Group Activity for The Great Gatsby / Ms. Liu

F. Scott Fitzgerald believed that his book The Great Gatsby was popular because it was set in his time, “The Roaring Twenties.” Indeed, if you have been reading carefully, you probably have noticed many references pertaining to the era. He is even responsible for coining the term “gold digger.” Many of the references reflect society and the times.

Your group should list an example for each area (record the page# on which you find the reference). The first group to find all areas will receive 5 bonus points.

After finding each reference, your group should discuss and record a contemporary example. What differences are there, i.e., focus or reflection of society? What do these differences show?

  1. Popular song title (and lyrics)
  2. Popular dance
  3. Slang words or phrases
  4. Fashion
  5. Sports
  6. Infamous scandal
  7. Pastime
  8. Popular outlook or shared belief

Narrative and Point of View

The Great Gatsby

First-person narration wraps the reader into the perspective of the main character, as this person tells us, first-hand, about his or her experiences. This person uses the first-person “I” to draw us through her or his adventures. A first-person narrator is almost always personally invested in

how the drama unfolds.

Third-person narration uses “he” or “she” to tell the story, while removed from the drama. Third-person narration establishes a greater distance between narrator and audience and relates events as an outside observer. Since this outside observer does not appear to participate in or affect theevents of the story, the narrator objectively relays dramatic events. An omniscient third-person narrator knows the thoughts and movements of every character.

The Great Gatsbyis told in the first person by Nick Carraway. The novel begins from the point of view of an older Nick, reminiscing on the events of one summer. Nick’s perspective, entangled in the dramatic action, subjectively depicts a series of events.

Discussion Activities

What do you know about Nick in the first two pages of the novel? How do his attitudes color the story he is about to tell? How might Chapter 1 be narrated, in the third person, from Daisy’s

“sophisticated” point of view? Have the class brainstorm the outline of this new chapter.

Writing Exercise

Based on the previous activity, write a few pages of Daisy’s version of the story. Chapter 2 begins with the “valley of ashes” and the “eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg.” What do they reveal about Nick’s character and point of view? What do they reveal about the landscape?

Homework

Read Chapter 3 What do we learn about Gatsby from Nick’s observations before we meet him?

Three

Newspaper Directions

Your newspaper should be eight pages long - one page for each of the sections listed below.

You may assemble your newspaper using a computer program (such as Microsoft Word, PageMaker, etc.) or you may create a mock up by cutting and pasting the typed articles and images to your newspaper pages.

Before you begin, examine the contemporary newspaper provided to evaluate the content and story types for each of the pages.

