Discussion Guide The Great Gatsby
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Discussion Guide
The Great Gatsby
By F. Scott Fitzgerald
Adapted by Simon Levy
Directed by Brian Isaac Phillips
About the Author:
F. Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota. His first novel's success made him famous
and let him marry the woman he loved, but he later descended into drinking and his wife had a mental breakdown.
Following the unsuccessful Tender is the Night, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood and became a scriptwriter. He died of a
heart attack in 1940, at age 44, his final novel only half completed.
“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely
and isolated from anyone. You belong.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald
EARLY YEARS:
F. Scott Fitzgerald was born Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald on September 24, 1896, in St.
Paul, Minnesota. His namesake (and second cousin three times removed on his father's
side) was Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to the "Star-Spangled Banner."
Fitzgerald's mother, Mary McQuillan, was from an Irish-Catholic family that had made a
small fortune in Minnesota as wholesale grocers. His father, Edward Fitzgerald, had
opened a wicker furniture business in St. Paul, and, when it failed, he took a job as a
salesman for Procter & Gamble that took his family back and forth between Buffalo and
Syracuse in upstate New York during the first decade of Fitzgerald's life. However,
Edward Fitzgerald lost his job with Procter & Gamble in 1908, when F. Scott Fitzgerald
was 12, and the family moved back to St. Paul to live off of his mother's inheritance.
He attended the St. Paul Academy, and when he was 13, he saw his first piece of writing
appear in print: a detective story published in the school newspaper. In 1911, when
Fitzgerald was 15 years old, his parents sent him to the Newman School, a prestigious
Catholic preparatory school in New Jersey. There, he met Father Sigourney Fay, who
noticed his incipient talent with the written word and encouraged him to pursue his
literary ambitions.
After graduating from the Newman School in 1913, Fitzgerald decided to stay in New Jersey to continue his artistic
development at Princeton University. At Princeton, he firmly dedicated himself to honing his craft as a writer, writing
scripts for Princeton's famous Triangle Club musicals as well as frequent articles for the Princeton Tiger humor magazine
and stories for the Nassau Literary Magazine. However, Fitzgerald's writing came at the expense of his coursework. He
was placed on academic probation, and, in 1917, he dropped out of school to join the U.S. Army. Afraid that he might die
in World War I with his literary dreams unfulfilled, in the weeks before reporting to duty, Fitzgerald hastily wrote a novel
called The Romantic Egotist. Though the publisher, Charles Scribner's Sons, rejected the novel, the reviewer noted its
originality and encouraged Fitzgerald to submit more work in the future.
Fitzgerald was commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry and assigned to Camp Sheridan outside of Montgomery,
Alabama. It was there that he met and fell in love with a beautiful 18-year-old girl named Zelda Sayre, the daughter of an
Alabama Supreme Court judge. The war ended in November 1918, before Fitzgerald was ever deployed, and upon his
discharge he moved to New York City hoping to launch a career in advertising lucrative enough to convince Zelda to
marry him. He quit his job after only a few months, however, and returned to St. Paul to rewrite his novel.
EARLY CAREER:
The novel's new incarnation, This Side of Paradise, a largely autobiographical story about love and greed, was centered on
Amory Blaine, an ambitious Midwesterner who falls in love with, but is ultimately rejected by, two girls from high-class
families. The novel was published in 1920 to glowing reviews and, almost overnight, turned Fitzgerald, at the age of 24,
into one of the country's most promising young writers. One week after the novel's publication, he married Zelda Sayre in
New York. They had one child, a daughter named Frances Scott Fitzgerald, born in 1921.
