1. In the first chapter, Daisy says: " 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." What does she want to express?
2. Can you explain the role of Doctor T.J.Eckleburg´s advertisement?
pp.23 "Above the gray (valley of ashes)...the eyes of Doctor T.J.Eckleburg...are blue and gigantic...they look out of no face, but, instead, from pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose.
pp.122 "Then as Doctor T.J.Eckelburg´s faded eyes came into sight down the road,
I remembered Gatsby´s caution about gasoline."
pp.160 Wilson: "You may fool me, but you can´t fool God!"
Standing behind Wilson, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor
T.J.Eckelburg, which had just emerged, pale and enormous, from the dissolving night."
"God sees everything,"repeated Wilson.
"That´s an advertisement,"Michaelis assured him.
Could he symbolize God? Why or why not?
3. "...then Mr. Gatz and the minister and I in the limousine, and, a little later, four or five servants and the postman from West Egg in Gatsby's station wagon, all wet to the skin."
There were very few people at Gatsby's funeral. What could be the reason for this? Did Gatsby possess any greatness at all or was is just the "saturday-night greatness?"
4. Is the depicted upper class a worthy example of the American Dream or is it rather an example of its disintegration? Is there any person in the novel who is a shining example how the American Dream should be lived?
5. "At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others - poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary dinner - young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life."
Why is it that people often feel lonely at overcrowded places such as New York and why particularly in this novel where the characters go to parties almost every evening and always meet new people?
6. Both Hemingway and Fitzgerald belong to the same group of the Lost Generation. What are the similarities and differences between their male and female characters?
7. ´James Gatz - That was really, or at least legally, his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career...´
´To the young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the railed deck, the yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world.´
Has the change of Gatsby´s name (from James Gatz into Jay Gatsby) meant (marked) any difference in his personality / character? Did it change his way of life? How?
8. How does Nick´s relationship towards Gatsby change throughout the novel? What does Nick feel when Gatsby dies at the end?
´..., Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him...´
´... my impression, that he was a person of some undefined consequence, had gradually faded and he had become simply the proprietor of an elaborate road-house next door.´
After Gatsby dies:
´I found myself on Gatsby´s side, and alone.´
´I wanted to get somebody for him. I wanted to go into the room where he lay and reassure him - I´ll get somebody for you, Gatsby. Don´t worry. Just trust me and I´ll get somebody for you... - ´
9. In chapter 5, page 90, Gatsby meets Daisy for the first time after many years and he is very excited about it: „But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room.“
How would you describe Daisy's character? Is Daisy the one Gatsby is looking for? Does she have all the virtues Gatsby searches in a woman?
10. Does the author suggest that people’s fates are determined by their original standing and that it is something that can never be got rid of?
* Daisy, the rich girl, gets away with killing somebody
* Jay, the poor boy, gets high but finally loses everything
* Nick, the boy who always liked to return home for the holidays, finally finds 178 "the East hunted for me".
11. What does the green light mean for Gatsby and what does it symbolize?
pp.21-22 Nick:"...I glanced seaward - and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute
and faraway, that might have been the end of a dock...".
pp.182 "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes
before us. It eluded us then, but that´s no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out arms
farther....And one fine morning---
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
12.Can it be stated that the basic motivation for the actions of the characters was love or the love of money? If greatly simplified , which characters basically acted with the former and which with the latter motivation?
How is it historically connected with the period they lived in? ( The Jazz Age or The Roaring Twenties)
No comments:
Post a Comment