The Great Gatsby: “The Most Careless of All”
Guilty parties—Daisy Fay and Tom Buchanan: “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.” (187-188)
What does this quotation imply about their values and ethics or lack thereof? What social commentary is Fitzgerald making through their characters?
Causing others to “bleed on their sacrificial altar”
The final car accident—Myrtle Wilson: “The “death car,” as the newspapers called it, didn’t stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment and then disappeared around the next bend…Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick, dark blood with the dust.” (144-145)
What is most noticeable in the imagery provided here? Why is Fitzgerald so graphic? What is he trying to convey to the reader?
George Wilson: “Until long after midnight a changing crowd lapped against the front of the garage while George Wilson rocked himself back and forth on the couch inside.” (164)
What is the response that Fitzgerald is aiming for in this image of Wilson? How does this connect to the “careless” acts of others?
Gatsby: “If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about…like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees…
A small gust of wind that scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental burden. The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved around it slowly, tracing, like the leg of a compass, a thin red circle in the water.
It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson’s body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete.” (169-170)
This is the final image that Fitzgerald provides the reader with concerning Gatsby. What tone is evident in the diction? How does Gatsby compare to Tom, Daisy, and Jordan in this manner?
Nick’s last words to Gatsby: “They’re a rotten crowd,” I shouted, across the lawn. “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.”
What do you make of the narrator, Nick Carraway? What are his morals, if any?
Make A Value Judgment
Directions: Put in order from cruel to kindest (1 cruelest to 10 kindest) the characters of The Great Gatsby. Please remember all aspects of their lives and all actions. Briefly say next to each of the characters’ names why you gave each the particular rating.
______Jordan Baker______
______Daisy Fay Buchanan______
______Nick Carraway______
______Tom Buchanan______
______Jay Gatsby______
______Meyer Wolfsheim______
______Myrtle Wilson______
______George Wilson______
______Old Owl Eyes______
______Klipspringer______