F. Scott Fitzgerald eagerly embraced his newly minted celebrity status and embarked on an extravagant lifestyle that earned him a reputation as a playboy and hindered his reputation as a serious literary writer. Beginning in 1920 and continuing throughout the rest of his career, Fitzgerald supported himself financially by writing great numbers of short stories for popular publications such as The Saturday Evening Post and Esquire. Some of his most notable stories include "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "The Camel's Back" and "The Last of the Belles." In 1922, Fitzgerald published his second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned, the story of the troubled marriage of Anthony and Gloria Patch. The Beautiful and the Damned helped to cement his status as one of the great chroniclers and satirists of the culture of wealth, extravagance and ambition that emerged during the affluent 1920s—what became known as the Jazz Age. "It was an age of miracles," Fitzgerald wrote, "it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire." Seeking a change of scenery to spark his creativity, in 1924, Fitzgerald moved to France, and it was there, in Valescure, that Fitzgerald wrote what would be credited as his greatest novel, The Great Gatsby. Published in 1925, The Great Gatsby is narrated by Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner who moves into the town of West Egg on Long Island, next door to a mansion owned by the wealthy and mysterious Jay Gatsby. The novel follows Nick and Gatsby's strange friendship and Gatsby's pursuit of a married woman named Daisy, ultimately leading to his exposure as a bootlegger and his death. LATER LIFE: After he completed The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald's life began to unravel. Always a heavy drinker, he progressed steadily into alcoholism and suffered prolonged bouts of writer's block. His wife, Zelda, also suffered from mental health issues, and the couple spent the late 1920s moving back and forth between Delaware and France. In 1930, she was briefly committed to a mental-health clinic in Switzerland, and, after the Fitzgeralds returned to the United States in 1931, she suffered another breakdown and subsequently entered the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1934, after years of toil, Fitzgerald finally published his fourth novel, Tender is the Night, about an American psychiatrist in Paris, France, and his troubled marriage to a wealthy patient. Although Tender is the Night was a commercial failure and was initially poorly received due to its chronologically jumbled structure, it has since gained in reputation and is now considered among the great American novels. After another two years lost to alcohol and depression, in 1937 Fitzgerald attempted to revive his career as a screenwriter and freelance storywriter in Hollywood, and he achieved modest financial, if not critical, success for his efforts. He began work on another novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, in 1939, and he had completed over half the manuscript when he died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940, at the age of 44, in Hollywood, California. F. Scott Fitzgerald died believing himself a failure. None of his works received anything more than modest commercial or critical success during his lifetime. However, since his death, Fitzgerald has gained a reputation as one of the pre-eminent authors in the history of American literature due almost entirely to the enormous posthumous success of The Great Gatsby. Perhaps the quintessential American novel, as well as a definitive social history of the Jazz Age, The Great Gatsby went on to become required reading for virtually every American high school student, and effected generation after generation of readers.
From the actors:
Justin McCombs- Nick Carraway: “I'm playing Nick
Carraway. Nick serves two functions in the play: one as the narrator who speaks to the
audience about times and events in the story, and one as an invested character in the
outcome. I enjoy playing Nick because there are a number of his traits that I identify with,
most notably that he's a Midwesterner who moved away from his family to chase his
dream. Some of the challenges I've come across are sifting through the novel and making
tough choices on how much detail from the novel I can get into the character in the play. As
an adaptation, the play needs to cut things out of the novel to keep the storyline moving. That
means a lot of the narrator's connective tissue from one point in the story to the next gets cut
out of the stage version. It's also challenging to be a character speaking to the audience after
the events of the play have happened upon reflection, and then to jump into a scene in the past
where I don't know what's going to end up happening. Playing with the elements of time is a
major theme in both the novel and the play. I've really enjoyed tackling some of the challenges
and seeing how much Nick changes from the beginning of this story to the end.”
Jared Joplin-Jay Gatsby/James Gatz:
“Jay Gatsby is a man driven by money but for the best possible of reasons... love. In truth, his
material wealth means nothing to him until measured against what he assumes Daisy
wants. Sadly, he convinced himself that money (or rather his lack thereof) was what cost him
the love of his life and he has spent the years since trying to quickly build himself up
financially in order to win her back. He is not an amoral man; rather, I think he believes that
his love is so pure and so right that any moral obstacle which stands in his way - be it legally
or societally based - is understandably null and void. His hubris is that he is not content to
just win back his love. He needs to nullify the time that has separated him from Daisy and he
wants her to prove that there was never anyone but him in heart. He is asking her to confirm
that, like him, no part of her life mattered beyond the last moment they spent together. If he
could only love her now, in this moment, rather than insisting that they both try to "erase the
past," he may have found happiness.
James Gatz was a poor farm boy who unfortunately believed that money was the key to your dreams. He let his own
insecurities ultimately cost him his heart, his morals and his life. At no time in this story or play did the reality of "James
Gatz" ever stand in the way of "James Gatz." It was only and always his own belief that he wasn't enough, that he should
be more that cost him. Daisy fell in love with James - not the soldier, not the wealthy man of mystery - James. He wanted
to offer her so much more that HE decided that he was not enough. Everything that followed, HE set in motion. His
hubris - self doubt or perhaps self loathing.”
