Characters
Which characters live in East Egg, and which characters live in West Egg?
(Daisy, Tom, Gatsby, Jordan, Nick)
East Egg: Daisy, Tom, and Jordan
West Egg: Gatsby and Nick
“I hope she'll be a fool – that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” (Chapter 1)
Daisy to Nick
Dr. T. J. Eckleberg
"Eyes of God"
Green
Green represents so many things in this novel. One thing is that it means is something to hope for, to reach out for, and a hope of new.Like the green light that is at the end of Daisy and Tom’s dock. In the first chapter Gatsby is reaching out for the light. He is reaching out for his hope of Daisy and a life with her It also represents wealth and prosperity. And both of these meanings correlate with each other because in the book, wealth is something to hope for and to reach out for.
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which a writer gives an advance hint of what is to come later in the story. In chapter 7, Gatsby house has changed significantly from the beginning of the story. Describe these changes.
Everything begins to quiet down. At the beginning of the book, there are parties every week; everything is golden. By the end of the book, the house has "yellowed" and aged."Nothing gold can stay"
He falsely identifies Gatsby as the driver of the car that killed Myrtle (and indirectly as Myrtle's lover) to her jilted husband, George Wilson. This lie leads to Gatsby's tragic end.
Tom
“Can’t repeat the past?…Why of course you can!” (Chapter 6)
Gatsby to Nick
East and West Egg
Old money versus new money.
Blue
It represents a lost time, a pure color that is overly displayed, a pure color in the valley of ashes.
Tom's car
An allusion is a reference to a historical or literary person, place, or event with which the reader is assumed to be familiar.
During Nick's discussion of his journey East, he makes an allusion to “The shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan in the Maecenas knew" (historical figures who were successul financial figures). What do these characters have to do with Nick's career possibilities?
This quote contains several allusions: The name Midas is an allusion to the Greek god Midas, who turned everything he touched to gold, and “Morgan and Maecenas” are allusions to the financier J. P. Morgan and the wealthy Roman patron Mæcenas.
He hosts lavish parties that he never seems to attend and obsesses over the objects of his desire—especially his longtime love. All of his actions seem to be driven by that single-minded, even naïve, love. He is the protagonist of the novel, as his actions drive the plot.
Jay Gatsby (James Gatz)
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” (Chapter 9)
Nick
The Valley of Ashes
Hopelessness
Yellow
Yellow is in many facets of the book. Yellow in general means corruptness and things that go bad.
Yellow leaves represent decay and corruptness.
The yellow of Gatsby’s car represents corrupt dishonesty and deception.
Juxtaposition is the placing of two ideas side-by-side so that their closeness suggest a new meaning.
What might Fitzgerald be suggesting by the juxtaposition of “Gatsby’s Splendid car” being passed by “a dead man… in a hearse heaped with blooms”?
The juxtapositiong of Gatsby's car and the hearse foreshadow Gatsby's death by linking it to his pursuit of luxury and the darkness that follows that pursuit.
A recent Yale graduate who moves to Long Island after getting a job as a bond salesman. He is relatively innocent and mild-mannered, especially when compared to the hedonistic elite among whom he lives. Over time, however, he becomes wiser, more observant, and even disillusioned, but never cruel or selfish.
Nick
“It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced – or seemed to face – the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.” (Chapter 3)
Nick about Gastby
Mansions and Parties
Appearance vs. reality
Money cannot buy joy.
White
Daisy’s color is white, she wears white dresses and recalls her “white girlhood” (chapter 1), and this use of color helps her to characterize her as the unattainable “enchanted princess” who becomes incarnate as Gatsby’s dream.
After reading the following passage, what do you think Fitzgerald is suggesting about these two women through this imagery?
"the only stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were Rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house ellipses then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the cop wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs in the two young women balloon slowly to the floor."
Light and airy. A stark difference between Jordan/Daisy and Tom.
Beautiful, frivolous, and rich, she is a young socialite with no troubles to speak of—at least, that's how it seems on the surface. She has an innate understanding of human behavior, and she comprehends the harsh truths of the world even as she hides from them. Her romantic choices seem to be the only choices she makes, but those choices represent her efforts to create the life she really wants (or can handle living).
Daisy
“And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”
Jordan to Nick while at Gatsby's party
The Green Light
Hope of what may be.
Red
Red is symbolic for sin, passion, blood, anger, and death.
Inside of Gatsby's car. Death of Myrtle.
A Paradox is a statement that seems contradictory, but actually presents a truth. What might be the truth in the paradox: “I like large parties, They’re so intimate”? How can large parties be intimate?
Getting lost at a party.
Hiding in the corners.