I need some help with The Great Gatsby
1. Why would Fitzgerald write this from Nick Carraway’s point of view?
2. What is the relationship between Nick and the Buchanans?
3. Why does Daisy always speak in such exaggerated phrases?
4. Why does Daisy hope her child will be a “beautiful fool”?
5. Why does Daisy describe her youth as a “white girlhood”?
6. Why does Gatsby reach out to the water?
7. What might the green light symbolize?
8. Who is Nick Carraway? What do you know about him from the first chapter? (Focus particularly on his views, emotions, and reactions to others).
9. Who is Tom Buchanan? What do you know about him from the first chapter? (Focus on what he says, his physical descriptions, and actions).
10. Who is Daisy Buchanan? What do you know about her from the first chapter? (Focus on what she says and her actions).
- Fitzgerald writes from Nick Carraway’s point of view because Nick has objective observation skills. And in general, Nick as a character is more believable and reader trusts him. It also allows the reader to see all perspectives of the world in which Nick, as an outsider, since he just moves there, finds himself.
3. Daisy exaggerates everything she says to make it seem more important than it really is. And if we analyze this behavior of a character we can see that by this she shows that nothing is really important to her. She thinks it makes her more intelligent and sophisticated, but in reality, it is just the opposite.
4. Daisy hopes her child will be a “beautiful fool” because beauty is what is really important in her life, in her world. Beauty is not just a gift, it is a necessity. Intelligence, on the other hand, might be even a curse because if she started to closely analyze her life, she would have probably found it unbearable.
5. If you take this question literally, then the white color really follows her throughout her youth, she always wore white dresses and even had a white car. But in general, she thinks about her youth as about time of innocence and simplicity compared to the time she lives in now.
8. Nick Carraway is a young man from Minnesota, he is well educated, he was a soldier and fought in the World War I, after this he decided to learn about business, that is why he goes to New York. He is honest, tolerant, he truly knows what is good and what is bad. People like him and trust him, that is why he is the narrator of the story because people will not question his word.
9. Tom Buchanan is Daisy’s extremely wealthy husband. He is the opposite of Nick – arrogant, intolerant, bully. In his social attitudes, we can spot racism and sexism. He thinks it is okay to have an affair (which he had), but at the same time when he suspects Daisy in having an affair he gets angry and wants to confront a man. He did not even try to change something in his attitudes.
10. Daisy Buchanan is Nick’s cousin and a woman Gatsby loves. When she first met Gatsby before the war, she fell in love and promised to wait for him. Although she had a need to feel loved and when Tom proposed to her, she agreed. She is sardonic and somewhat cynical and hides her pain behind her superficial behavior.