Sara Clark- Daisy Buchanan:
“The joy and the challenge of playing Daisy is how unlike we are in temperament. I tend to be
pretty measured and controlled in my own life, so it’s both difficult and freeing to play a
character whose heart is planted firmly on her sleeve. As always, I go to the books first; not
just the text of The Great Gatsby, but research into the period and into Scott and Zelda
Fitzgerald themselves, whose lives play heavily into Fitzgerald’s novels. There are several
moments in the adaptation that don’t actually appear in the novel, but where Simon Levy has
pulled from Zelda’s letters to Scott over the course of their marriage and puts those words
into Daisy’s mouth. Playing the line between the character of Daisy, the real-life person of
Zelda, and my own personal experience has been the most interesting thing to explore over
the course of this process.”
About the Novel:
"“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is
stare blankly.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of
characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story
primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his passion and obsession for the
beautiful former debutante, Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby
explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess, creating a portrait of
the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties that has been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American
Dream.
Fitzgerald, inspired by the parties he had attended while visiting Long Island's north shore, began planning the
novel in 1923 desiring to produce, in his words, "something new—something extraordinary and beautiful and
simple and intricately patterned." Progress was slow with Fitzgerald completing his first draft following a move
to the French Riviera in 1924. His editor, Maxwell Perkins, felt the book was too vague and convinced the
author to revise over the next winter. Fitzgerald was ambivalent about the book's title, at various times wishing
to re-title the novel Trimalchio in West Egg.
First published by Scribner's in April 1925, The Great Gatsby received mixed reviews and sold poorly; in its
first year, the book sold only 20,000 copies. However, the novel experienced a revival during World War II,
and became a part of American high school curricula and numerous stage and film adaptations in the following
decades. Today, The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be a literary classic and a contender for the title
"Great American Novel". The book is consistently ranked among the greatest works of American literature. In
1998 the Modern Library editorial board voted it the 20th century's best American novel and second best novel
in the English language.
“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Synopsis:
Nick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn about the
bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long
Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated by the new rich, a
group who have made their fortunes too recently to have established
social connections and who are prone to garish displays of wealth.
Nick’s next-door neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious man named
Jay Gatsby, who lives in a gigantic Gothic mansion and throws
extravagant parties every Saturday night.
Nick is unlike the other inhabitants of West Egg—he was educated at
Yale and has social connections in East Egg, a fashionable area of
Long Island, home to the established upper class. Nick drives out to
East Egg one evening for dinner with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and
her husband, Tom, an erstwhile classmate of Nick’s at Yale. Daisy
and Tom introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, a beautiful, cynical young
woman with whom Nick begins a romantic relationship. Nick also
learns a bit about Daisy and Tom’s marriage: Jordan tells him that
Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the valley of ashes, a
gray industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York
City. Not long after this revelation, Nick travels to New York City
with Tom and Myrtle. At a vulgar, gaudy party in the apartment that
Tom keeps for the affair, Myrtle begins to taunt Tom about Daisy, and Tom responds by breaking her nose.
As the summer progresses, Nick eventually garners an invitation to one of Gatsby’s legendary parties. He
encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet Gatsby himself, a surprisingly young man who affects an
English accent, has a remarkable smile, and calls everyone “old sport.” Gatsby asks to speak to Jordan alone,
and, through Jordan, Nick later learns more about his mysterious neighbor. Gatsby tells Jordan that he knew
Daisy in Louisville in 1917 and is deeply in love with her. He spends many nights staring at the green light at
the end of her dock, across the bay from his mansion. Gatsby’s extravagant lifestyle and wild parties are simply
an attempt to impress Daisy. Gatsby now wants Nick to arrange a reunion between himself and Daisy, but he is
afraid that Daisy will refuse to see him if she knows that he still
loves her. Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house, without
telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially
awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy reestablish their connection.
Their love rekindled, they begin an affair.
After a short time, Tom grows increasingly suspicious of his
wife’s relationship with Gatsby. At a luncheon at the Buchanans’
house, Gatsby stares at Daisy with such undisguised passion that
Tom realizes Gatsby is in love with her. Though Tom is himself
involved in an extramarital affair, he is deeply outraged by the
thought that his wife could be unfaithful to him. He forces the
group to drive into New York City, where he confronts Gatsby in
a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Tom asserts that he and Daisy have a
history that Gatsby could never understand, and he announces to
his wife that Gatsby is a criminal—his fortune comes from
bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities. Daisy realizes that
her allegiance is to Tom, and Tom contemptuously sends her back
to East Egg with Gatsby, attempting to prove that Gatsby cannot
hurt him.
