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ENG1515EXAM
PACK 2024
LATEST EXAM PACK QUESTIONS AND
ANSWERS AND SUMMARIZED NOTES FOR
EXAM PREPARATIONS.
UPDATED FOR 2024 EXAMS.
,OVERALL ANALYSIS – The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby
In A Nutshell
Let's play a game called Free Association. When we say the words "Roaring Twenties," what are
the first things that pop into your head? Go for it. We'll wait here for you.
Cool? Let's check out your list. Maybe you came up with something like this:
• Flappers. Definitely flappers
• Bobs
• Bootleggers
• The Harlem Renaissance
• Old cars
• Partays
• Those long cigarette holders
• Lillian Gish and old movie stars
• And much more, eh what?
You are in luck! The Great Gatsby is a cocktail of all of these people, places, and things. As one
of the most important books in American literature, it captures a fascinating and lively time in
American history. The Roaring Twenties (a.k.a. the Jazz Age) was a time of great, mind-bending
change.
The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, is set in New York City and Long Island during the
Prohibition era (remember, the Prohibition era was a time in which alcohol was illegal, no matter
how old you were – yowsa). Author F. Scott Fitzgerald associated this moment in American
history – the Jazz Age – with materialism ("I want things! Lots of things!") and immorality.
Materialism and immortality were the name of the game for many of the newly wealthy of the
post-World War I era. The novel's star is Jay Gatsby, a young, rich man in love with a society girl
from his past. A girl who, as it happens, is married to someone else.
Do we smell a Twilight-esque love triangle approaching? We do indeed.
And that's not the only reason why Gatsby still feels fresh today. The novel's very title has
become a kind of buzzword for periods of excess and fake luxury. The economic collapse of
2008 brought back, to many, distant and unwelcome memories of the stock market crash of
1929, casting the boom times of the 1990s and early 2000s as the modern-day analogue of the
Roaring Twenties. In the 1920s it had been a bubble in stocks that brought easy prosperity, while
in our own time the bubble had been in the housing market. In both cases, though, unsustainable
boom times led to devastating crashes with profound cultural consequences. In the 1920s and
the 2000s, easy money meant that many people could begin to dream of living out their days like
Jay Gatsby, with life as just one grand party in a seersucker suit. But as that vision of easy luxury
crashed and burned (in both 1929 and 2008), newfound hard times required a redefinition of the
American Dream.
Gatsby tackles the American Dream, as well as issues of wealth and class, materialism, and
marital infidelity. And while Gatsby is a work of fiction, the story has many similarities to
Fitzgerald's real-life experiences. Gulp. Fitzgerald's personal history is mirrored in the characters
of Jay Gatsby and narrator Nick Carraway. Nick is both mesmerized and disgusted by Gatsby's
extravagant lifestyle, which is similar to how Fitzgerald claimed to feel about the "Jazz Age"
excesses that he himself adopted. As an Ivy League educated, middle-class Midwesterner,
Fitzgerald (like Nick) saw through the shallow materialism of the era. But (like Gatsby) Fitzgerald
,came back from World War I and fell in love with a wealthy southern socialite – Zelda Sayre. The
Great Gatsby is swaddled in Fitzgerald's simultaneous embrace of and disdain for 1920s luxury.
Since Fitzgerald did indeed partake in the Jazz Age's high life of decadence, it's not surprising
that the details of the setting and characters make The Great Gatsby a sort of time capsule
preserving this particular time in American history. Gatsby is taught all over the world partly
because it's a history lesson and novel all rolled into one delicious lettuce wrap of intrigue.
Mmmmm…intrigue. You may find that when many people refer to the "Jazz Age" or the "Roaring
Twenties," they automatically associate it with Gatsby, and vice versa.
Why Should I Care?
The Great Gatsby is a delightful concoction of Real Housewives, a never-ending Academy
Awards after-party, and HBO’s Sopranos. Shake over ice, add a twist of jazz, a spritz of adultery,
and the little pink umbrella that completes this long island iced tea and you’ve got yourself a 5
o’clock beverage that, given the 1920s setting, you wouldn’t be allowed to drink.
The one thing all these shows and Gatsby have in common is the notion of the American Dream.
The Dream has seen its ups and downs. But from immigration (certainly not a modern concern,
right?) to the Depression (we wouldn’t know anything about that), the American Dream has
always meant the same thing: it’s all about the Benjamins, baby.
Yet Gatsby reminds us that the dollars aren’t always enough. As we learned from Audrey
Hepburn in My Fair Lady, you can put on the dress, but you still aren’t going to know which fork
to use. At least back in the 1920s – especially if you’re bootlegging to make the money for the
dress. Even when they have the cash, newly-made millionaires are still knocking at the door for
the accepted elite to let them in. If the concept of the nouveau riche (the newly rich) has gone by
the wayside, the barriers to the upper echelon (education, background) certainly haven’t.
