Lesson 4
We will continue to study the depiction of characters at the end of Chapter 1 and the influence of Nick’s narration on our views of those characters. We will read what critic Scott Donaldson has to say about these issues in a second excerpt from his critical essay, “The Trouble With Nick: Reading Gatsby Closely.” We will then examine the cryptic evidence that introduces us to Gatsby in Chapter 1 and speculate about where his story may go.
Lesson Goals
Can I summarize the character descriptions and relationships from Chapter 1?
Can I recognize and interpret what Nick’s language and sentence structures suggest about his character and his perceptions of other characters?
Can I identify the claims, reasoning, and evidence used to develop arguments and explanations in a literary analysis argument?
Texts
Core
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- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Scribner, 1925
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- “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 discuss the final paragraphs of Chapter 1, considering the text-specific questions we used to guide our reading.
Discuss with a partner your reactions to pages 17-21 of Chapter 1 and your responses to the following text-specific questions previously assigned for homework in Lesson 3:
What does the mention of Nick’s engagement and his subsequent response to it tell you about his character?
What are the final impressions of Tom and Daisy that Nick relates toward the end of the chapter?
What do we learn from Nick’s first view, description, and impression of Gatsby?
What might be the significance of “the single green light, minute and far away”?
Activity 2: Read – Write
We will examine a range of strategies to determine the meaning of words in Chapter 1 of The Great Gatsby.
In this activity, you will use the Vocabulary in Context Tool. This tool is used for words you can decipher from the text; for others, you might use morphology to decipher the meaning, or a reference resource to check if your meaning is accurate.
Select three words from your Vocabulary Journal that you wrote down for the previous lesson’s homework. Determine the meaning for each of the words and identify the vocabulary strategy (e.g., context, morphology, reference resource) you used to determine its meaning. Use the Vocabulary in Context Tool to support your analysis.
Activity 3: Read – Write – Discuss
We will interact with the words we defined to cement our understanding of their meaning.
Work with a partner or group to respond to the vocabulary exercises, as directed by your teacher.
Activity 4: Discuss – Read
We will examine Nick’s character descriptions of Daisy and Tom at the end of Chapter 1.
Closely re-examine the first paragraph at the top of page 20, which begins, “Their interest rather touched me.” Consider the following:
Why, as Nick drives away from the Buchanans’ house, does he say he “was confused and a little disgusted”?
What judgment does Nick make about Daisy in the aftermath of what he has learned during the dinner party? What evidence from the text supports your conclusion?
What judgments does Nick make about Tom? What evidence from the text supports your conclusion?
Looking carefully at the word choices and their meaning, interpret the final sentence of the paragraph:
Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart. (p. 20)
Activity 5: Read – Discuss
We will read a second excerpt from the critical essay “The Trouble With Nick: Reading Gatsby Closely” and further discuss how Nick’s views of the world may be coloring our perceptions of the novel’s characters and our first impressions of gatsby.
Return to scholar Scott Donaldson’s critical essay, “The Trouble With Nick: Reading Gatsby Closely,” the first two paragraphs of which you discussed in Lesson 2. Read through Paragraphs 3-5, considering the following:
What is a new claim the author makes to further develop his analysis of Nick as a snob?
What evidence from the text does Donaldson cite to support this claim?
In a class discussion, read the claim you have identified and then summarize the evidence Donaldson cites to support it.
Activity 6: Read – Discuss – Write
We will analyze the author’s use of verb tense in the excerpt from the critical essay “The Trouble With Nick: Reading Gatsby Closely.”
Step 1
Review the five paragraphs of this excerpt, identifying the verbs Donaldson uses when Nick is the subject of his sentences. Highlight present tense verbs in one color, past tense verbs in a second color, and future tense verbs in a third color.
With a partner discuss the following questions:
What do you notice about the verbs Donaldson uses?
Does the verb tense remain consistent?
Step 2
When writing a literary analysis, the convention is to use the present tense. Even though Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby in the past and you have also read it in the past, you will still use present tense verbs when writing about the text (e.g., “Fitzgerald uses figurative language," "Nick observes Gatsby’s reaction").
