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The Great Gatsby. Goal: To understand the background and development of Gatsby’s character in chapter 4. Intro Task: List 10 key aspects from chapter 3 Consider: C haracterisation Key Ideas Literary Devices.
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The Great Gatsby Goal: To understand the background and development of Gatsby’s character in chapter 4
Intro Task: List 10 key aspects from chapter 3 Consider: • Characterisation • Key Ideas • Literary Devices
If you were having a party, list any 5 people (local/international) you would invite. Why would you invite them? What would they represent about you?
Why does Fitzgerald list all of Gatsby's party guests? What do they reveal?
Why does Gatsby tell Nick about his life? Do you believe Gatsby? Does Nick?
What does Jordan's story of Daisy's marriage reveal about Daisy?
Images of light and life are at war in this chapter with images of darkness and death. Which set of images triumphs?
How are the ideas of hopes/dreams and delusions/illusions being developed?
Goal: To carefully consider Fitzgerald’s use of language in creating meaning. The city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of non-olfactory money…in it’s first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world. Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge…anything at all. (ch. 4) Task: Write your own descriptive piece which describes your views of Melbourne and society in our current era.
Chapter 6Discussion Points…. • What times in the past would you like to relive? • What times would you like to relive and do better? • Can we avoid the past? • Can we relive or recapture the past?
Chapter 6 Group Discussions 1. How truthful was Gatsby when he relayed the story of his life to Nick? Why does Fitzgerald tell the story of ‘James Gatz’ now? 2. Describe the meeting of Tom and Gatsby. What does this meeting reveal about them? 3. Why did Daisy and Tom find Gatsby's party loathsome? 4. How did Gatsby measure the success of his party? 5. When Nick told Gatsby that "you can't repeat the past", Gatsby replied, "Why of course you can!" Do you agree with Nick or Gatsby?
Chapter 8 Last paragraph of pg. 142 But he didn’t despise himself... End of pg. 143-4 For Daisy was young…that was close at hand • Comment on the repeated references to gold and silver and starlight. Make links to other passages of the text which use similar references. • What is Fitzgerald implying on this page?
End of pg. 145 The track curved and now it was away from the sun • Discuss what is revealed about Gatsby and Nick? Key language? • How is the narrative voice significant here? What is interesting about Nick’s observations? Has he changed?
Pg. 153-4 At two o’clock Gatsby put on his bathing suit… Comment on the language Frightening leaves, grotesque…rose… A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about…like that ashen, fantastic figure…through the amorphous trees… Holocaust was complete… What is revealed about Gatsby? Discuss the motifs – ashen, ghostly. What links can you make to other passages in the text? What is the tone of this section and how is it developed?
Is there a beauty in the way in which Nick describes the death scene? • What judgement of Gatsby does it reflect? • What is your opinion of Gatsby at this point?
The structure of this chapter is interesting. Nick returns to the night before on pg. 148 • Discuss why you think Fitzgerald ordered the narrative this way.
Chapter 9 TASK: Quick Review of Holiday Questions Discuss in Groups • Why did Nick take care of Gatsby’s funeral • How was Jay Gatz’s childhood schedule significant? • Who attended Gatsby’s funeral? Why is this significant? • Why is the term ‘careless people’ important? • What is the message of the final symbolic scene of the novel?
Pg. 166-167 • Comparison of the description of the West and the East
A sense of liveliness is implied in in the aural imagery of ‘the chatter’ and ‘sleighbells’, overcoming the coldness of ‘frozen breath’ and ‘frosty dark’. This is continued with the imageryof the railroad cars ‘looking cheerful and Christmas like’ and the snow that would ‘twinkle’. The specific adjectives of the ‘real snow, our snow’ represents Nick’s perception of the West being more pure than the East. It is this reason he feels that made all of them, who originally came from the West, ‘unadaptable to Eastern Life’, as it was their past in the morally superior West which moulded them.
TASK: Now try to write a close analysis of next section about the East on pg. 167 • How did he perceive the East? Key words? Links to other passages/repetition of words (distortion, fantastic dreams, haunted, grotesque, crouching, sparkles cold…) • What does his description imply about society and human nature? Self centred, isolated, consumerist, hedonistic, immoral, death of the dream… • How does the imagery develop a contrasting tone to the previous passage?
Page 167 Nick acknowledges that the East initially ‘excited’ him as he viewed the West as ‘bored’ and ‘sprawling’, yet he returns to magical descriptions, reminiscent of Gatsby’s thoughts, as he describes the East as having a ‘quality of distortion’ in his ‘fantastic dreams’. Nick utilises dark imagery, likening New York an ‘El Greco’ scene, with a ‘sullen, overhanging sky and lustreless moon’, a direct contrast to the ‘sparkle’ of the previous description. The personification of the ‘hundred houses…conventional and grotesque, crouching…’ reiterates the sense of disconnect in New York, and a pervading sense of conformity.
The sense of liveliness and purity is removed, and hedonism implied as a ‘drunken woman’ passes on a stretcher. Whilst her hand ‘sparkles’ with jewels, it is lacking vitality as it is ‘cold’, literally in death, and figuratively in regards to the coldness of consumerism. He likens the woman to the loneliness of the city as ‘no one knows her name, and no one cares. Similar to Gatsby, the American Dream dies with her. As Gatsby’s dream of Daisy had a haunted element to it, Nick is aware that the East and its promise of dreams was now ‘haunted’ and ‘distorted’.
