I. Give a summary of Chapter IX in writing.

II. Be ready to discuss the following:

1. Why was Nick Carraway afraid that the whole tale would “shortly be served in racy pasquinade”? Speak on Catherine’s behaviour at the inquest, comment on the way Nick describes it. Speak on Nick’s efforts to round up Gatsby’s friends and acquaintances to witness the funeral. What impression does Klipspringer’s call produce on the reader? Comment on Nick’s words: “I began to have a feeling of defiance, of scornful solidarity between Gatsby and me against them all.”

2. Describe Henry C. Gatz’s appearance, his manner of speech and behaviour. Why did Nick feel uncomfortable speaking with him? What other facts from Gatsby’s life do you learn from his father’s words? Speak of Gatsby’s youthful aspirations.

Say what you know of Gatsby’s partnership with Wolfshiem. Why couldn’t Wolfshiem come to the funeral?

3. Some critics consider the nameless man with owl-eyed glasses to be an incarnation of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg. Express your opinion on it (see also Chapter III). What is the role of his appearance at the cemetery? Comment on his “The poor son-of-a-bitch!”

Speak on the weather on the day of Gatsby’s funeral.

Comment on Caraway’s homely memory of Christmas time (the very snow being humanized).

What does the El Greco scene suggest?

4. What did Tom tell about his last meeting with Wilson? Comment on Nick’s words: “There was nothing I could say, except the one unutterable fact that it wasn’t true.” Why “unutterable”? Why did Nick shake hands with Tom in the end?

Comment on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s words: “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They are different.” Comment on Jordan’s words of driving a car and Nick’s answer to them. What were the new choices Carraway made in his life because of Gatsby’s life and death (see also the preface)?

Comment on Caraway’s thoughts of the old island, “a fresh, green breast of the new world” once. What is the meaning of the green light? Comment on the code of the novel: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

5. How does Carraway inform the reader of the events he has no firsthand knowledge of?

Subjects for final discussion or composition

1. F. Scott Fitzgerald, his life and literary career.

2. Which of the critical opinions of “The Great Gatsby” do you think right?

“… a novel without ideas”;

“very skilful, often superb technically, and yet curiously hollow at times”;

“Fitzgerald seems to be far more interested in maintaining its suspense than in getting under the skins of its people”;

“… except for Gatsby himself, the characters are mere marionettes—often astonishingly lifelike, but nevertheless not quite alive”;

“… the author has made the real people live and breathe in all their sordidness… They are memorable people of today—not types”;

“Fitzgerald was not able to go beneath ’the glittering surface’… characters ’remain type’”;

“… an inferior novel, considered from any angle whatsoever… feeble in theme, in portraiture and even in expression”;

“The Great Gatsby” has an extraordinary unity of purpose in theme, plot, characterization, and atmosphere.”

Some reviewers enumerate the following excellences of the book: “its form, its poetic style, its grasp of ’a moment of history as a great moral fact’, and above all, its hero, who may betaken not only as an individual character but also as a symbolic or even allegorical character … to be thought of as standing for America itself.”

3. The major theme in “The Great Gatsby” (take into account projected title of the book “Among Ash Heaps and Millionaires”).

4. The American dream and “The Great Gatsby”.

5. The Jazz Age in the novel.

6. What makes Gatsby great?

7. Comment on the epigraph of the novel.

8. Give a character sketch of Jay Gatsby; Daisy Buchanan; Tom Buchanan; Nick Carraway; Jordan Baker.

9. The role of the minor characters in the novel.

10. The symbols in the novel.

11. “The Great Gatsby” as a disinterested observer’s story.

12. Fitzgerald’s method in portraying his characters.

13. Fitzgerald’s art of composition.