CHAPTER 1
- ” ‘Whenever you feel like criticising anyone,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’ ” was a piece of advice that Nick’s father gave him. This makes him a good person to tell the story as he isn’t a judgemental person. It gives the story more freedom to your imagination, to decide yourself what your depth of judgement is. However, as Nick said, there is a limit to your tolerance. This would mean that his judgement would come into effect sometime in the story, most likely when he feels strongly against or for a subject. Nick’s judgement on a topic or person can change our opinion as it is the only side of the story we got. Nick is the one mind in the book and he doesn’t know the deeper thoughts of the other characters.
- In New York, West Egg and East Egg are the names for the two small peninsulas. West Egg was where the ‘new money people lived. The new Money characters were those who earned their money themselves rather than ‘old money’, money that was inherited from family. Daisy and Tom lived in East Egg and didn’t usually like the average new money citizens, they looked down on them believing they were better. In my opinion, I would rather live in West Egg, because I would have the satisfaction of earning my own money genuinely, rather than just following in other people’s footsteps. I would be able to make my own path, control my life choices and I belive the majority of New-money class are happier than those in East Egg. For me, I would rather work for my own money, if it resulted in a successful and happy life.
- I think the colour white/beige would be strong colours that would describe Daisy’s personality. To me, these colours represent plain or blankness. She has grown a vacant mind while being in a relationship with Tom Buchanan, leaving her with a blank space where her vibrant personality used to be. She is now just another plain human in the world with no sense of fulfilment in life. Her soul is trapped, hiding away from the shame that could come from Tom’s community. She’s scared to show her true personality incase it leaves embarrassment for Tom. (White did represent purity and perfectness until you get to know her.
- Jordan Baker seems like the kind of person who loves a bit of drama. She has to know every little personal thing that’s going on in people’s life. She wants to be the first person to know everything so she can be the one that spreads the news. **
- During the book, the importance of a green light will become a valuable theme. The colour green represents the thought of new life, a new hope. For Gatsby, this green light that shines over from East Egg, keeps him have high hopes to meet Daisy once more. This light reassures him that there is always hope, although some people would say it gave him a false hope. **
CHAPTER 2
Explore one way that Fitzgerald presents illusion in the chapter and use evidence.
“Then she flounced over to the dog, kissed it with ecstasy, and swept into the kitchen, implying that a dozen chefs awaited her orders there.”
The Great Gatsby gives a sense of illusion throughout the book on many occasions. Fitzgerald is showing two different worlds each character lives in, they like to use it all as an act, pretending their lives are perfect. They want to get away from their pure lives that in fact have many flaws. When Fitzgerald says “Then she flounced over to the dog, kissed it with ecstasy, and swept into the kitchen, implying that a dozen chefs awaited her orders there.” , he was making Nic show the illusion and the double life that Myrtle and Tom were living together. Because of Myrtle’s marriage, she was been living in a less fortunate world than what she was expecting. She finds that when she gets away with Tom, she can pretend she lives in a high-status world. This impression is given when she is said to be going to the kitchen to see the ‘dozen chefs awaiting her orders there.’ It is shown that she is expecting people to be working for her while she’s in this alter-world, she is making the best of being allowed to break the rules and get away with it.
CHAPTER 3
- Theatrical producer and playwright
- 1853- 1931
- was determined to make melodramas more accurate
- used setting and lighting in extreme detail
- in the time of realism
- light – gelatin slides, colour silks
- settings- so realistic
CHAPTER 4
What is Fitzgerald trying to achieve when he opens this chapter?
Fitzgerald chose to list all the party guests at the start of chapter four to give people an idea of the variety of the excess amounts of people who attended. Out of all the people at the party, most were part of the rich society that resided in both East and West Egg. The vast majority of guests had never seen or acknowledged Gatsby: “But I can still read the gray names, and they will give you a better impression than my generalities of those who accepted Gatsby’s hospitality and paid him the subtle tribute of knowing nothing whatever about him.”
This shows that the party-goers had no intent or need, to get to know Gatsby; they thought it would be better for him to give him his privacy. However, there was a big mystery looming every night of the party, who is this man, why is he throwing these extraordinary parties. Having the list of names gives an illusion that Gatsby has some importance, but they are just in fact characters in his play.
(when you read the names out loud, you realise that their names have some meaning behind them because of the way they sound.)
“There’s something funny about a fellow that’ll do a thing like that,” said the other girl eagerly. “He doesn’t want any trouble with anybody.”
CHAPTER 5
“It had gone beyond her, beyond everything¹. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way². No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart³.”
- Gatsby’s lies have become bigger and more real than first implied. The illusion he has given had begun to extend and exaggerate on the original idea of the perfect life with Daisy. It started so innocent but grew to become a fake reality he was living, he not only was fooling everyone around him, he started to fool himself; Gatsby began to believe in the life he was leading on. This just began to encourage him to keep adding and adding to his story, ending with people not knowing was real and what was not.
- The story he spun, that was so well prepared and practised, had taken over Gatsby’s life. He put so much into it, that he began to lose himself between all the lies he told to create the fake persona that was his only life now. Each time the story was told, extra details were added, making the story seem too perfect to be real; every opportunity to extend the story, Gatsby grabbed, even creating imitations. This was things such as his own Merton College Library.
- This persona he’s built up has been protecting his heart that was broken, so long ago when Daisy left him the first time. He has been using the lies to hide from reality. All the passion he has stored in his defeated heart for Daisy is never going to go away, even with all the new opportunities he comes upon.
CHAPTER 6
“His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people — his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all (1). The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself (2).He was a son of God — a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that — and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty.So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception, he was faithful to the end.(3)” page 99
- Gatsby let his imagination take over his life, he let it make the decisions for him. Everything had to fit into his plan, his Alta-lifestyle. Everything was lined up and had a set place in his well-rehearsed story, that couldn’t risk having any flaws.
- Plato was a greek philosopher who was concerned with the real world vs the ideal world. Gatsby is a real person; he creates his ‘ideal stuff’ and names it, Gatsby.
- The story Gatsby carries on to create himself seems slightly immature and childlike, giving away the feeling that he began making it when he was younger (first met Daisy) and has just had to continue on the story, without tripping up or changing main features. To the making of the story, he couldn’t neglect it and let it fade away, he had already created too big of a persona, so he had to carry it on. He made it such a big deal he had no way out anymore.
CHAPTER 7
how is the scene in the hotel room similar to the scene in chapter 2?
We can relate the scene in the hotel room, where Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, Jordan and Nic venture to a cool hotel room to escape the heat to a similar scene in chapter 2. In the second chapter, we are introduced to the apartment Tom and Myrtle have to get away from their lives. Tom is the character who initiates this activity both times, he is the one that wants to hide behind a different life where, to him, everything is perfect. He likes to put up a facade to shy away from his illusion of a life. Tom takes Myrtle to the apartment for the same reason Gatsby took Daisy to the hotel; they pretend their lives….. how they can have each other