PRESENTATION OUTLINE
IWBAT analyze the quotes from The Great Gatsby, chapter 1, and infer the author's purpose for setting, characterization, and tone in a 8-10 sentence paragraph using textual evidence.
"I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth. (2)."
"When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn (2)."
"I lived at West Egg, the – well, the least fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard … My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor's lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month. (5)"
"It'll show you how I've gotten to feel about – things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool – that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.' "(16-17)
What is Fitzgerald trying to achieve by using Nick's character as narrator for the Gatsby story?
Describe the "valley of ashes." What does it look like and what does it represent?
What more have you learned about Nick in this chapter? Is he similar or different than the people he spends his time with?
Pay attention to Nick's judgements. What do they reveal about his character that he does this (especially in relation to his opening comments)?
Describe Gatsby the first time Nick sees him.
Based on Nick's judgments and description of Gatsby, describe Fitzgerald's possible purpose of choosing two characters who juxtapose one another.
What new meaning do you see in the last two paragraphs of Chapter 1? What does Nick mean when he says, “Then it had
not been merely the stars to which he had aspired on the June night”?
Nick says, "There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired." What does Nick mean? How does each character in the novel fit into this schema?
"If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay," said Gatsby. "You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock." Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one."
"He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was…" ().
Plato held that reality was an imperfect reflection of an ideal, permanent realm. With this in mind,
what would you say Nick means when he says, “Jay Gatsby sprang from his Platonic conception of
himself?”
"Thirty – the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face fell lazily against my coat's shoulder and the formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand" (7.308).
Is Gatsby's "dream" over at the end of the chapter? Explain your rationale with TE.
How does Nick's statement "You're worth the whole bunch put together" show a change in Nick
from the beginning of the novel?
"They're a rotten crowd," I shouted across the lawn. "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together."
I've always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end. First he nodded politely, and then his face broke into that radiant and understanding smile, as if we'd been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time" (8.44).
"brooding on the old unknown world...boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into our past" (9.151).
Does Gatsby achieve the American Dream? If yes, when exactly can he say that he reaches it? If no, what prevents him from truly achieving it?
