Character Setting and
History
Purpose
Who
Said it?
Literary
Devices
Themes
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Question Column 1-100
A clam digger and salmon fisher from
North Dakota. He knew women
early, and they spoiled him.
Answer Column 1-100
Who is James Gatz or Jay Gatzby
Question Column 1-200
From Chicago; family is “Old money” so
wedding is full of pomp and flair;
purchases fiancé a $350,000 pearl necklace
Answer Column 1-200
Who is Tom Buchanan
Question Column 1-300
His friend Rosy Rosenthal was shot in his
full belly 3 times walking out of the old
Metropole at 4am; fixed the 1919 World’s
Series
Answer Column 1-300
Who is Meyer Wolfsheim
Question Column 1-400
Married a man she thought was a
“gentleman”. But he borrowed someone’s
best suit to get married in. Has been living
over a garage for 11 years.
Answer Column 1-400
Myrtle Wilson
Question Column 1-500
At age 18 already entertaining soldiers on a
regular basis. Falls for one man who
family does not approve of. Depressed
about marrying the man her family
accepted. Got drunk the day before her
wedding because she’d received a letter
from her former lover.
Answer Column 1-500
Daisy Buchanan
Question Column 2-100
Geographic location of Gatsby and
Nick’s homes.
Answer Column 2-100
What is West Egg
Question Column 2-200
Each quote describes what setting? “men
and girls came and went like moths”…
“Every Friday five crates of oranges and
lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New
York”… “they conducted themselves
according to the rules and behaviors of an
amusement park” What is the author’s
purpose for these descriptions?
Answer Column 2-200
What are Gatsby’s parties.
What is to show the affluence of
Gatsby and the carelessness of the
wealthy.
Question Column 2-300
“About half way between West Egg
and New York, the motor road hastily
joins he railroad…so as to shrink
away from a certain desolate area of
land.” Later, a body is wrapped in a
blanket and on a work table by the
wall.
Answer Column 2-300
What is George Wilson’s garage in
the Valley of Ashes.
Question Column 2-400
Nick is bullied into going here and
here he gets drunk for the 2nd time in
his life. This is where Tom breaks
Myrtle’s nose.
Answer Column 2-400
What is Myrtle’s apartment in New
York, which Tom pays for and uses as
a rendezvous location for their affair.
Question Column 2-500
This was an important clue for
Wilson. This object made him
suspect that his wife was having an
affair. He shows it to Michaelis.
Answer Column 2-500
What is “a small, expensive dogleash, made of leather and braided
silver. It was apparently new” (158).
Question Column 3-100
For this category, you must identify the
speaker and the person spoken to or about and
explain the quote’s significance.
“and I said, ‘God knows what you’ve been
doing, everything you’ve been doing. You
may fool me, but you can’t fool God!’”).
Answer Column 3-100
Speaker: George Wilson
Speaking to: Michaelis about what he said to
Myrtle while looking at Dr. T.J. Eckleberg’s
eyes
Significance: George is looking at the
billboard. He thinks the eyes are the eyes of
God. The eyes are a symbol of how God is
always watching and sees everything. Also,
this shows how Wilson is going crazy.
Question Column 3-200
“They were careless people…they
smashed things and creatures and
then retreated back into their
money…” (179).
Answer Column 3-200
Speaker: Nick
About: Tom and Daisy
Significance: Demonstrates the
carelessness and selfishness of the wealthy
during the 1920s.
Question Column 3-300
“ ‘I raised him up out of nothing, right out
of the gutter…Right off he did some work
for a client of mine up to Albany. We were
so thick like that in everything’ – he held
up two bulbous fingers – ‘always together’
” (171).
Answer Column 3-300
Speaker: Meyer Wolfsheim
About: Gatsby
Significance: shows us Gatsby’s history of
illegal activities and that it is Wolfsheim who
“made him” but Dan Cody who “educated”
him.
Question Column 3-400
“Civilization is going to pieces…The idea
is if we don’t look out the white race will
be – will be utterly submerged. It’s all
scientific stuff; it’s been proved” (13).
Answer Column 3-400
Speaker: Tom Buchanan
About / to: Nick, Daisy and Jordan
Significance: We learn that Tom is an elitist or
white supremacist who thinks he’s the center of the
universe. He likes to talk big, and he doesn’t come
off as very smart since he considers such nonsense
to be “scientific”
Question Column 3-500
“ ‘Jimmy sent me this picture.
Look here’…‘Jimmy sent it to me.
I think it’s a very pretty picture. It
shows up well…
He come out to see me two years
ago and bought me the house I
live in now.’” (172).
