
Write out all the adjectives from the following lines. What do
you notice about these adjectives? What nouns do they
describe? What difference between dream and reality is
established by these adjectives?

“But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most
grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A
universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while
the clock ticked on the wash-stand and the moon soaked with wet
light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the
pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some
vivid scene with an oblivious embrace” (105/98-99).

Source of activity inspiration: Liu, Xiangqi . “Stylistic Analysis of The Great Gatsby from Lexical and Grammatical Category.” Journal
of Language Teaching and Research. September 2010 .

Write out all the adjectives from the following lines.
What do you notice about these adjectives? What
nouns do they describe?

“But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most
grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at
night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in
his brain while the clock ticked on the wash-stand and the
moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the
floor. Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies
until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with
an oblivious embrace” (105/98-99).

Source of activity inspiration: Liu, Xiangqi . “Stylistic Analysis of The Great Gatsby from Lexical and Grammatical
Category.” Journal of Language Teaching and Research. September 2010 .

What difference between dream and reality is
established by these adjectives?

“But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most
grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at
night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in
his brain while the clock ticked on the wash-stand and the
moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the
floor. Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies
until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with
an oblivious embrace” (105/98-99).

Source of activity inspiration: Liu, Xiangqi . “Stylistic Analysis of The Great Gatsby from Lexical and Grammatical
Category.” Journal of Language Teaching and Research. September 2010 .

Plato held that reality was an imperfect
reflection of an ideal, permanent realm, and
that our immortal soul lost the “vision
splendid,” knowledge of eternal ideas, at
birth. The individual must recapture, or
gradually “recollect” the “vision splendid”
through philosophical discipline during life.

With this in mind, what does Nick mean when
he says, “Jay Gatsby sprang from his Platonic
conception of himself” (104/98)


“He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it
means anything, means just that—and he
must be about His Father’s Business, the
service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious
beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay
Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy
would be likely to invent, and to this
conception he was faithful to the end”?
(104/98).
Why “son of God”? How does that fit?

When Nick says that Gatsby “wanted to
recover something, some idea of himself
perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy.”
What is the “idea of himself”?

Nick describes Gatsby kissing Daisy in
Louisville. What happens when Gatsby kisses
Daisy? What words in paragraph reinforce the
idea?

Examine the sentence: “Out of the corner of
his eye…” What does this sentence mean?

How does this last paragraph perfectly
summarize this chapter? Examine how the
language of the paragraph supports the
ideas.