Required sections

  1. News (front page)
  2. Write at least one news story featuring a major historical event based on a document/object that you located from your search of the American Memory collections. If the document does not contain enough information, you may need to complete additional research.
  3. Write at least one fictionalized news story based on details from The Great Gatsby.
  4. Include all of the parts found on the front page of a newspaper including the "flag" (newspaper name) date, headlines, pictures and captions, etc. (Examine the modern newspaper provided for examples.) Use images from the American Memory collections.
  5. Editorials
  6. Write at least one editorial featuring a major historical controversy based on a document/object that you located from your search of the American Memory collections. If the document does not contain enough information, you may need to complete additional research.
  7. Write at least one fictionalized editorial based on details from The Great Gatsby.
  8. You should include several "letters to the editor" which concern both historical events as well as fictionalized events in The Great Gatsby.
  9. Include all of the parts found the editorial page of a newspaper including the "masthead" (newspaper name and the names of editors) date, headlines, political cartoons, etc. (Study the modern newspaper provided for examples.)
  10. Lifestyles
  11. Write at least one lifestyle story featuring a major historical event based on a document/object that you located from your search of the American Memory collections. If the document does not contain enough information, you may need to complete additional research.
  12. Write at least one fictionalized lifestyle story based on details from The Great Gatsby.
  13. Include all of the parts found on the lifestyle page of a newspaper as well as headlines, pictures and captions, etc. (Examine the modern newspaper provided for examples.) Use images from the American Memory collections.
  14. Advertising
  15. Select historical advertisements from your search of the American Memory collections and create your own fictionalized advertisements based on events described in The Great Gatsby. Include a "classified" or "personals" section on your advertisement page.
  16. Entertainment
  17. Write at least one entertainment story featuring a major historical event based on a document/object that you located from your search of the American Memory collections. If the document does not contain enough information, you may need to complete additional research.
  18. Write at least one fictionalized entertainment story based on details from The Great Gatsby.
  19. Include all of the parts found on the entertainment page of a newspaper as well as headlines, pictures and captions, etc. (Examine the modern newspaper provided for examples.) Use images from the American Memory collections.
  20. Obituaries
  21. Write at least one full-length obituary featuring a prominent figure from the 1920s and based on a document/object that you located from your search of the American Memory collections. If the document does not contain enough information, you may need to complete additional research.
  22. Write at least one fictionalized obituary based on details from The Great Gatsby.
  23. Include all of the parts found on the obituary page of a newspaper including the abbreviated death notices. (Study the modern newspaper provided for examples.) Use images of "the deceased" from the American Memory collections.
  24. Sports
  25. Write at least one sports story featuring a major historical event based on a document/object that you located from your search of the American Memory collections. If the document does not contain enough information, you may need to complete additional research.
  26. Write at least one fictionalized sports story based on details from The Great Gatsby.
  27. Include all of the parts found on the sports page of a newspaper as well as headlines, pictures and captions, etc. (Examine the modern newspaper provided for examples.) Use images from the American Memory collections.
  28. Business
  29. Write at least one business story featuring a major historical event based on a document/object that you located from your search of the American Memory collections. If the document does not contain enough information, you may need to complete additional research.
  30. Write at least one fictionalized business story based on details from The Great Gatsby.
  31. Include all of the parts found on the business page of a newspaper including headlines, pictures and captions, etc. (Study the modern newspaper provided for examples.) Use images from the American Memory collections.

Documentation

  • Wherever you used an item from the American Memory collections, include an internal reference citation.
  • Compile a bibliography of all of the sources that your team used to prepare your Literary Newspaper. The American Memory Web site provides information for citing electronic resources.

The Great Gatsby

Open Response

1. Is Fitzgerald writing a love story that embraces American ideals, or a satire that comments on American ideals? Have students refer to passages and quotes to build a thesis.

2. In Chapter 7, Nick says,“You can’t repeat the past” and Gatsby replies “Can’t repeat the past…Why of course you can!” Gatsby then describes a moment when he had kissed Daisy. Nick describes Gatsby’s memory as “appalling sentimentality,” after which, Nick himself remembers a “fragment” and an “elusive rhythm.” Are these passages about Nick or Gatsby? What has Nick forgotten, that he is trying to retrieve? Finally, does Gatsby misuse the past and his memories in order to enliven the present? Does this make him the “new generation”?

3. Originally titled On the Road to West Egg, then Trimalchio, then Under the Red White and Blue or Gold-Hatted Gatsby, Fitzgerald had difficulty settling on his title. Help F. Scott Fitzgerald rename the novel. Provide an argument to explain why your new title ideally suits the story.

4. Nick says:“I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.” When you consider his role as narrator, do you believe that he is honest? Are his depictions of others honest? If he is not honest, why does he believe he is so honest?

5. Examine the last page of the novel. Fitzgerald writes,“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 our arms farther…And one fine morning—” (p.___). Why does Fitzgerald leave this sentence unfinished? What does Nick think will happen one fine morning? Are hopes and dreams always centered on a future belief? Is this more important than the actual satisfaction of one’s desires? Why or why not?

The Roaring Twenties

1920

The 18th Amendment, establishing Prohibition, becomes law.
The 19th Amendment passes, giving 26 million women the right to vote.
Warren G. Harding is elected President.

1921

Charlie Chaplin stars in The Kid.
Coco Chanel introduces Chanel No. 5.
Rorschach inkblot tests first used.
"Shoeless" Joe Jackson and others banned from baseball in wake of the "Black Sox" scandal.

