The Great Gatsby close-reading questions



The Great Gatsby close-reading questions: Answer each question with specific references to the text. Additionally, with each 3 chapter grouping, find ten (10) new vocabulary words—define and cite them in the text.

ASSIGNMENT ONE, CHAPTERS 1-3, DUE 1-10 with vocabulary.

Chapter 1

1. What is the impact of Nick’s father’s advice to him?

2. Describe Nick’s feelings about the world when he returned from the east.

3. What does Nick reveal about Gatsby early in the chapter?

4. The setting includes the two islands, east and west egg. What are they, and what is the difference?

5. How does Nick describe Tom Buchanan, and what is the significance of what Nick reveals?

6. What is the first impression we get about Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker?

7. What focus does Nick place on features or traits of Daisy? Be specific.

8. What is the tone toward Tom’s reading? The phone call?

9. What is the attitude Nick shows regarding wealth?

10. Explain the significance of Jay Gatsby’s behavior at the end of the chapter.

Chapter 2

1. Recount the language used to describe the Valley of Ashes—note especially some of the modifiers.

2. What is the effect “The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg” have on Nick?

3. What is Nick’s initial impression of George Wilson? Myrtle Wilson?

4. What do the items Myrtle purchases say about her?

5. Explain the changes in Myrtle during the party.

6. What rumor about Gatsby does Catherine share with Nick?

7. We hear a great deal about marriages in this chapter. Explain the implications.

8. Compare the parties in the first two chapters.

9. Analyze Tom’s behavior toward the end of the party.

Chapter 3

1. In the chapter’s opening paragraph, on what does Nick focus?

2. In describing the party guests, Nick notes that they “dissolve and form,” among other descriptions. Note similar language and explain what effect Nick is attempting to evoke.

3. Contrast Nick with the other guests at Gatsby’s party.

4. Describe some of the anonymous guests. What is their attitude toward Gatsby?

5. What does Owl-Eyes think of Gatsby’s books? How does that fit with Gatsby’s story about his past?

6. Explain what Nick says about Gatsby’s smile.

7. Describe Nick’s first interactions with Gatsby—pay special attention to both men’s behavior.

8. Explain the two incidents with automobiles in this chapter. What role have cars played in the novel?

9. Explain what Nick notices and what he remembers about Jordan Baker.

10. What is Nick’s opinion of himself at the chapter’s end? What prompts it?

ASSIGNMENT #2, CHAPTERS 4-6, DUE 1-15 with vocabulary.

Chapter 4

1. What does the catalog of guests reveal? From where do they come? What is their attitude toward Gatsby?

2. Why does Nick include the future details of some of the guests? Explain

3. Analyze the section where Gatsby shares his past. What does Nick believe?

4. How does Gatsby get out of the ticket? What does that tell us?

5. Describe Nick’s attitude toward Meyer Wolfsheim. Who is he?

6. What does Jordan’s story reveal about Daisy? Gatsby? Daisy’s marriage?

7. Why does Fitzgerald change the point of view?

8. What does Gatsby want from Nick?

9. Why does Nick distinguish his own relationship with Jordan from Gatsby’s or Tom’s?

10. What does Nick mean: “there are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired”?

Chapter 5

1. Why does Gatsby offer Nick a chance to make more money?

2. Why is it important that Nick have the grass cut?

3. Explain the meeting between Gatsby and Daisy by tracing each person’s behavior.

4. What changes in Gatsby’s diction and syntax during this chapter? Why?

5. What does Gatsby say about his house to Daisy? Why?

6. Why does Daisy cry? What does this mean?

7. Why is it that the “colossal significance of that [green] light had now vanished forever”?

8. “There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion.” Analyze this in depth.

9. Why is Nick focused on what is in Gatsby’s “ghostly heart”?

10. What are some descriptors of Daisy’s voice at the end of the chapter? What do they mean?

Chapter 6

1. Who is Gatsby, really?

2. Why does Nick save this information until now? What does it reveal about Gatsby?

3. Explain the connection between Dan Cody and Gatsby.

4. Why is Nick “believing everything and nothing” about Gatsby?

5. Plato suggested that reality was an imperfect reflection of an ideal, permanent realm. With this in mind, interpret Nick’s comment that “Jay Gatsby sprung from his Platonic conception of himself.”

6. Interpret the following passage: “He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—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.” Explain the biblical allusion, the meaning of meretricious, and the reference to age.

7. What is the difference between the group on horseback and Gatsby? Explain

8. How does Tom react to Gatsby’s party? Daisy? What does Gatsby want them to see?

9. Why is West Egg a “short cut from nothing to nothing”? Whose attitude is this?

10. Nick tells Gatsby, “you can’t repeat the past.” How does he react? What does he want Daisy to tell Tom?

ASSIGNMENT #3, CHAPTERS 7-9, Due 1-22 with vocabulary.

Chapter 7

1. Look up Trimalchio and decide whether that is an appropriate comparison for Gatsby.

2. What has changed at Gatsby’s house? Why?

3. In chapter 1, Daisy and Jordan are lying on a couch. Find and compare the passage that this section repeats.

4. How do Gatsby and Daisy behave together? In the absence of Tom? With Tom around?

5. When is it that Tom realizes Daisy is in love with Gatsby? Why?

6. How does Gatsby characterize Daisy’s voice? What does that mean? How does that make sense to Nick?

7. What does Tom learn about Wilson? What does Myrtle misinterpret?

8. What is ironic about the music below the suite?

9. Describe the behavior of Tom, Gatsby, and Daisy. What is Nick’s attitude toward them?

10. What is Gatsby’s insistence with Daisy? Why? How does this connect to earlier in the novel?

11. What does Nick realize about himself? How does it make him feel?

12. Why does Myrtle Wilson die, according to Gatsby? How does this relate to her earlier misinterpretation?

13. What is the status of Daisy and Tom at the end of the chapter?

14. Compare Gatsby’s vigil at the end of the chapter with a similar moment earlier in the novel.

Chapter 8

1. What is it about Gatsby that makes him cling to “some last hope” as we open the chapter?

2. Describe some of the factors that led to Gatsby’s first interest in Daisy.

3. Why is the notion that he was “following . . . a grail” an appropriate analogy.

4. Explain what “above the hot struggles of the poor” means in connection with Gatsby and Daisy.

5. Why does Daisy begin seeing other men?

6. Explain why Nick says, “They’re a rotten crowd . . . You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”

7. Why is Gatsby corrupt but his dream incorruptible, according to Nick?

8. What does Wilson think happened? How does he know?

9. Why does Wilson say, “God sees everything”?

10. Why is it that Gatsby “found what a grotesque thing a rose is”?

Chapter 9

1. Why is Nick “on Gatsby’s side alone”? Why does he feel responsible?

2. Describe Gatsby’s father.

3. List and describe some of Gatsby’s fair-weather friends who frustrate and anger Nick.

4. What seems to have been the relationship between Meyer Wolfsheim and Gatsby?

5. Why is Gatsby’s book Hopalong Cassidy so interesting to Nick and Gatsby’s father?

6. Who shows up at the funeral? What does that reveal? Who doesn’t?

7. Why does Nick start to describe “his west”? What does it have to do with the novel?

8. Explain what Nick says at last to Jordan Baker. Also, analyze Nick’s last talk with Tom.

9. Is Nick’s description of Daisy and Tom (and all their ilk) as “careless” appropriate? Why?

10. Analyze the novel’s last four paragraphs. Explain what Nick is suggesting about idealism and the past.

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