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Lesson 2

As a whole class and then in small groups, we will closely reread and analyze the first five pages of Chapter 1 with an emphasis on Nick’s monologue and his reliability as a narrator. We will begin to examine how literary scholars and critics analyze The Great Gatsby and its characters—in this case, Nick.

Lesson Goals

  • Can I formulate and use questions to establish and deepen my understanding of texts and topics?

  • Can I summarize the important information about the narrator, Nick, and his possible connections to Fitzgerald’s life?

  • Can I recognize and interpret what Nick’s language and sentence structures suggest about his character and perceptions?

Texts

Core

  • Tradebook
    • The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Scribner, 1925
  • Unit Reader
    • “The Trouble with Nick: Reading Gatsby Closely,” excerpt from Fitzgerald and Hemingway: Works and Days, Scott Donaldson, Columbia University Press, 2009

Materials

Tools

Reference Guides

Question Sets

Editable Google Docs

Activity 1: Discuss

We will briefly discuss our impressions of the first five pages of the novel and of Nick carraway, and compare the details we have observed by using an Attending to Details Tool.

With a partner, compare and discuss the details you identified on your Attending to Details Tool in response to Question 2 from the previous lesson’s homework, then compare and discuss your “first impression” observations about Nick Carraway.

Activity 2: Read – Write – Discuss

We will use Question Set 1.2 and the character Note-Taking Tool to complete a close reading of the first five paragraphs of the novel and analyze Nick’s characteristics as a narrator.

Step 1

Reread the opening monologue of Chapter 1. Use the following questions to guide your annotations:

  1. Is the narrative written in the first or third person? Who is the narrator, and what might be his role in the story?

  2. What does the phrase “in my younger and more vulnerable years” imply about Nick’s stage of life as he begins to tell the story?

  3. What do you think Nick’s father meant when he told him, “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had”?

  4. In the paragraph that follows this advice, what details suggest how Nick interpreted his father’s advice? Did he correctly understand the advice or misinterpret it?

Step 2

Follow along as your teacher introduces (or reviews) the Character Note-Taking Tool. You will use this tool throughout your reading of the novel to write down key textual evidence about each of its major characters and your interpretations of that evidence. Set up a tool for Nick, who is both the story’s narrator and one of its most important characters.

Write down Nick’s father’s quote (from Question 3) in the Details column. Summarize your interpretation of his words and their meaning for Nick in the Analysis column. In the Type of Detail column, indicate how you learned what you did—in this case through Nick’s interactions with his father (code as “INT”). Be sure to always include a page number reference in the first column of the tool.

Step 3

Reread and write down the final sentence of the paragraph while considering the following question:

  1. What does the comment about “fundamental decencies” by Nick tell you about him, his perceptions of himself and others, and his understanding of his father’s advice?

Write down your analysis of the quote and key details on a new line in your Character Note-Taking Tool. Discuss your analysis with a partner.

Activity 3: Read – Discuss – Write

We will use Question Set 1.2 and a character Note-Taking Tool to complete a close reading of pages 3–5 of the novel and analyze Nick’s characteristics as a narrator.

Step 1

You and a reading partner will now become textual detectives, investigating what else you can learn about Nick Carraway and his attitudes about life and other people as you reread pages 3-5 from the start of Paragraph 5 (“My family had been prominent”) until the end of Paragraph 14 (“the consoling proximity of millionaires, all for 80 dollars a month”).

While reading, find and write down textual evidence on your Character Note-Taking Tool that supports your response to one of the following questions (your partner will take the other one):

  1. What details of Nick’s life, past and present, does he relate in this part of his narrative? What do those details suggest about Nick and his life?

  2. What words and phrases does Nick use to describe himself, his life, and other people? What do his words suggest about him?

Share with your reading partner what you have written down in your tool. Add new details found by your partner to your tool. Discuss how your first impressions of Nick are developing based on what you have noticed through your close reading.

Step 2

As a class, discuss the following question:

  1. If Nick Carraway were someone you knew and was telling you a story about himself and other people, would you trust his perceptions and judgments? Why or why not? What evidence from the text supports your opinion?

Include in your discussion the concept of reliable and unreliable narrators. So far, what would be your opinion of Nick as a reliable teller of this story?

Identify evidence from your Character Note-Taking Tool that you see as important in judging Nick’s character and his reliability. Form an observation or claim about Nick based on this evidence and capture it in your Learning Log.

Activity 4: Read – Discuss

We will read and discuss a short introductory excerpt from a literary analysis of The Great Gatsby to see how a literary critic might write about Nick as a character and narrator.

Step 1

Before reading the beginning of critic Scott Donaldson’s literary analysis titled “The Trouble with Nick: Reading Gatsby Closely,”review the following key vocabulary words and add them to your Vocabulary Journal:

  • denigrates

  • exemplary

  • propriety

  • tolerance

  • propensity

  • eventuate

  • construes

  • moral acumen

Step 2

Locate Donaldson’s essay in the Unit Reader under Fitzgerald and Hemingway: Works and Days, the book in which “The Trouble with Nick: Reading Gatsby Closely” is published.

Using your Vocabulary Journal as a reference, read the essay’s first paragraph and use the following questions to guide your annotations:

  1. What initial claim about Nick does Donaldson make? How does he develop and support this conclusion with expository claims in Sentences 2-4? What, in Donaldson’s opinion, are Nick’s shortcomings?

  2. How do Donaldson’s claims compare to the claim you developed about Nick in the previous activity?

  3. What question does Donaldson ask about Nick as the novel’s narrator? How does he answer his own question?

  4. What do you think Donaldson means when he describes Nick’s narrative voice as “at once ‘within and without’ the action”?

Discuss your responses as a class.

Step 3

Read the second paragraph, considering the following questions:

  1. What evidence from the text does Donaldson use to further explain his initial claims about Nick’s personal shortcomings?

  2. How does Donaldson respond to the question we previously considered, as to whether Nick correctly understood his father’s advice? How does Donaldson’s answer compare to your previous thinking about Nick?

  3. What is Donaldson’s final claim about Nick, and what “he disapproves of”?

Discuss what you learn from reading this literary essay excerpt about how scholars and critics analyze a novel like The Great Gatsby.

Note: The tasks in this unit, including the Culminating Task, will involve a similar kind of critical analysis.

Activity 5: Read – Write

For homework, we will read pages 5–17 of chapter 1, considering guiding questions in our Learning Logs and using Attending to Details Tools.

For homework, read and annotate pages 5-17 of Chapter 1 (starting with “Across the courtesy bay” and ending with "to which she and Tom belonged") and respond to the questions below. Note your responses either in your Learning Log or using a Character Note-Taking Tool. Write new or interesting words you encounter in your Vocabulary Journal.

  1. How do we come to know the characters? How are they introduced and developed?

  2. What do the characters’ actions and reactions reveal about them?

  3. What do the characters’ words and dialogue reveal about them?

  4. What are your first impressions of Tom, Daisy, and Jordan?