Analyzing Key Moments from The Great Gatsby



Analyzing Key Moments from The Great Gatsby

Directions:

Working with a partner cut up the following 11 quotes and put them in the correct order on your timeline. Select three quotes and explain both the context (who/what/where) and significance (analysis/meaning) of that particularly moment. You may write your response below the quote.

|EXAMPLE |

| |

|In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. |

|"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the |

|advantages that you've had." |

| |

|Context: |

|Nick Carroway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby, says this quote at the very start of the novel as he explains to the reader his |

|own background and value system. |

| |

|Significance: |

|This is an important moment in the story because it sets up Nick’s persona and provides critical information about the narrator’s |

|potential biases and perspective. Nick’s father’s insistence that he consider the “advantages” he has had suggests that Nick comes|

|from a wealthy background. Furthermore, Nick’s reference to his “younger and more vulnerable years” hints at the fact that Nick |

|will change, grow and loose some of his vulnerability over the course of the story. |

It makes me sad because I've never seen such - such beautiful shirts before.

This is a valley of ashes - a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.

He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He's so dumb he doesn't know he's alive.

Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

I married him because I thought he was a gentleman...I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn't fit to lick my shoe.

He borrowed somebody's best suit to get married in, and never told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he was out...I gave it to him and then I lay down and cried...all afternoon.

It's a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too - didn't cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?

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. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion.

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.

All right...I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.

If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay....You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.

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