Fitzgerald is remembered as the chronicler of the Jazz Age (a term he coined), also known as the Roaring 20s, a time he called “the most expensive orgy in history” (he was using orgy being used in its original sense, which is not just sexual). What sense do you get of this era in American history from this novel?
The party in Chapter Three is one of the great set-pieces in American literature. Call it what you want — completely over-the-top excess, conspicuous consumption — Fitzgerald creates a sense of excitement and abundance that even director Baz Luhrman struggled to put on film. How does Fitzgerald achieve this through language?
Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan have a history, as Jordan tells us. What draws them together now, after all this time? Their attraction to each other derives not just (maybe not even substantially) from themselves but from what each represents to the other. What does Gatsby represent for Daisy, and what does Daisy represent for Gatsby?
Fitzgerald got much of his style and many of his ideas from John Keats. A superb example of that occurs in Chapter 5. Look at John Keats’s poem “The Eve of St. Agnes,” especially stanza XXX. Which passage in this reading reminds you of this stanza? Why? What term we have discussed this semester applies to this passage?
In Chapter Six, we learn Gatsby’s real background. How do his origins help to explain who he is today? How do they explain his fascination with Daisy? Why does Fitzgerald tell us all this now? Note that he violates the book’s chronology to do so, as Nick doesn’t find all this out at this point in the story. Note that he tells us that Gatsby tells him this “very much later.” As we learned in the first chapter, Nick is telling us the entire story in retrospect: when he begins telling it to us, it has all already happened. That means Fitzgerald could have Nick tell us the truth about Gatsby in Chapter One, or he could wait and have him tell us when Gatsby tells Nick. We can assume the reason Nick gives us for telling us now is not Fitzgerald’s reason, just an excuse for something we might otherwise question. What purpose, then, does telling us now serve?