Answer Column 3-500
Speaker: Mr. Gatz (talking to Nick)
About: Gatsby, his son
Significance: Gatsby’s father has carried
around the well worn, often admired picture of
Gatsby’s house, which shows he was proud of
Gatsby. We also learn that Gatsby, though in
the past he didn’t have a good relationship with
his family, since he became successful he had
been generous with his family.
Question Column 4-100
For each of the following quotes or questions,
identify or explain the literary device
Fitzgerald uses.
“They were gone, without a word, snapped
out, made accidental, isolated, like ghosts,
even from our pity” (135).
Answer Column 4-100
What is a simile
Author’s purpose: to compare Daisy and
Gatsby’s relationship to something from the
past, something that now only exists in
people’s imagination (like ghosts).
Question Column 4-200
“This is the valley of ashes – a fantastic farm
where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and
hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes
take the forms of houses and chimneys and
rising smoke…Occasionally a line of gray
cars crawls along an invisible track…and
immediately the ash-gray men swarm up
with leaden spades and stir up and
impenetrable cloud, which screens their
obscure operations from your sight” (23).
Answer Column 4-200
What is imagery
Author’s purpose: To create this image
Fitzgerald uses simile, metaphor, color
symbolism and diction to convey the dark
desperate atmosphere of the valley of ashes
– foreshadowing gloom.
Question Column 4-300
“He was crazy enough to kill me if I
hadn’t told him who owned the
car…What if I did tell him? What
fellow had it coming to him. He
threw dust into your eyes just like he
did in Daisy's but he was a tough one.
He ran over Myrtle like you’d run
over a dog and never even stopped
his car (178).
Answer Column 4-300
What is dramatic irony
Context: Tom is speaking to Nick. The
audience knows that Daisy, not Gatsby
killed Myrtle, but Tom does not.
Question Column 4-400
“Involuntarily I glanced seaward –
and distinguished nothing except a
single green light, minute and far
way, that might have been the end of
a dock.”
Answer Column 4-400
What is symbolism
Context: Nick is observing Gatsby for the first
time and Gatsby appears to be looking longingly
and mysteriously at a green light, which we later
learn is Daisy’s green light.
Question Column 4-500
“When I came back from the East last autumn I
felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and
at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no
more riotous excursions with privileged
glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby,
the man who gives his name to this book, was
exempt from my reaction – Gatsby, who
represented everything for which I have an
unaffected scorn” (2).
Answer Column 4-500
What is foreshadowing
Context: Nick is presently going to tell us the
story of his summer spent in NY/East and West
Egg. He has returned home to the West and just
desires life to go back to normal –
foreshadowing that the story to follow is full of
experiences in the East that were too immoral,
emotional and full of things/activities he resents.
Question Column 5-100
For each of the quotes, or passages that follow, identify the
speakers, define the motif that is exhibited and come up with
an appropriate theme statement given the context of the novel.
“You’re a rotten driver,” I protested. “Either you ought to
be more careful, or you oughtn’t to drive at all.”
“I am careful.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Well other people are,” she said lightly.
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“They’ll keep out of my way,” she insisted. It takes two to
make an accident” (58).
Answer Column 5-100
Speakers: Nick and Jordan
Motif: carelessness
Theme: answers will vary
Question Column 5-200
“Let us learn to show our friendship
for a man when he is alive and not
after he is dead,” he suggested.
“After that, my own rule is to let
everything alone” (172).
Answer Column 5-200
Speaker: Meyer Wolfsheim
Motif: friendship
Theme: answers will vary
Question Column 5-300
“However glorious might be his future as Jay
Gatsby, he was at present a penniless young man
without a past…He might have despised himself,
for he had certainly taken her under false
pretenses…he had deliberately given Daisy a
sense of security; he let her believe that he was a
person to take care of her. As a matter of fact, he
had no such facilities – he had no comfortable
family standing behind him…” (149).
Answer Column 5-300
Speaker: Nick (about Gatsby)
Motif: dishonesty
Theme: answers will vary
Question Column 5-400
“In June she married Tom Buchanan of
Chicago, with more pomp and circumstance
than Louisville ever knew before. He came
down with a hundred people in four private
cars, and hired a whole floor of the
Seelbach Hotel, and the day before the
wedding he gave her a string of pearls
valued at three hundred and fifty thousand
dollars” (76).
Answer Column 5-400
Speaker: Jordan Baker, talking to Nick.
Motif: money
Theme: answers will vary
Question Column 5-500
“He was so hard up he had to keep on
wearing his uniform because he couldn’t
buy some regular clothes. First time I saw
him…he hadn’t eaten anything for a couple
of days.”
“Did you start him in business?” I inquired.
“Start him! I made him”
“Oh.”
“I raised him up out of nothing, right out of
the gutter.”
Answer Column 5-500
Speakers: Meyer Wolfsheim and Nick
Motif: the American Dream
Theme: answers will vary