So there you have it. There’s more to the Gatsby cocktail than sex, lies, and organized crime.
Although those are there, too, which, as far as reading the book goes, is kind of a motivation in
itself.
The Great Gatsby Summary
How It All Goes Down
Our narrator, Nick Carraway, begins the book by giving us some advice of his father’s about not
criticizing others. Through Nick’s eyes, we meet his second cousin, Daisy Buchanan, her large
and aggressive husband, Tom Buchanan, and Jordan Baker, who quickly becomes a romantic
interest for our narrator (probably because she’s the only girl around who isn’t his cousin). While
the Buchanans live on the fashionable East Egg (we’re talking Long Island, NY in the 1920’s, by
the way), Nick lives on the less-elite but not-too-shabby West Egg, which sits across the bay
from its twin town. We are soon fascinated by a certain Mr. Jay Gatsby, a wealthy and
mysterious man who owns a huge mansion next door to Nick and spends a good chunk of his
evenings standing on his lawn and looking at an equally mysterious green light across the bay.
Tom takes Nick to the city to show off his mistress, a woman named Myrtle Wilson who is, of
course, married. (Fidelity is a rare bird in this novel.) Myrtle’s husband, George, is a passive,
working class man who owns an auto garage and is oblivious to his wife’s extramarital activities.
, Nick is none too impressed by Tom.
Back on West Egg, this Gatsby fellow has been throwing absolutely killer parties, where
everyone and his mother can come and get wasted and try to figure out how Gatsby got so rich.
Nick meets and warily befriends the mystery man at one of his huge Saturday night affairs. He
also begins spending time with Jordan, who turns out to be loveable in all her cynical practicality.
Moving along, Gatsby introduces Nick to his "business partner," Meyer Wolfsheim. Everyone
(that is, Nick and readers everywhere) can tell there’s something fishy about Gatsby’s work, his
supposed Oxford education, and his questionable place among society’s elite. Next, Gatsby
reveals to Nick (via Jordan, in the middle school phone-tag kind of way) that he and Daisy had a
love thing before he went away to the war and she married Tom (after a serious episode of cold
feet that involved whisky and a bath tub). Gatsby wants Daisy back. The plan is for Nick to invite
her over to tea and have her casually bump into Gatsby.
Nick executes the plan; Gatsby and Daisy are reunited and start an affair. Everything continues
swimmingly until Tom meets Gatsby, doesn’t like him, and begins investigating into his affairs.
Nick, meanwhile, has revealed Gatsby’s true past to us: he grew up in a poor, uneducated family,
and would in all likelihood have stayed that way had he not met the wealthy and elderly Dan
Cody, who took him in as a companion and taught him what he needed to know. Yet it wasn’t
Dan that left Gatsby his oodles of money – that part of his life is still suspicious.
The big scene goes down in the city, when Tom has it out with Gatsby over who gets to be with
Daisy; in short, Gatsby is outed for being a bootlegger and Daisy is unable to leave her husband
for her lover. As the party drives home to Long Island, Tom’s mistress, Myrtle, is struck and killed
by Gatsby’s car (in which Gatsby and Daisy are riding). Gatsby tells Nick that Daisy was driving,
but that he’s going to take the blame for it. Tom, meanwhile, feeds Gatsby to the wolves by
telling George where to find the man that killed his wife, Myrtle. George Wilson shoots and kills
Gatsby before taking his own life.
Daisy and Tom take off, leaving their mess behind. Nick, who by now is fed up with ALL of these
people, breaks things off with Jordan in a rather brusque way. He is the only one left to take care
of Gatsby’s affairs and arrange for his funeral, which, save one peculiar former guest, none of
Gatsby’s party-goers attend. Nick does meet Gatsby’s father, who fills in the picture we have of
Gatsby’s youth. Standing on Gatsby’s lawn and looking at the green light (which, not
accidentally, turned out to be the light in front of Daisy’s house across the bay), Nick concludes
that our nostalgia, our desire to replicate the past, forces us constantly back into it.
The Great Gatsby Chapter 1 Summary
• We meet our narrator. But before we really know who he is, we hear the advice that he
got from his father: "Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the
people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had."
• We learn that our narrator is non-judgmental. As a result, people tell him their life stories
like he’s the bartender on Cheers.
• We find out that he is "a Carraway," which means something in the way of wealth and
class. And he went to Yale.
• This Carraway fellow introduces us to the setting: New York City and the twin villages
of West Egg and East Egg in Long Island. Please note that West Egg, where Carraway
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