Colours
Which character is linked to the colour white, and what might this suggest?
Daisy
What is Jay Gatsby’s real name?
James Gatz
When is the story set?
1922
“I raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter. I saw right away he was a fine-appearing, gentlemanly young man, and when he told me he was at Oggsford I knew I could use him good. I got him to join up in the American Legion and he used to stand high there.
The American Legion is the nation’s largest veterans service organization, advocating for veterans, service members, and military families while fighting to end veteran suicide. The American Legion | Serving Veterans, Families, & Communities Nationwide
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 _______ed — _______ed, I mean, with that intense personal _______to which every one has some vague right at the end.
(…)
I wanted to _______ for him. I wanted to go into the room where he lay and reassure him: “I’ll _______ for you, Gatsby. Don’t worry. Just trust me and I’ll _______ for you ——”
interest
get somebody
What object is linked to the colour green, and what might this suggest?
a single green light
How long did Gatsby study at Oxford?
Five months in 1919
When is Nick Carraway writing his story?
Two years after the events (around 1924)
He seemed reluctant to put away the picture, held it for another minute, lingeringly, before my eyes. Then he returned the wallet and pulled from his pocket a ragged old copy of a book called Hopalong Cassidy.
Hopalong Cassidy is a fictional cowboy hero created in 1904 by the author Clarence E. Mulford.
As portrayed on the screen, white-haired Bill "Hopalong" Cassidy was usually clad strikingly in black (including his hat, an exception to the Western film stereotype that only villains wore black hats).
He was reserved and well-spoken, with a sense of fair play. He was often called upon to intercede when dishonest characters took advantage of honest citizens.
the Hopalong Cassidy brand as one of the most successful Hollywood enterprises of all time.
When Michaelis’s testimony at the inquest brought to light Wilson’s suspicions of his wife I thought the whole tale would shortly be served up in racy pasquinade — but Catherine, who might have said anything, didn’t say a word. She showed a surprising amount of character about it too — looked at the coroner with determined eyes under that corrected _______of hers, and swore that her sister had never seen Gatsby, that her sister was completely happy with her husband, that her sister had been into no mischief whatever. She convinced herself of it, and cried into her handkerchief, as if the very suggestion was more than she could endure. S. Wilson was reduced to a man “deranged by grief” in order that the case might remain in its simplist form. And it rested there.
brow
Which character is linked to the colour grey, and what might this suggest?
Wilson
How did Gatsby pay for his college education?
He worked as a janitor to pay for college
What is the time span of the story, from Nick meeting Gatsby to Gatsby’s death?
About three months
It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night — and, as obscurely as it had begun, his career as Trimalchio was over. (cj.7)
Trimalchio - nouveau-riche host from the Satyricon. The term "Trimalchio" has become shorthand for the worst excesses of the nouveau riche. (Wikipedia)
“This is Klipspringer.” I was relieved too, for that seemed to promise another friend at Gatsby’s grave. (…)
“What I called up about was ________ I left there.” (ch.9)
a pair of shoes
Which character is linked to the colour pink, and what might this suggest?
Gatsby
What did Gatsby buy for his father in 1920?
A house
When did Daisy Buchanan get married?
In the middle of June
“If he’d of lived, he’d of been a great man. A man like James J. Hill. He’d of helped build up the country.”
Hill, James J. (1838–1916) | MNopedia
James J. Hill fit the nickname “empire builder.” He assembled a rail network—the Great Northern (1878), the Northern Pacific (1896), and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy (1901)—that stretched from Duluth to Seattle across the north, and from Chicago south to St. Louis and then west to Denver. He was one of the most successful railroad magnates of his time.
I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all — Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all _________, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life. (ch.9)
Westerners
Which character is linked to the colour blue, and what might this suggest?
Myrtle
What year was Gatsby born?
1890
What happens to Nick’s age on the day of Myrtle’s death?
He turns 30 that day
Even when the East excited me most, even when I was most keenly aware of its superiority to the bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which spared only the children and the very old — even then it had always for me 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 houses, at once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a lustreless 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. Gravely the men turn in at a house — the wrong house. But no one knows the woman’s name, and no one cares.
El Greco (born 1541, Candia [Iráklion], Crete—died April 7, 1614, Toledo, Spain) was a master of Spanish painting, whose highly individual dramatic and expressionistic style met with the puzzlement of his contemporaries but gained newfound appreciation in the 20th century. He also worked as a sculptor and as an architect.
El Greco | Paintings, Art, Museum, Biography, & Facts | Britannica
As we started through the gate into the cemetery I heard a car stop and then the sound of someone splashing after us over the soggy ground. I looked around. It was _________ whom I had found marvelling over Gatsby’s books in the library one night three months before. (ch.9)
the man with owl-eyed glasses