11U The Great Gatsby Quotation Analysis
QUOTATION ANALYSIS OF PROSE
The Great Gatsby
a. Is it narration? If so, what is the point of view? Is it a character's voice? If so,
answer: who is the character, whom is the character speaking to, and maybe even how
the character is speaking.
b. Discuss what is happening (the context) in the quotation without offering too much
summary.
c. Prose analysis: Referring to TWO devices, assess how it is said, considering how
the word choice, the ordering of ideas, sentence structure, subtleties of the imagery and
figurative language, and the ideas expressed contributes to the meaning of the
passage.
d. Story analysis: Explain the dramatic significance of the words. Discuss why it is
significant to the work as a whole. Explain what is being said both explicitly and
implicitly. Explain how the quotation illuminates the story element indicated.
11U The Great Gatsby Quotation Analysis
QUOTATION ANALYSIS OF PROSE
The Great Gatsby
a. Is it narration? If so, what is the point of view? Is it a character's voice? If so,
answer: who is the character, whom is the character speaking to, and maybe even how
the character is speaking.
b. Discuss what is happening (the context) in the quotation without offering too much
summary.
c. Prose analysis: Referring to TWO devices, assess how it is said, considering how
the word choice, the ordering of ideas, sentence structure, subtleties of the imagery and
figurative language, and the ideas expressed contributes to the meaning of the
passage.
d. Story analysis: Explain the dramatic significance of the words. Discuss why it is
significant to the work as a whole. Explain what is being said both explicitly and
implicitly. Explain how the quotation illuminates the story element indicated.
11U The Great Gatsby Quotation Analysis
CHARACTERIZATION
“It was a random shot, and yet the reporter’s instinct was right.
Gatsby’s notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted
his hospitality and so become authorities on his past, had increased all
summer until he fell just short of being news. Contemporary legends
such as the “underground pipe-line to Canada.” attached themselves to
him, and there was one persistent story that he didn’t live in a house at
all, but in a boat that looked like a house and was moved secretly up
and down the Long Island shore. Just why these inventions were a
source of satisfaction to James Gatz of North Dakota, isn’t easy to say”
(98).
CHARACTERIZATION
“It was a random shot, and yet the reporter’s instinct was right.
Gatsby’s notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted
his hospitality and so become authorities on his past, had increased all
summer until he fell just short of being news. Contemporary legends
such as the “underground pipe-line to Canada.” attached themselves to
him, and there was one persistent story that he didn’t live in a house at
all, but in a boat that looked like a house and was moved secretly up
and down the Long Island shore. Just why these inventions were a
source of satisfaction to James Gatz of North Dakota, isn’t easy to say”
(98).
11U The Great Gatsby Quotation Analysis
PLOT
“I glanced at Daisy, who was staring terrified between Gatsby and her
husband, and at Jordan, who had begun to balance an invisible but
absorbing object on the tip of her chin. Then I turned back to Gatsby—
and was startled at his expression. He looked—and this is said in all
contempt for the babbled slander of his garden—as if he had “killed a
man.” For a moment the set of his face could be described in just that
fantastic way.
It passed, and he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything,
defending his name against accusations that had not been made. But
with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he
gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon
slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling
unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room”
(135).
PLOT
“I glanced at Daisy, who was staring terrified between Gatsby and her
husband, and at Jordan, who had begun to balance an invisible but
absorbing object on the tip of her chin. Then I turned back to Gatsby—
and was startled at his expression. He looked—and this is said in all
contempt for the babbled slander of his garden—as if he had “killed a
man.” For a moment the set of his face could be described in just that
fantastic way.
It passed, and he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything,
defending his name against accusations that had not been made. But
with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he
gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon
slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling
unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room”
(135).
11U The Great Gatsby Quotation Analysis
SETTING
“About half way between West Egg and New York the motor road
hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as
to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a 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 and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of
men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.
Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out
a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men
swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which
screens their obscure operations from your sight” (23).
SETTING
“About half way between West Egg and New York the motor road
hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as
to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a 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 and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of
men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.
Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out
a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men
swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which
screens their obscure operations from your sight” (23).
11U The Great Gatsby Quotation Analysis
CONFLICT
“There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water as the
fresh flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other.
With little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden
mattress moved irregularly down the pool. A small gust of wind that
scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental
course with its accidental burden. The touch of a cluster of leaves
revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of compass, a thin red circle in
the water.
It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener
saw Wilson’s body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was
complete” (163).
CONFLICT
“There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water as the
fresh flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other.
With little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden
mattress moved irregularly down the pool. A small gust of wind that
scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental
course with its accidental burden. The touch of a cluster of leaves
revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of compass, a thin red circle in
the water.
It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener
saw Wilson’s body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was
complete” (163).