Geometry of Love
Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan are rivals for Daisy’s affection. What is one way that they differ?
a. Unlike Gatsby, Tom has never been responsible for a car wreck in which a young woman was injured.
b. Gatsby owns a mansion, unlike Tom.
c. Daisy has only ever loved one of them.
d. Tom’s wealth springs from shady, criminal origins.
e. Tom showed remorse for Myrtle’s death.
What is e.?
After Myrtle's death, Tom broke into tears, unlike Gatsby, Daisy, or Jordan.
How did Gatsby make his fortune?
a. he inherited it from his parents.
b. he inherited it from Dan Cody.
c. bootlegging alcohol during Prohibition
d. owning drug stores
e. on Wall street
What is c. bootlegging alcohol through the drugstores he and Wolfshiem bought together.
What is ironic about Gatsby’s funeral?
a. George and Myrtle Wilson were buried beside him.
b. Another man was buried in Gatsby’s coffin.
c. Of the hundreds of people who had attended Gatsby’s parties, almost no one showed.
d. Daisy was really driving the car.
e. While Gatsby lets Nick believe that Daisy was really driving the car, we have only his word for it.
What is c?
Of the hundreds of people who had attended Gatsby’s parties, almost no one showed.
Why does George Wilson insist that Tom Buchanan sell his blue car to him?
a. Jordan has expressed an interest in owning this car.
b. He wants to move Myrtle out of the valley of the ashes and into West Egg.
c. He has developed a crush on Daisy and wants an opportunity to talk to her.
d. He needs the money to buy Myrtle a diamond leash.
e. He needs the money to take Myrtle back west, away from temptation.
What is e? George has caught on to Myrtle's affair, and he wants to move back to the Midwest with her.
How does the description of Myrtle here characterize the difference between the poor and the rich?
Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time before, and was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream-coloured chiffon. With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur.
a. In her dress Myrtle resembles a rich woman, more full of status than life.
b. In her dress Myrtle has become more lively.
c. In her dress Myrtle doesn't change--- this echoes the novel's theme that one's identity cannot be altered.
d. Hauteur suggests the room is now hotter, as the dress awakens her firey self.
e. Cream colored chiffon sounds expensive.
What is a?
Myrtle puts on airs much like Gatsby, except less successfully.
How does the knowledge that Tom has a mistress affect Daisy?
a. Due to Myrtle’s death, Daisy never learns that Tom has a mistress.
b. Daisy’s knowledge of Tom’s unfaithfulness hardly affects her because she never loved him.
c. Daisy appears to put up with Tom’s unfaithfulness because he is wealthy, powerful, and comes from a good family.
d. Jordan Baker’s acceptance of Tom’s unfaithfulness reveals her cynicism.
e. Nick’s knowledge of Tom’s mistress causes him to understand the truth of Myrtle’s death.
Mayer Wolfshiem claims that he "made" Gatsby. Who created Gatsby?
a. Mr. and Mrs. Gatsby (his parents)
b. Mr. and Mrs. Gatz (his parents)
c. James Gatz
d. Dan Cody
e. Mayer Wolfshiem
Who is c. James Gatz?
The Great Gatsby is set during the period known as the Jazz Age, a time when people had lost faith in the goodness of the universe and decided it was time to really party. What marked the beginning and end of the Jazz Age?
a. The end of WW1 and the beginning of WW2
b. The end of WW2 and the beginning of the Cold War
c. The end of symphony orchestras and the beginning of rock and roll groups
d. Gatsby's birth and death
e. The end of WW1 and the beginning of the Great Depression.
What is e?
The Jazz Age represented a response to the hopelessness and absurdity of WW1. The party ended when the money ran out for many during the Great Depression.
What does Gatsby’s pool represent?
“I’m going to drain the pool today, Mr. Gatsby. Leaves’ll start falling pretty soon, and then there’s always trouble with the pipes.”
“Don’t do it today,” Gatsby answered. He turned to me apologetically. “You know, old sport, I’ve never used that pool all summer?”
a. The pool symbolizes the way he has maintained the things in his world for others, not himself.
b. The pool stands for the purity of his and Daisy’s love.
c. The pool suggests the way he takes his immense wealth for granted.
d. The pool signifies a connection between this time in his life and an earlier, happier time.
e. The pool represents the blood he has spilled in amassing his fortune.
What is a? He has kept the pool open to everyone else, but never used it during the summer.
Why is Tom sensitive to the word hulking?