When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley of ashes, however, they discover that Gatsby’s car has
struck and killed Myrtle, Tom’s lover. They rush back to Long Island, where Nick learns from Gatsby that
Daisy was driving the car when it struck Myrtle, but that Gatsby intends to take the blame. The next day, Tom
tells Myrtle’s husband, George, that Gatsby was the driver of the car. George, who has leapt to the conclusion
that the driver of the car that killed Myrtle must have been her lover, finds Gatsby in the pool at his mansion
and shoots him dead. He then fatally shoots himself.
Nick stages a small funeral for Gatsby, ends his relationship with Jordan, and moves back to the Midwest to
escape the disgust he feels for the people surrounding Gatsby’s life and for the emptiness and moral decay of
life among the wealthy on the East Coast. Nick reflects that just as Gatsby’s dream of Daisy was corrupted by
money and dishonesty, the American dream of happiness and individualism has disintegrated into the mere
pursuit of wealth. Though Gatsby’s power to transform his dreams into reality is what makes him “great,” Nick
reflects that the era of dreaming—both Gatsby’s dream and the American dream—is over.
Development:
"“Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald began planning his third novel in June 1922 but it was
interrupted by production of his play, The Vegetable, in the summer and
fall. The play failed miserably, and Fitzgerald worked that winter on
magazine stories struggling to pay his debt caused by the production.The
stories were, in his words, "all trash and it nearly broke my heart,”
although included among those stories was "Winter Dreams", which
Fitzgerald later described as "a sort of first draft of the Gatsby idea".
After the birth of their child, the Fitzgeralds moved to Great Neck, New
York, on Long Island, in October 1922; the town was used as the scene
for The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald's neighbors in Great Neck included such
prominent and newly wealthy New Yorkers as writer Ring Lardner, actor
Lew Fields, and comedian Ed Wynn. These figures were all considered to
be "new money", unlike those who came from Manhasset Neck or Cow
Neck Peninsula, places which were home to many of New York's
wealthiest established families, and which sat across a bay from Great
Neck. This real-life juxtaposition gave Fitzgerald his idea for "West Egg"
and "East Egg". In this novel, Great Neck (King's Point) became the new-
money peninsula of "West Egg" and Port Washington (Sands Point) the
old-money "East Egg". Several mansions in the area served as inspiration for Gatsby's home, such as Oheka
Castle and the now-demolished Beacon Towers.
By mid-1923, Fitzgerald had written 18,000 words for his novel but discarded most of his new story as a false
start, some of which resurfaced in the 1924 short story "Absolution".
Work on The Great Gatsby began in earnest in April 1924; Fitzgerald wrote in his ledger, "Out of woods at last
and starting novel." He decided to make a departure from the writing process of his previous novels and told
Perkins that the novel was to be a "consciously artistic achievement" and a "purely creative work — not trashy
imaginings as in my stories but the sustained imagination of a sincere and yet radiant world." He added later,
during editing, that he felt "an enormous power in me now, more than I've ever had." Soon after this burst of
inspiration, work slowed while the Fitzgeralds made a move to the French Riviera where a serious crisis in their
personal relationship soon developed. By August, however, Fitzgerald was hard at work and completed what
he believed to be his final manuscript in October, sending the book to his editor, Maxwell Perkins, and agent,
Harold Ober, on October 30. Fitzgerald made revisions through the winter after Perkins informed him in a
November letter that the character of Gatsby was "somewhat vague" and Gatsby's wealth and business,
respectively, needed "the suggestion of an explanation" and should be "adumbrated". Content after a few rounds
of revision, Fitzgerald returned the final batch of revised galleys in the middle of February 1925.
Historical Connections:
Set in the prosperous Long Island of 1922, The Great Gatsby provides a critical social history of America
during the Roaring Twenties within its narrative. That era, known for unprecedented economic prosperity, the
evolution of jazz music, flapper culture, and bootlegging and other criminal activity, is plausibly depicted in
Fitzgerald's novel. Fitzgerald uses these societal developments of the 1920s to build Gatsby's stories from
simple details like automobiles to broader themes like Fitzgerald's discreet allusions to the organized crime
culture which was the source of Gatsby's fortune. Fitzgerald educates his readers about the garish society of the
Roaring Twenties by placing a timeless, relatable plotline within the historical context of the era.
