Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

Chapter I

• What type of guy is Nick? What is he like in College?
• How does Nick know Tom and Daisy? Describe Tom and Daisy.
• How is the phone call the "fifth guest" at dinner?
• Daisy mentions Nick's engagement to Nick, and we learn a great deal about Nick. What do we learn?
• Like all great characters, the reader hears a great deal about Gatsby indirectly before we hear him actually speak. With this in mind, why is the end of this chapter significant?

Chapter II

• Describe the valley of Ashes; can you think of a similar area that you know personally that compares to this area?
• Who is Wilson and to whom in the novel is he connected?
• My life as a dog: describe what it feels and will feel to be Myrtle's newly bought puppy?
• What are the remarkable things that happen during the party?
• Describe the narration at the end of the chapter.

Chapter III

• The great Gatsby parties are described here. What are some new rumors about Gatsby in this chapter? What happens when one of his female party patrons tears her yellow dress?
• Finally Nick meets the mysterious Gatsby; what so interesting about their meeting?
• Explain the details surrounding the car accident.
• Read the last four pages carefully. When Nick writes "Reading over what I have written so far," many critical thinking flags fly off the page for us. What are they?

Chapter IV

• The list of guest; know that many epic works contain such grand lists. Why is there a grand list here? What is Nick trying to do to his story? What is significant of the condition of the paper? What is significant about the actual paper?
• Despite his too cool for school car, Gatsby seems nevervous, restless. Be sure to underline passages in the drive to NYC scene that indicate this characteristic.
• Meyer Wolfshiem loves the past! How do we know?
• Tom is also in the popular lunch spot; what happens when Nick attempts to introduce Tom to Gatsby?
• Be sure to know well Jordan's account of Gatsby's and Daisy's love affair as well as Daisy's wedding and post wedding narrative with Tom.

Chapter V

• What does Gatsby offer Nick? What does it tell us about Gatsby?
• There is so much tension in the room during the tea. What happens to the poor clock on the mantle?
• Five pages from the end of the chapter, Gatsby points out the Daisy the view of her dock's green light. What is the after shock of this event for Gatsby?

Chapter VI

• The first five pages present us with more background information on Gatsby. What do we learn? Who is Dan Cody? How did Gastby change his name?
• Tom, Mr. Sloane and a woman show up at Gastby's house for a rest and some refreshments. They are not there to sincerely visit with Gastby. What misunderstanding happens when they leave?
• Finally Daisy attends one of Gatsby's party. Where do the two of them have the best time? What type of time does Daisy have at the party? (There is some great dating advice that one can glean from this chapter!)
• The chapter ends with a great kiss scene. What is Romantic (in terms of the literary movement) about the kiss?

Chapter VII

• Why did Gatsby fire his servants?
• How does Daisy child deliver another aftershock blow to Gatsby?
• According to Gatsby and Nick, what is Daisy voice full of?
• During the marriage/lover fight scene in the hotel, what music is drifting up into the room?
• Explain the dramatic irony of the car crash.
• If we had any doubts that Nick was a man in the margin, we get hit over the head when he wanders around Tom and Daisy's house to find out what they are doing. What does he observe?

Chapter VIII

• This chapter is a rich blend of Gatsby's last night and day on earth mixed with memories that Gatsby relates to Nick regarding his past with Dan Cody, Daisy, and the war. Be sure to mark the shifts in time throughout the chapter; the extra space in the books helps sometimes.
• While the narration drifts from the past to the present, we find that by midmorning, Nick finally goes to work and does nothing productive--except have a poor conversation with Jordan on the phone. What is Wilson doing all this time?
• When Daisy still has not called over on the phone, what does Gatsby do as a way to take advantage of the great weather?
• At the end of the novel, we will discuss Dr. T.J. Eckleburg's advertisement. How does it come up in this chapter?

Chapter IX

• Why does Meyer attend the funeral?
• Who calls up for tennis shoes? Does he attend the funeral?
• What does the self-help list remind you of from another author this fall?
• Be prepared to discuss the possible interpretations of the ending.

Literary Influences: 

• Notice Gatsby's entry of self improvement goals that he notes in his copy of Hopalong Cassidy. (By the way, who is Hopalong Cassidy and what connotative air is left by this character?) Jimmy's Gatz's goals resemble a passage from Ben Franklin's The Autobiography. Click on the following link and compare: http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/autobiography/page38.htm

• Do Dave Singleman's green velvet slippers from Miller's Death of a Salesman haunt Fitzgerald's text?
• Does the line from Gatsby father, "he told me I et like a hog once, and I beat him for it" (175) resurrect images of Pap from Twain's Huckleberry Finn?
• Epic convention: Nick's guest list written on the time table imitate heroic lists of characters and lineage in the Bible as well as in Homer's epics. Fitzgerald is obviousy out to create an epic; what is his motive in this chapter? Are Gatsby's guest epic? Heroic? Explain.
• John Keats' influence haunts Fitzgerald's novel. Readers of This Side of Paradise know how Fitzgerald loved and often cited the English Romantic poets. In The Great Gatsby, we are alluded to this influence in a quite a subtle way in the first chapter when we hear that "there's a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Start Line. He's singing away...It's romantic, isn't it?" At the end of Chapter Six, Nick refers to "an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words." Based on Nick's college literary magazine days and his educational background, it is implied that he is referencing Keats and the English (White Star Line has transported the muse: Greece, to Italy (Virgil) to England to Nebraska briefly (Cather) now to the green lawns and honey blue sky of Long Island. (NB: Fitzgerald's characters are all from the West and are indulging in the Jazz Age on the East Coast. Click here for Ode to a Grecian Urn. It is interesting to note that the figures on the Grecian Urn replicate the characters in the novel as well as the party atmosphere of Gatsby's house.
• Colridge wrote a poem called Ode to Dejection. Right from the start, how does the title fit into Fitzgerald's novel? Click on the third stanza below; it is linked to a great Coleridge web page. Moreoever, it can be dangerous to mix a poet's biograph with his/her art. One thing that we should discuss, however, is the fact that Coleridge publishes Ode to Dejection at the same time William Wordsworth, his friend and fellow author of Lyricall Ballads 1798, marries Mary Hutchinson

It were a vain endeavour,

Though I should gaze for ever

1802 (aged 30 in October)

STC writes first (long) version of Dejection

May 8, 1802

Napoleon becomes life Consul

June 1802

STC publishes Poems

September-October 1802

STC writing for Morning Post

October 4, 1802

STC publishes Dejection, William Wordsworth marries Mary Hutchinson

October 1802