That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a—”
“I hate that word ‘hulking,’ ” objected Tom crossly, “even in kidding.”
a. He's worried that he is not strong enough to deserve it.
b. He dislikes being patronized for his brute strength.
c. It calls to mind his failures as an athlete.
d. It makes him sound weak and unmanly.
e. That's Myrtle's special term for him.
What is b?
Tom doesn't have much in the brains department, but plenty of brawn. He seems to know it too.
What does this passage suggest?
Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, I had no girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs, and so I drew up the girl beside me, tightening my arms.
a. Nick’s love for Gatsby blinds him to his faults.
b. Nick’s love for Daisy haunts him nightly.
c. Nick and Jordan’s love runs parallel to the loves of Gatsby and Tom.
d. Nick and Jordan’s relationship is one of convenience and opportunity.
e. Jordan has forced Nick to submit to her will.
What is d? They are only seeing each other because they've been thrown together. Nick doesn't seem to like Jordan, and we don't really know what she thinks of him.
This conversation between Nick and Jordan---
“You’re a rotten driver,” I protested. “Either you ought to be more careful, or you oughtn’t to drive at all.”
“I am careful.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Well, other people are,” she said lightly.
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“They’ll keep out of my way,” she insisted. “It takes two to make an accident.”
“Suppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself.”
a. foreshadows the recklessness that leads to Myrtle’s death.
b. reveals the source of Jordan’s abiding love for Nick.
c. is ironic because Jordan eventually kills Myrtle.
d. displays Nick’s deep sympathy for other people.
e. is ironic because Gatsby’s greatness comes from his recklessness.
What is a?
Recklessness and carelessness are persistent themes in the story. Daisy and Tom are accused of being careless people who wreck lives and let others clean up the messes they've made.
Why does Tom resent Gatsby’s love affair with Daisy?
They were out in the open at last and Gatsby was content.
“Self-control!” repeated Tom incredulously. “I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that’s the idea you can count me out… Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white.”
Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization.
a. Tom believes in the importance of family life and institutions.
b. Tom hates every threat to his position in the social hierarchy.
c. Tom believes that Daisy has never loved him.
d. Tom worries that Myrtle doesn’t love him as much as Daisy loves Gatsby.
e. Tom wanted to be an Oxford man, whereas Gatsby was one.
What is b? Tom is a prig, a reactionary. He fears change, including a world after desegregation, and Gatsby represents change, among many other things. Tom cheats constantly, so he doesn't care about family life.
What is the secret of Daisy’s attractiveness to men, according to Gatsby and Nick?
a. Her voice is low and inviting.
b. She is always faithful.
c. Her body is coarse and sensual.
d. Her wealth can free them from poverty.
e. Her voice is full of money.
What is e? Her voice is full of money.
“Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly.
That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it… High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl…"
Gatsby refers to Tom Buchanan as "the polo player."
Why does this title bother Tom so much?
a. Tom isn't a polo player.
b. Tom plays polo, but not well.
c. It makes Tom seem upper-crust, whereas Tom wants to be a man of the people.
d. It makes Tom seem frivolous.
e. Gatsby is a much better polo player.
What is d?
Tom is proud of his achievements as a polo player, but somehow, when Gatsby says it, he seems foolish. More like a boy than a man.
How did Gatsby present himself to Daisy when they first met?
he had certainly taken her under false pretences. I don’t mean that he had traded on his phantom millions, but he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he let her believe that he was a person from much the same strata as herself—that he was fully able to take care of her. As a matter of fact, he had no such facilities—he had no comfortable family standing behind him
a. He let her know that he was from a different socioeconomic class than her.
b. He misled her regarding his social position.
c. He presented himself as-is, a handsome young man with a vision.
d. He showed her that his love for her was bigger than the difference in their social positions.
e. He only meant to take advantage of her, but he fell in love with her extraordinary wealth.
What is b? Gatsby lets Daisy think that he is wealthy, but he has nothing but the uniform he is wearing.
George and Myrtle Wilson live where the junction of the roads to West Egg and East Egg meets the road to New York City. This area is known as the "valley of the ashes."
What does the name suggest?
a. fertile soil, abundant crops, and therefore success
b. the fire that will burn down Gatsby's home
c. the fire that burns down the Buchanan's mansion
d. the threshold between the world of the old money "Eggers" and the new money of New York.
e. death and devastation
What is e? Death and devastation are on display in the valley of the ashes long before Myrtle catches her final ride to town.
How does Daisy’s impression of Gatsby’s party affect him?