Write down one of Donaldson’s sentences in your Mentor Sentence Journal. Add a note explaining why authors of critical analyses use the present tense of verbs when talking about a character such as Nick. You can return to this Mentor Sentence Journal entry as you compose a response to the Section Diagnostic.
Activity 7: Discuss – Read – Write
We will do a close reading and comparison of two key passages from Chapter 1 in which Nick introduces us to gatsby. We will discuss how Fitzgerald presents the imagery and symbolism that may continue to be central in the development of the novel and its themes.
Step 1
Reread the last two paragraphs of Chapter 1 closely (beginning with “Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs” and ending with “I was alone again in the unquiet darkness”). As you read, consider the three questions below about the descriptions of the scene and of Gatsby.
With a partner, identify key words and phrases used by Nick (and through Nick, by Fitzgerald) to describe the late-night scene in these two paragraphs.
What atmosphere and mood does the description of the scene create? How does Fitzgerald use word choice to create the atmosphere and mood?
Find the place in the paragraph where Nick first notices Gatsby.
What initial descriptions and impressions do we get of Gatsby?
What do you make of the following description?
He gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and as far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling.
Set up a Character Note-Taking Tool for Gatsby (if you have not already done so). Write down this key sentence, code it, then explain what you think it says about Gatsby or what it makes you wonder about.
Step 2
As a class, discuss your first impressions of Gatsby. Then shift your discussion to the imagery that Fitzgerald presents in this passage, specifically the following final image:
A single green light, minute and far away, that might have been at the end of a dock.
What do you make of the imagery that ends the first chapter?
Brainstorm ideas about what you think this image might be or what it might signify in the novel, discussing various associations with the color green. Share some educated guesses about how this image might play out in the story, and what it might come to symbolize. Write down your ideas in your Learning Log.
Step 3
As a class, discuss where else in Chapter 1 you have learned something about Gatsby. Identify and interpret moments when his name has come up.
Return to Nick’s opening monologue, specifically to the fourth paragraph and the sentence: “Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction.” Read the rest of that paragraph closely, considering the following questions:
In terms of the overall story of the novel, when do you think Nick has the thoughts and observations he reports here? What evidence from the text supports your answer?
Why might Fitzgerald have chosen to skip forward in time and have Nick look back on the story before it has even been told?
What key details and impressions of Gatsby does Nick relate?
How might you interpret the following cryptic sentence?
No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
What do you think might be the relationships between this early scene, in which Nick looks back, and the last scene of Chapter 1, in which Nick first sees and describes Gatsby and the green light? Cite textual evidence from both scenes to support your answer.
Discuss your responses to these questions with the class.
Activity 8: Read – Write
We will form an original claim about Nick as a reliable or unreliable narrator, in preparation for writing a paragraph in which we analyze how Nick’s perceptions color our first impressions of Gatsby, citing evidence from the text.
On your own, review the two passages we have just examined, in which Nick presents initial descriptions and impressions of Gatsby. Using a Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool, respond to the following text-specific question:
What do descriptive details and images from the text suggest are Nick’s various impressions of Gatsby at the beginning and end of the story? How might Nick’s descriptions color our own perceptions of him as the novel’s central character?
Identify and analyze key evidence from the two sections of text that are related to this question, and form an original claim about Gatsby or Nick that results from your analysis of the evidence.
Share and compare your claim with that of a partner.
Activity 9: Write
For homework, we will write a claim-based paragraph about Nick’s narration and his initial presentation of Gatsby. In preparation for the Section Diagnostic, we will begin to review what we have discovered so far about the characters and potential themes of the novel.
For homework, write a claim-based paragraph that explains something you have discovered about Gatsby or Nick’s perceptions of Gatsby in Chapter 1. Model your paragraph after what you have noticed in Donaldson’s essay “The Trouble With Nick: Reading Gatsby Closely,”keeping in mind the following points:
Cite and quote evidence from the text that supports your claim.
Use present tense verbs in your sentences about the characters (e.g., “Gatsby appears to be …” or “Nick views Gatsby …”).
You might use a Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool to assist you as you compose your paragraph. Be prepared to share your paragraph and explain your claim in the next lesson.