Fitzgerald's visits to Long Island's north shore and his experience attending parties at mansions inspired The
Great Gatsby's setting. Today there are a number of theories as to which mansion was the inspiration for the
book. One possibility is Land's End, a notable Gold Coast Mansion where Fitzgerald may have attended a party.
Many of the events in Fitzgerald's early life are reflected throughout The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald was a young
man from Minnesota, and like Nick, he was educated at an Ivy League school (in Nick's case, Yale.) Fitzgerald
is also similar to Jay Gatsby, as he fell in love while stationed in the military and fell into a life of decadence
trying to prove himself to the girl he loves. Fitzgerald became a
second lieutenant, and was stationed at Camp Sheridan, in
Montgomery, Alabama. There he met and fell in love with a wild
seventeen-year-old beauty named Zelda Sayre. Zelda finally agreed
to marry him, but her overpowering desire for wealth, fun, and
leisure led her to delay their wedding until he could prove a
success. Like Nick in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald found this new
lifestyle seductive and exciting, and, like Gatsby, he had always
idolized the very rich. In many ways, The Great Gatsby represents
Fitzgerald’s attempt to confront his conflicting feelings about the
Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was driven by his love for a
woman who symbolized everything he wanted, even as she led him
toward everything he despised.
In her book Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of
'The Great Gatsby' (2013), Sarah Churchwell speculates that parts
of the ending of The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald
were based on the Hall-Mills Case. Based on her forensic search
for clues, she asserts that the two victims in the Halls-Mills murder
case inspired the characters who were murdered in The Great
Gatsby.
Themes:
Society and Class:
America is a classless society. True or false? You'll have good support no matter which way you answer, but The Great
Gatsby has a pretty clear answer: no. There's no such thing as the American Dream or the up-from-the-bootstraps self-
made man. You are who you're born, and attempting to change classes just leads to tragedy. It's a pretty grim picture of
American society—and life, to those who lived through World War I, could feel pretty grim indeed..
Love:
Only fools fall in love, and the biggest fool in The Great Gatsby is, well, Gatsby. Tom and Daisy may have some kind of
affection and loyalty for each other, but we're pretty sure it's not actually love. Jordan and Nick are happy enough to do
some summer lovin' together, but they're not exactly in it forever. It's Gatsby who falls in love, but is he in love with
Daisy, or with a dream of Daisy, or with the idea of being in love? And does true love always come with destruction and
violence?
Visions of America:
Did the American Dream die in 2008, or did it die in 1918—or did it never
really exist at all? In The Great Gatsby, the American Dream is supposed to
stand for independence and the ability to make something of one's self with
hard work, but it ends up being more about materialism and selfish pursuit of
pleasure. No amount of hard work can change where Gatsby came from, and
old money knows it. Merit and hard work aren't enough, and so the American
Dream collapses—just like the ballooning dresses of Jordan and Daisy when
Nick first sees them.
WEALTH:
In The Great Gatsby, money makes the world go 'round—or at least gets you
moving in the right direction. It can buy you yellow Rolls-Royces, "gas blue"
dresses, and really nice shirts, but in the end it can't buy you happiness. Or
class. It does, however, buy you the privilege of living in the world without
consequences, leaving a trail of bodies halfway from Chicago to New York. But
being poor isn't exactly the moral choice, either. So, where does that leave us?
In the middle class?
MEMORY AND THE PAST:
There's nothing wrong with remembering the good times, but living in the past just leads you to tragedy. (Or at least to
being a major bore at parties.) In The Great Gatsby, living in the past is a lot direr than being boring. Characters pursue
visions of the future that are determined by their pasts, which—in the memorable phrase that ends the book—makes us all
into little boats beating against the current. And, unfortunately, some of those boats are doomed to sink.
GENDER:
Here's a fun scavenger hunt for you: see where and how
often the word "woman" shows up in The Great Gatsby.
We'll give you a hint: it's mostly in reference to lower
class women, like Myrtle or some of the servants. Upper
class women are "girls," like the "men and girls" who
wander around Gatsby's garden. That doesn't quite tell
you all you need to know about gender in The Great
Gatsby, but it tells you a lot: Fitzgerald is no feminist,
and neither, apparently, is Nick.