She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented “place” that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village—appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a shortcut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand.
a. Daisy thinks that Gatsby’s home is tawdry, so he resolves to move to East Egg at his first opportunity.
b. Daisy has a charming time at Gatsby’s party. This leads him to throw more parties.
c. Daisy was offended by the way Gatsby ignored her throughout the party. After this, he resolved to pay more attention to her.
d. Daisy looks down on the new money and low social status of Gatsby’s guests and West Egg in general. Due to this, after five years of throwing parties, Gatsby stops.
e. Gatsby and Tom get into a physical altercation at the party after Daisy says she wants to move to West Egg.
What is d?
Daisy looks down on the West Egg people about as much as Tom does. After this party, Gatsby closes his home, replaces his staff, and entertains her privately.
How does this description of the area around the Wilson’s garage relate to the characters?
The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and, when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour. There is always a halt there of at least a minute, and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress.
a. Like young Gatsby, the Wilson’s lives are full of promise and potential despite their unattractive surroundings.
b. Words like ashes, foul, and dismal suggest their lives are squalid and hopeless.
c. Their garage sits near the junction of West Egg and East Egg, suggesting it is a place where people from different walks of life meet and start friendships.
d. The imagery of drawbridges and waiting trains suggests a place where things slow down, as things seem to slow down for characters when they pass through the valley of ashes.
e. The imagery of ashes foreshadows the fire that will destroy Gatsby’s mansion at the end of the novel.
What is b? The lives of the poor people there are dirty and hopeless.
In this passage, what does Daisy represent?
Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.
a. the warmth of love
b. the cool of autumn
c. a person whose value grows even as her freshness fades
d. Nick’s blossoming love
e. something cold to the touch, but valuable
What is e? Daisy is compared to silver, cool and high-value, unlike the hot poor people.
What does this passage suggest about young Gatsby's love for Daisy?
He had intended, probably, to take what he could and go—but now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail. He knew that Daisy was extraordinary, but he didn’t realize just how extraordinary a “nice” girl could be. She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing.
a. He only planned to seduce her, but he fell in love with what she represented.
b. He fell in love with her at first sight.
c. He planned to swindle her out of her money.
d. He offered her all his wealth, but she chose Tom.
e. He and she planned to build his fortune together.
What is a?
This passage suggests that Gatsby was ready for a one-night stand, but the niceness of Daisy's world, her house, her status, became something he quested after, a grail.
The changing settings of the story, from early summer, high summer, to the beginning of autumn echoes---
a. the themes of innocence, destruction, and oblivion
b. the themes of love, friendship, and acceptance
c. anagnorisis and peripeteia
d. the themes of transformation and growth
e. Gatsby's successful bid to repeat the past
What is a?
Time is obessively depicted in the story. Innocence relates to early summer, intensity and passion to high summer, and after that, destruction and death.
What doesn’t the structure of this lyric from the popular song “Ain’t We Got Fun” do?
“One thing’s sure and nothing’s surer
The rich get richer and the poor get—children.”
a. amplify the thematic divisions between the rich and poor.
b. mirror the series of surprises and revelations in the novel.
c. present a feminist critique of society.
d. parallel the light-hearted immorality of the the Jazz Age.
e. imply that Gatsby is the father of Daisy’s child.
What is e.?
The song points out the differences between rich and poor.
It does mirror the surprises in the novel by changing the expected end rhyme.
You could argue that it points out the burden of childbirth on poor women.
It parallels the immorality of the times.
What does this suggest?
After the sudden death of his wife, Myrtle, when George Wilson stares at the eyes of the Doctor T.J. Eckleburg billboard and says:
“God sees everything,” repeated Wilson.
“That’s an advertisement,” Michaelis assured him.
a. Despite the shallow nature of most of the characters, truth will prevail.
b. Whereas most people whisper rumors and gossip about Gatsby’s life, their thoughts of him change when they realize the truth of Gatsby’s sacrifice for love.
c. Only the simple-minded people in Gatsby’s world place any faith in truth. Everyone else deals in appearances.
d. God’s justice will be brought down on the person who killed Myrtle.
e. Nick’s unbiased presentation of events is symbolized by the glasses on the Eckleburg billboard.
What is c?
Ouch. This answer reeks of cynicism, but it seems the truest to the story. George is weak-minded, he sees the billboard as the all-seeing eyes of God. But God is nowhere in this novel, unless you count Gatsby's hubris in transforming himself.
What does Nick think of Gatsby's house at the end?
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
a. His house is a mansion and a dirty word can't change that
b. His house is a testament to how far he had come in the world.
c. His house is represented as a complex mixture of purity and sin.
d. His house symbolizes his ambition and collapse.
e. His house is in West Egg, which will never be as good as East Egg.
What is d?
Come now, old sport, surely you were tipped off by the phrase incoherent failure.