1922

James Joyce's Ulysses published.
T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land published.
First issue of Reader's Digest published.
Louis Armstrong leaves New Orleans for Chicago to play with King Oliver.
Dance marathon craze begins.

1923

First transcontinental nonstop flight takes off from New York and lands in San Diego.
Jelly Roll Morton makes his first Paramount recordings in Chicago.
President Harding dies; Calvin Coolidge takes oath of office.

1924

George Gershwin premieres Rhapsody in Blue.
J. Edgar Hoover appointed Director of the Bureau of Investigation, later named the FBI.
The 10 millionth Model T rolls off the Ford assembly line.
Colleen Moore plays the title role in the film The Perfect Flapper.

1925

Charles Scribner's Sons publishes The Great Gatsby.
First issue of the New Yorker goes to press.
After John Scopes is charged with teaching from Darwin's Origin of Species, Clarence Darrow takes his case.

1926

The value of bootlegging in the U.S. estimated at $3.6 billion.
Benny Goodman records his first solo, "He's the Last Word," with the Ben Pollack Band.
Henry Ford institutes the 5-day workweek and 8-hour workday.

1927

The Jazz Singer opens as the first talking motion picture.
Charles Lindbergh lands his Spirit of St. Louis in Paris after the first trans-Atlantic flight.
Ford introduces the Model A.
Duke Ellington opens a four-year residency at the Cotton Club in New York City.

1928

Walt Disney makes his first Mickey Mouse silent short, Plane Crazy, and succeeds with his second one, Steamboat Willie, which was synchronized with sound.
Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to make a trans-Atlantic flight.
Herbert Hoover is elected President.

1929

March 26: The New York Stock Exchange hits a record high, with 8.2 million shares traded.
The Gerber Co. invents canned baby food.
Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms is published.
October 29: On Black Tuesday, the stock market crashes.

Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age

Most young American veterans of the First World War came home changed by two revelations. One was the horror of trench warfare; the other their exposure to life in London and Paris, where artists and writers celebrated sheer survival with decadent verve.

Raised by Puritan-minded parents to first succeed at Ivy League universities and then in business, masses of young men and their wives-to-be returned at least mildly shell-shocked by their conflicting experiences.

Despite serving stateside during the war, F. Scott Fitzgerald nevertheless wrote of this disenchantment and its consequences in his greatest works. The nihilism of this Lost Generation is evident from This Side of Paradise's concluding page, when Fitzgerald said they had "grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken."

Americans had two strong and opposite reactions to this state of affairs: The older generation pushed for new laws to control social outbursts, and the new generation rejected those laws, especially the 1920 Prohibition Act, which forbade the sale and consumption of alcohol. Many Americans turned to bootleggers, who illegally either served alcohol smuggled from abroad or distilled their own. In The Great Gatsby, the title character's party guests often attribute his extraordinary wealth to bootlegging and other illicit activities.

Introducing the 75th anniversary edition of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli wrote that the Great War "triggered disillusionment, moral reevaluation, social experimentation, and hedonism...Although Fitzgerald joined the parties and chronicled them, he wrote in judgment."

Not only was he the most famous writer of the 1920s, Fitzgerald also coined the term "Jazz Age," which denoted an era of ragtime, jazz, stylish automobiles, and uninhibited young women with bobbed hair and short skirts.

Often called the Roaring Twenties, the postwar decade sometimes appears as one long flamboyant party, where the urban rich danced the Charleston and the foxtrot until 2 a.m. In fact, one might just as convincingly describe it as a period of individual possibility and lofty aspirations to serve the greater good. In his 1931 essay "Echoes of the Jazz Age," Fitzgerald wrote, "It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire."

"Daisy began to sing with the music in a husky, rhythmic whisper, bringing out a meaning in each word that it had never had before and would never have again. When the melody rose, her voice broke up sweetly, following it, in a way contralto voices have, and each change tipped out a little of her warm human magic upon the air."
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby