The Great Gatsby

1. The Great Gatsby Chapter 9

2. Timeframe of the novel • “After two years I remember the rest of that day, and that night and the next day, only as an endless drill of police and photographers and newspaper men in and out of Gatsby’s front door”

3. The verdict • Michaelis tells the coroner that Wilson suspected that his wife was having an affair • Catherine tells the coroner that Myrtle was happy with her husband and remained faithful to him • “So Wilson was reduced to a man ‘deranged by grief’ in order that the case might remain in its simplest form”

4. Nick is one of the only people at Gatsby’s side • Daisy and Tom went away and left no address • Wolfsheim says he can’t come for the funeral • The person on the other end of the fishy call from Chicago doesn’t care • Klipspringer comes to the house for a pair of shoes, but says he can’t come to the funeral

5. Why does Nick feel a “responsibility” to Gatsby? • “At first I was surprised and confused; then, as he lay in his house and didn’t move or breathe or speak, hour upon hour, it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no one else was interested-interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to which every one has some vague right at the end” • Why does Nick feel the need “to get someone for him [Gatsby]”

6. Henry C. Gatz • From Minnesota • Gatsby’s father • “…his grief began to mix with an awed pride” • Why? • Nick tells Gatz, “We were close friends” • Really? Is Nick being honest here?

7. Henry C. Gatz • Gatz says, “If he’d of lived, he’d of been a great man…” • Nick responds, “That’s true” • Again, do you think Nick is being honest?

8. “Jimmy was bound to get ahead” • What does Gatz show Nick to prove this statement? • Can you make a text-to-text connection?

9. The weather • What was the weather like on the day of Gatsby’s funeral?

10. Nick as narrator • After Gatsby’s funeral Nick narrates some of his memories of going home to the mid West during prep school and college. • What is the purpose of this sentimentality?

11. A story of the West… • “I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.”

12. A quality of distortion… • “West Egg, especially, still figures in my more fantastic dreams. I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred haunted houses, at once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a lusterless moon. In the foreground four solemn men in dress suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles over the side, sparkles cold with jewels.”

13. El Greco

14. Nick decides to return home • “After Gatsby’s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes’ power of correction” • When Nick “breaks up” with Jordan, why is her hair described as “the color of an autumn leaf”?

15. Nick sees Tom • Late October • Nick won’t shake hands with Tom • Tom told Wilson that Gatsby owned the yellow car • “I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused” • Does Nick eventually shake hands with Tom?

16. Nick’s conclusion • “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy-they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made”

17. The Green Light • Image of the new world waiting to be discovered – American Dream • “Gatsby believed in the green light…” • “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”