Directions: You have 10-15 minutes to answer the question(s) assigned to your group. Assign someone in your group to take notes, someone to watch the time, and two people to present your group’s findings to the class.
Group A: Gatsby’s Self-Creation
On page 98, Nick tells us, “The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God – a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that – and he must be about His Father’s Business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.”
The Platonic conception of something is its ideal form. What, then, is “ideal” to Gatsby? Nick says that Gatsby is what a seventeen year old would be likely to invent; is Nick implying that Gatsby’s self-created persona is immature? How might he be seen as immature?
Group B: Class and Money
In the novel, what seems to be the relationship between money and class? Does one need money to be high class? Does having money automatically confer high-class status? To answer this question, consider the following:
--James Gatz remakes himself as Jay Gatsby. In your opinion, how successful is this remake? Has he turned himself into a real high-society person, or does he lack some important elements?
--Why is Daisy so uncomfortable at Gatsby’s party? How are Gatsby’s parties different when seen through Daisy’s eyes, as opposed to Nick’s?
Group C: Gatsby’s Model
Consider the story of Gatsby’s mentor, Dan Cody. What parallels exist between Cody’s life and Gatsby’s thus far? How much does Gatsby seem to have modeled himself on Cody? If Cody is Gatsby’s role model, what might that foreshadow about Gatsby’s story?
Group D: Gatsby’s Past
Finally, we know something real about Gatsby’s past. How does his past shed light on his behavior thus far? How does it explain his parties? His dealings with Nick? His “business gonnegtions”? His behavior toward Daisy?
Exit Ticket: Read the following passage and write a response to the question below.
Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace. For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing (105).
He talked a lot about the past and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could one return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was . . . .
. . . One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. . . . Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalk really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees – he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.
His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete (117).
What happens to Gatsby when he kisses Daisy? How is his life changed? (Hint: Please go beyond “Now he loves Daisy.”)