FORGIVENESS:
The characters in The Great Gatsby all show a unique
combination of a willingness to forgive and a
stubbornness not to. Gatsby is willing to forgive Daisy’s
marriage to another man, but not her loving him. Daisy
is willing to forgive Tom for cheating but unwilling to forgive Gatsby for deceiving her about what kind of
person he is. Much of the sadness of The Great Gatsby comes from this kind of almost-forgiveness; the
characters are taunted with the possibility that all will be forgiven, only to have it torn away because of another
character’s stubbornness.
EDUCATION:
In The Great Gatsby, education is a must-have for the socially elite. For the most part, characters in The Great
Gatsby are well-educated – this is reflected by their speech and dialogue. The narrator takes note, however, of
Gatsby’s effort to sound like everybody else. It is clear that Gatsby must practice sounding educated and
wealthy. Mr. Wolfsheim speaks in a dialect that indicates his lack of education, lack of class, and general lack
of what wealthy people in the 1920s might have called "good breeding." Oxford becomes "Oggsford."
"Connection" becomes "gonnection." The use of different dialects works to reveal the differences between the
working class and the upper class. By contrasting Wolfsheim’s and Gatsby’s diction with that of people like
Nick Carraway, Fitzgerald suggests that people involved in organized crime are from the working class only, no
matter how wealthy and powerful they are or how educated they appear to be. Education is what distinguishes
the upper class from those below them. It is also a source of connection as loyalty – Nick and Tom have Yale in
common and are therefore tied to each other.
Title:Choosing a Title:
Fitzgerald had difficulty choosing a title for his novel and entertained many choices before reluctantly choosing
The Great Gatsby, a title inspired by Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes. Prior, Fitzgerald shifted between
Gatsby; Among Ash-Heaps and Millionaires; Trimalchio; Trimalchio in West Egg;On the Road to West
Egg;Under the Red, White, and Blue;Gold-Hatted Gatsby;and The High-Bouncing Lover.He initially preferred
titles referencing Trimalchio, the crude parvenu in Petronius's Satyricon, and even refers to Gatsby as
Trimalchio once in the novel.
In November 1924, Fitzgerald wrote to Perkins that "I have now decided to stick to the title I put on the book ...
Trimalchio in West Egg," but was eventually persuaded that the reference was too obscure and that people
would not be able to pronounce it. His wife, Zelda, and Perkins both expressed their preference for The Great
Gatsby and the next month Fitzgerald agreed. A month before publication, after a final review of the proofs, he
asked if it would be possible to re-title it Trimalchio or Gold-Hatted Gatsby, but Perkins advised against it. On
March 19, 1925, Fitzgerald asked if the book could be renamed Under the Red, White and Blue, but it was at
that stage too late to change. The Great Gatsby was published on April 10, 1925. Fitzgerald remarked that "the
title is only fair, rather bad than good."
Gatsby’s Car, the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost:
“On week-ends,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of Jay Gatsby, “his
Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the
city between nine in the morning and long past midnight…”
Okay, we know the mysterious tycoon and party host Gatsby owned
a Rolls-Royce, probably a 1922 model, and one big enough to serve
as a bus. Fitzgerald doesn’t spell it out in so many words, but it was
probably a Silver Ghost. Later we learn it was a rare creamy yellow
one.
“It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and
there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-
boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields
that mirrored a dozen suns,” Fitzgerald noted.
The interior was “a sort of green leather conservatory,” as
Fitzgerald described it. Perhaps Fitzgerald was envisioning
something like the Rolls-Royce model (actually a Phantom) in the
famous “Best Car In The World” art deco poster.Dance the Charleston: 1. Find a 4/4 beat, ragtime jazz music selection. "Charleston," "Ain't She Sweet" and "I Wanna be Loved by You" are just a few. 2: Start with the basic Charleston dance step, the kick. This is the basis for the rest of the dance, so get this down well before you move on. 3: Step back with your right foot. 4: Kick back with your left foot. 5: Step forward with your left foot. You should be right back where you started. 6: Kick forward with your right foot. 7: Repeat. Add Arms 8: Get those arms moving. Swing your left arm forward and your right arm back when you begin the kick step. You are swinging your arms opposite of your feet-just like you would naturally if you were walking, but exaggerate the motion, and swing them high. 9: Switch it up with alternative arm movements. Holding your arms straight out in front of you, bend you elbows so that your arms are at a 90- degree angle. 10: Swing your forearms in a circle, towards the right, then towards the left. 11: Partner the arm moves with the kick step, and you are dancing the Charleston.
