, scrawled by some boy with a piece of brick, stood out clearly in the moonlight, and I erased it, drawing my shoe raspingly along the stone. Then I wandered down to the beach and sprawled out on the sand.
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby. Chapter 9, Nick is the keeper of Gatsby’s memory. He can’t stand to his his friend’s name tarnished and erases the graffiti on the steps of the house, now standing neglected and a monument to Gatsby’s social failure.