EAST VS. WEST: “Even when the East excited me most, even when I was most keenly aware of its superiority to the bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the Ohio…after Gatsby’s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes’ power of correction” (176)

CONSIDER: What is Nick saying about the East and the West? Describe both. Analyze why these people failed (all main characters).

EYES and MYRTLE: “I told her she might fool me but she couldn’t fool God. I took her to the window and I said ‘God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but you can’t fool God! He was looking at the eyes of Dr. T.K. Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and enormous, from the dissolving night” (159-160).

CONSIDER: What kind of God is present through the eyes? Why is it important that George is the one who sees them that way, instead of just an advertisement?

TOM AND DAISY: “It was all every careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy---they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made..” (179)

CONSIDER: What does the word restless mean? Explain why each of these people is restless. Then evaluate what they do to cope with it. What does the word careless mean? Examine which of these people are truly careless. Do they ever pay for it?

DREAMS: 1) “He had intended, probably, to take what he could and go---but now he found that he had committed himself to the following of grail. He knew that Daisy was extraordinary, but he didn’t realize just how extraordinary a “nice” girl could be….Her porch was bright with the bought luxury of star-shine..” (149).

5) “I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to his blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city…Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us…” (180).

CONSIDER: What was Gatsby’s dream, really? It is more than just Daisy—in fact, she falls short of his dream. Where does his dream begin? Where (and possibly, with whom) does his dream alter? Does he ever consider the consequences of where his money gets him? Why does he still keep up hope, even after we know Daisy is lost to him?

TOM: 2) “…as we drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic. His wife and his mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping precipitately from his control” (125).

3) “Watching Tom, I saw a wad of muscle back of his shoulder tighten under his coat…Tom drove slowly until we were beyond the bend—then his foot come down hard, and the coupe raced along through the night. In a little while I heard a low husky sob, and saw that the tears were overflowing down his face” (141).

4) (talking about revealing to George whose yellow car it was) “He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadn’t told him who owned the car. His hand was on a revolver in his pocket every minute he was in the house---What if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him. He threw dust into your eyes just like he did in Daisy’s, but he was a tough one. He ran over Myrtle like you run over a dog and never even stopped his car” (178).

CONSIDER: Why is Tom unsatisfied with life (it is more than just Daisy)? What happens to Tom when he realizes he can no longer control two women? How does Tom handle George at the end of the novel?

DAISY:

2) “Oh, you want too much!! I love you now—isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past. I did love him once—but I loved you too” … “with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up…” (134)

3) “She was feeling the pressure of the world outside, and she wanted to see him and feel his presence behind her and be reassured that she was doing the right thing after all. For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras…all the time something within her was crying for a decision. She wanted her life shaped now, immediately---and the decision must be made by some force---of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality—that was close at hand” (151).

CONSIDER: Who is the real Daisy? What good does her coping mechanism do her? Compare Tom and Gatsby to her when she was younger. Explain the last quote---why does Daisy really marry Tom? Could she have ever really been happy with Jay? Now what will life be like?

NICK:

3) “I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade. Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair” (135).

4) “’They’re a rotten crowd’… ‘you’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.’…I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end” (154).

5) “I found myself on Gatsby’s side, and alone. From the moment I telephoned news of the catastrophe to West Egg Village, every surmise about him, and every practical question, was referred to me….hour upon hour, it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no one else was interested—interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to which every one has some vague right at the end…” (164-5).

CONSIDER: What are Nick’s true (and fluctuating) feelings about Gatsby? Reflect again on his signature comment in 2a. Can he? How does Nick react to what he sees in East and West Egg? Explain why he would return home to the Midwest. Did he, in fact, fail?

JORDAN: 4) “I remember thinking she looked like a good illustration…when I had finished she told me without comment that she was engaged to another man. I doubted that, though there were several she could have married at a nod of her head, but I pretended to be surprised. ‘I don’t give a damn about you now, but it was a new experience for me, and I felt a little dizzy for a while. Well, I met another bad driver, didn’t I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess’” (177). CONSIDER: Jordan is drawn to Daisy (almost like Gatsby). Why? What does the comment about the way Jordan dates men say about her? What does her dishonesty do for her life? What is her outcome?

JAY GATSBY: 4a) “He come out to see me two years ago and bought me the house I live in now…he knew he had a big future in front of him and ever since he made a success he was very generous with me” (172)

4b) looking at his schedule as a young boy “Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something. Do you notice what he’s got about improving his mind? He was always great for that…” (173). CONSIDER: Consider all of the personas of Gatsby: James Gatz, Jay Gatsby we met, and the Jimmy Gatz that Mr. Gatz, his father, saw. Is he truly “great”? What are his successes? Why does his dream fail? What mistakes did he make along the way (which he did not realize)?

Meyer Wolfsheim 1) a letter for Nick “This has been one of the most terrible shocks of my life to me I hardly can believe it that it is true at all. Such a mad act as that man did should make us all think….I hardly know where I am when I hear about a thing like this and am completely knocked down and out” (166).

2a) “Start him! I made him. I raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter. I saw right away that he was a fine-appearing, gentlemanly young man, and when he told me he was an Oggsford I knew I could use him good. I got him to join up in the American Legion and he used to stand high there. Right off he did some work for a client of mine up to Albany. We were so thick like that in everything---always together” (171).

2b) “When a man gets killed I never like to get mixed up in it in any way. I keep out. When I was a young man it was different—if a friend of mine died, no matter how, I struck with them to the end. You may think that’s sentimental, but I mean it---to the bitter end” (171).

2c) “Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead…after that, my own rule is to let everything alone” (172).

CONSIDER: What do we know about Wolfsheim? How do you react to his explanation that he “made” Gatsby? Consider the word corruption. Also reflect on Gatsby’s funeral---why

MYRTLE: 4b) “Beat me!” he heard her cry. “Throw me down and beat me, you dirty little coward!!” (137)

5) “…Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick dark blood with the dust…her left breast was swinging loose like a flap, and there was no need to listen for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide open and ripped at the corners, as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long” (137).

CONSIDER: These two people are representative of the failure of the American Dream. Explain why, from the get-go, these two are destined to fail. Explain also their physical contrasts and what that says about them. What drove Myrtle to chose Tom over George? What made George so upset when he lost Myrtle? How do both of their lives end?