The Great Gatsby - Study Guide

The Great Gatsby - Study Guide

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Instituto Superior Dardo Rocha

Language and Grammar III

The Great Gatsby

Study guide

1. Answer the questions about Scott Fitzgerald and “The Great Gatsby” background.

1. How did culture and time period impact in Scott’s life?

2. How did his father relationship affect Scott’s life and attitudes?

3. Who were the central in his life?

4. How did Scott take advantage of his experiences to create characters and plot lines?

5. How did alcoholism affect Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald’ lives?

6. What are the “Roaring Twenties”? How does this decade differ from the others?

7. List the changes occurred in 1922 (the year the novel is set)

8. What are “Lost generation” and “The prosperity & Consumerism movement”?

9. What was the Great Depression? The Jazz Age? The American Dream?

10. What was the 19th Amendment and how did women benefit from it?

11. What did the 18th amendment specifically prohibit?

12. How was society influenced by the American Dream?

1. Read Scott Fitzgerald, “The Great Gatsby”.

1. What is a novel of manners? Is it one of those? Why, Why not?

2. In what sense is “The Great Gatsby” an autobiographical novel?

3. Do the characters seem like real people? What do they represent? Which are the most real to you?

4. Compare the characters of Tom and Gatsby. How are they alike? How are they different? Why do you think Daisy chooses to remain with Tom instead of leaving him for Gatsby?

5. Analyze the novel considering the elements of plot.

6. How is setting used to emphasize the differences between social classes? What are the noteworthy locations in then novel and what is their role? How do they connect?

7. Discuss the following symbols.

* the valley of ashes

* the eyes of Dr T.J Eckeleberg

* the green light at the end of Daisy’ dock

* East and West Egg.

1. What role does the American Dream play in the novel?

2. How is The Jazz Age represented in the novel?

1) a-The culture that Fitzgerald reflected in his works represent a materialistic world. The novel combines symbolism and psychological realism. This is the basis of his lifelong devotions to both material and social success. This culture showed the consequences of the war. As regards the time, the writer considered youth as an important element in his prose and it is presented in all his books. He thought over youth to be filled with excitement, with eternal hope of accomplishment. He idealized “Time”, the opportunity about to be realized. Youth represented for him a fixed quality and quantity of energy and a kind of emotional vitality.

b- Scott Fitzgerald was the only son of an upper-class catholic family. But this family had not financial security to support upper-class tradition. His father was a furniture manufacture and he was not as ambitious as his son. Fitzgerald´s father had taught Scott the virtues of work and courage, courtesy and politeness. Scott loved his father but rejected his lack of ambition then realized that he did not want to be a failure himself so he focused on his goals; he wanted to be a successful writer. His attitude towards the past was created by the conflict between the man he wanted to be and the man he was.

c- The most important people in Scott´s life were his wife and his daughter.

d- In order to understand more deeply Fitzgerald´s characters and plots, it is necessary to know more about the man he was. When he wrote, he took into account his own experiences. He wrote about his past since he was a suffered man. His books are almost bases on his life. That is why; it is difficult to read them without learning the biographical context where Scott lived.

e- By 1923 Fitzgerald had progressed from party drinker to a steady drinker. He described the pleasurable effects he felt at a certain stage of drunkenness in “Tender is the night”. In the 20s writers were supposed to drink. His wife Zelda drank a lot whenever they attended to social gathering. But he soon found difficult to control it. Zelda a woman accustomed to life an upper-middle class style life used to drank at parties. She suffered a breakdown and Fitzgerald fell more into alcoholism.

f- The roaring twenties were marked by a general feeling of discontinuity associated with modernity and a break with traditions. This cultural period generated by its new mass-consumption economy, the changes and inventions, youth got importance since the appearance. People wasted the money in earthly pleasures, Young people enjoyed smoking, drinking and having sex.

g- The year of the novel setting was a critical social period of the history of America during the Roaring Twenties. It is said it was the decade of the Twenties was known as the Boom of prosperity. The evolution of the jazz that was considered as the “revolt of youth” and the criminal activities were arisen.

h- The lost generation was the post-war I era. The "Lost Generation" defines a sense of moral loss or aimlessness apparent in literary figures during the 1920s. World War I seemed to have destroyed the innocence, the hope and moral values. People were afraid of being poor, they worshiped success.

j- During the Great Depression the American economy quickly dropped into recession and the nation suffered the greatest depression that had ever experienced after the war. Millions of Americans lost their jobs and their homes. Meanwhile, the jazz music became incredibly popular. Originating in black communities in New Orleans around the turn of the century, jazz slowly moved its way north