English 12 Name: ______
M. Boudreau
September 12, 2014
A) Chapter 3 – Questions for thought
Answer the following questions in complete sentences:
1. Explain how Nick and Gatsby meet for the first time. What is significant about this meeting?
2. Compare and contrast Nick with Gatsby’s other guests. Describe at least four ways in which Nick differs from the other guests at Gatsby's party.
3. Comment on the ambiguity in Gatsby's character that strikes Nick.
4. What role do automobiles seem to play in the novel so far? How might they be considered symbolic?
5. How does Jordan and Nick’s relationship progress in Chapter 3? Why does he seemingly fall in love with Jordan?
B) Chapter 3 – Close Reading and Analysis
Comment on the meaning and significance of the following quotations.
Specific textual features you may wish to address include: form, speaker and situation, tone and atmosphere, vocabulary, imagery, subject and theme, rhyme and references to sounds, and ideas and messages.
1. Dressed up in white flannels I went over to his lawn a little after seven, and wandered around rather ill at ease among the swirls and eddies of people I didn’t know - though here and there was a face I had noticed on the commuting train (43).
2. He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf, muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable to collapse (47).
3. He smiled understandingly – much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced – or seemed to face – the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey (49).
4. The tears coursed down her cheeks – not freely, however, for when they came into contact with her heavily beaded eye-lashes they assumed an inky colour, and pursued the rest of their way in slow black rivulets. A humorous suggestion was made that she sing the notes on her face, whereupon she threw up her hands, sank into a chair, and went off into a deep vinous sleep (52).
5. A sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host, who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell (56).
6. I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye (57).
7. Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known (59).