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Section 1: Overview

Exposition and Narrative Perspective

We will begin reading Chapter 1 of The Great Gatsby, focusing our attention on the narrator’s reliability, the development of the central characters, and the author’s use of descriptive language to set the groundwork for a close study of the novel. As background, we will read and watch supplemental materials to further our understanding of the relationship of The Great Gatsby to the American Dream and American culture in the 1920s.

  • Lesson 1:

    We will think about the unit’s Central Question and make connections to our personal experiences. We will watch and discuss a video about the Roaring Twenties and study the historical and cultural events that form a context for The Great Gatsby, and we will learn some initial information about the novel’s author, F. Scott Fitzgerald. We will then preview vocabulary for Chapter 1 in order to prepare for our first The Great Gatsby reading homework assignment.

  • 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 3:

    We will discuss and analyze narrative details and dialogue in the dinner party scene from Chapter 1 of The Great Gatsby and then analyze the relationships of the characters and the perceptions of them provided through Nick’s narration. We will study Fitzgerald’s use of description and imagery and his use of punctuation in dialogue.

  • 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 5:

    We will begin preparing our responses for the Section Diagnostic. We will review our Character Note-Taking Tools, our Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tools, and the paragraphs we have written in previous lessons. In response to the task questions on the Section Diagnostic, we will draft our claims and find supporting evidence that we can use to develop those claims into well-developed paragraphs.

  • Lesson 6:

    Using our notes and materials from the previous lessons, we will demonstrate our understanding of the characters and narrator in Chapter 1 of The Great Gatsby by writing a short response to one or both Section 1 Diagnostic prompts about Fitzgerald’s use of narrative point of view and characterization.

  • Lesson 7:

    We will review feedback on the Section Diagnostic. We will use the feedback to make revisions to our work.

  • Lesson 8:

    We will commence an Independent Reading Program in which we choose texts to read independently as we progress through the unit. We will learn how to choose texts, what activities we may complete, about the final task, and about any materials we will use as we read our independent reading texts. We will begin by reading our texts, using tools to help us take notes and analyze important textual elements.