THE GREAT GATSBY Chapter 1 Questions (Pg. 1-2)
1) What advice did the narrator’s father give to him when he was younger? (In your own words)
2) What “habit” does this advice create in the narrator?
3) In terms of his interactions with other people, what is the result of this “habit”? (Consider the downsides for
the narrator) Use your own words.
4) What does this quote mean: “I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that…a sense of the
fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth” (2)? (What are the fundamental decencies?)
5) Why might reserving judgments be a “matter of infinite hope” (2)?
6) Paraphrase these sentences: “Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a
certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. 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.”
7) Based on his description of Gatsby, do you think the narrator likes Gatsby or not? (Prove your conclusion
with text. Consider the narrator’s overall stance, but also how he qualifies his position.)
8) Why is the narrator telling this story? How did this experience he’s about to tell us about change him?