THE GREAT GATSBY – chapter nine study guide
Literary Analysis—study questions
1. Why is it so important to Nick that he “get somebody” for Gatsby?
2. Why are Gatsby’s father, Nick and the owl-eyed man the only named characters
that come to the funeral?
3. What is Nick thinking as he repeats the phrase it just shows you when Gatsby’s
father shows him Gatsby’s early schedule for self-improvement?
4. Why does the owl-eyed man say, “The poor son-of-a-bitch,” (183) after the
funeral? Why is he given the last word at the funeral?
5. Are we [the readers] supposed to agree with Jordan that Nick isn’t straightforward
or honest or with Nick when he says he’s “five years too old to lie to myself and
call it honor”?
6. At the end of the novel, why does Nick return to Gatsby’s abandoned house and
rub out the obscene word on the steps? (188)
Further considerations
Nick’s reflection, two years later: “After two years, I remember the rest of that day, and
that night and the next day, only as an endless drill of police and photographers and
newspaper men in and out of Gatsby’s front door.”(171)
Analyze Fitzgerald’s writing about Nick: “But all this part of it seemed remote and
unessential. I found myself on Gatsby’s side, and alone.” (172)
Again, analyze Fitzgerald’s writing:
“But as they drew back the sheet and looked at Gatsby with unmoved eye, his protest continued in my
brain.
“Look here, old sport, you got to get somebody for me. You’ve got to try hard. I can’t go through this
alone.” (173)
Descriptions, mannerisms, dialogue of Henry C. Gatz
More on Gatsby’s past via Meyer Wolfshiem
Significance of Hopalong Cassidy book reference [romanticism] and “schedule”
More on Fitzgerald’s style:
“Even when the East excited me most, even when I was most keenly aware of its superiority to the
bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which spared
on the children and the very old—even then it had always for me a quality of distortion…” (185)
and
“After Gatsby’s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes’ power of
correction. So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry
stiff on the line I decided to back home.” (185)
Nick’s closure with Jordan—dialogue—and chance encounter with Tom…
Significance of the line: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up
things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or
whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had
made…” (188)
Or: “…that huge incoherent failure of a house once more…” (188)
Significance of the last four paragraphs of the novel:
“Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any
lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And
as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until
gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch
sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the
trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to
the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment
man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into
an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for
the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for
wonder.
And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s
wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He
had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so
close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already
behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the
dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year
recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will
run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the
past.” (189)
Literary criticism
From Matthew J. Bruccoli on errors that may have been deliberate and meaningful:
“Gatsby’s claim to be a Midwesterner from San Francisco indicates his autobiographical
untrustworthiness; but readers have regarded it as Fitzgerald’s error—not as Gatsby’s
blunder.” (193)
In the “Afterword,” from Gatsby’s publisher, Charles Scribner: “The general brilliant
quality of the book makes me ashamed to make even these criticisms. The amount of
meaning you get into a sentence, the dimensions and intensity of the impression you
make a paragraph carry, are most extraordinary. The manuscript is full of phrases which
make a scene blaze with life. If one enjoyed a rapid railroad journey I would compare the
number and vividness of pictures your living words suggest, to the living scenes
disclosed in that way. It seems in reading a much shorter book than it is, but it carries the
mind through a series of experiences that one would think would require a book of three
times in length.” (201)