Discussion Questions: 1. Is Gatsby in the same class as Wilson? If not, is he closer to Wilson's class, or to Tom's? 2. Is Gatsby's love for Daisy genuine? Does he love her, or his conception of her? What about Tom – does he really love Daisy? And whom does Daisy really love, after all? Is it possible, as she said, that she loved both Tom and Gatsby at once? 3. Does Gatsby achieve the American Dream? If yes, when exactly can he say that he reaches it? If no, what prevents him from truly achieving it? 4. Would you rather live in East Egg or West Egg? The Northeast or the Midwest? Why? 5. Nick leaves the East Coast, jaded by his experiences with Gatsby, the Buchanans, Jordan Baker, etc. Do you think he'll remain cynical even in the Midwest, or will he leave his disgust in New York? 6. In The Great Gatsby, what role does wealth play in people's life expectations? Could Gatsby have achieved his childhood goals without wealth? That is, did he really care about the money, or just about the things? 7. What does Gatsby mean when he says that Daisy's voice is "full of money?" Does he mean this negatively? Why does Nick agree with him? Does this comment say more about Daisy or Gatsby? 8. Is the past remembered realistically? Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan alike think nostalgically about the past, but are they ever able to confront reality? 9. Is Gatsby driven by his memory of the past or his dream for the future? Is there a difference? 10. What are Nick's visions of his own future? 11. Whose fault is it that Gatsby died? His own? Tom's? Daisy's? Wilson's? 12. At one point, Jordan claims that Nick deceived her. Is this true? Or was Jordan deceiving Nick? What kind of dishonesty is she talking about, anyway? 13. Nick assures us he is "one of the few honest people" he knows. How does this affect the way we read his story? Do we trust his narration? 14. Are Nick and Gatsby more similar than Nick would like to admit? Is it possible to see Nick and Gatsby as possessing the same fundamental characteristic of deception? 15. In the showdown scene at the Plaza, Daisy Buchanan is ultimately honest with her husband and Gatsby despite what she might lose. Why does she choose honesty? 16. Nick claims in the first page of the novel that he was told to never criticize. Is he compassionate towards Gatsby, or does he judge the man? Does this evolve over the course of the novel? 17. Are we, the reader, compelled to forgive Wilson for murdering Gatsby? 18. Back to Nick’s father’s advice at the beginning of the novel: what is the effect of this opening? Might it be intended as advice for us, as we read the story? If so, how easy is it to read The Great Gatsby without criticizing? Is the advice perhaps ironic, indicating that we are supposed to judge?
Classroom Activities:
Activity 1- Who killed Gatsby?:
Lead a discussion amongst the group as to who they think is responsible for Gatsby’s death. Then, divide your class into
groups, assigning each group one of the characters they felt carried some of the blame. Let them prepare arguments as to
why that character should be held responsible for Gatsby’s death.
Want to go a step further? Hold a trial! Put each of the accused on the stand and let each group ask him or her questions.
Then, turn the case over to a jury to decide who should receive the guilty verdict.
Activity 2- Jay’s Letter to daisy:
Jordan Baker tells us that on Daisy and Tom’s wedding day, she received a letter from Jay Gatsby, but we as the reader
never find out exactly what it says. Have your students draft the letter that sent Daisy to her tub and liquor on what should
have been the happiest day of her life. What does it say? Does he promise her anything? Where is Jay at the time of their
wedding? What does he ask of Daisy?
Activity 3- Hold a Gatsby party:
To celebrate the end of your Gatsby unit in classroom, hold a Jay Gatsby party! Assign every student a part
including Gatsby, Nick, Jordan, Meyer Wolfsheim, Owl Eyes (the drunkard from Nick’s first party), random
other party-goers, perhaps even a body guard for Gatsby. Get creative! Have every student bring a snack, dress
like flappers, listen to some roaring 20’s tunes, and celebrate the end of your unit in style!
“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Sources:
http://www.biography.com/people/f-scott-fitzgerald-9296261#synopsis
http://www.ehow.com/how_2071535_dance-charleston.html
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3190.F_Scott_Fitzgerald
http://jerrygarrett.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/secrets-of-the-great-gatsbys-fabulous-cars/
http://www.shmoop.com/great-gatsby/themes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby
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