Brief Character Bios

Character Bios for The Great Gatsby

Daisy Buchanan (née Fay).

Married to Tom Buchanan, Nick’s second cousin once removed.

‘Effervescent (excitable), attractive, shallow.’

A ‘voice full of money’.

The "girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs".

Nick Carraway

Narrator of The Great Gatsby.

Bond salesman, from Chicago. Graduated from Yale, WWI veteran.

Gatsby’s next-door neighbour.

Jay Gatsby (James Gatz)

‘Young, mysterious millionaire.’

A bootlegger from North Dakota, obsessively in love with Daisy.

WWI veteran.

Tom Buchanan

Arrogant. An ‘old money’ millionaire.

An interest in polo.

Yale graduate and a white supremacist.

Jordan Baker 

Daisy Buchanan’s long time friend.

A professional golfer, with a slightly shady reputation.

Myrtle Wilson – Tom’s mistress.

George Wilson
Myrtle's husband.  Owns a garage in the Valley Of Ashes. Murders Gatsby, then shoots himself.

Assessment Objectives?

These are exactly what  the examiner is looking for in your answers to ANY QUESTION in the ENTIRE A LEVEL.
They apply to Shakespeare, Poetry, Modern novels, EVERYTHING.

On the Gatsby exam, the examiners are looking only for AO2 in question A.
In question B, they look for everything else.

These are copied exactly from the Course Specifications, found HERE.

Assessment Objectives

AO1

Articulate creative, informed and relevant responses to literary texts, using appropriate terminology and concepts, and coherent, accurate written expression.

AO2

Demonstrate detailed critical understanding in analysing the ways in which structure, form and language shape meanings in literary texts.

AO3

Explore connections and comparisons between different literary texts, informed by the interpretations of other readers.

AO4

Demonstrate understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which literary texts are written and received.

A/B boundary Performance descriptions

AO1

Candidates characteristically:

a) communicate extensive knowledge and understanding of literary texts

b) create and sustain well organised and coherent arguments, using appropriate terminology to support informed interpretations

c) structure and organise their writing using an appropriate critical register

d) communicate content and meaning through expressive and accurate writing.

AO2

Candidates characteristically:

a) identify significant aspects of structure, form and language in literary texts

b) explore, through detailed critical analysis, how writers use these aspects to create meaning

c) consistently make reference to specific texts and sources to support their responses.

AO3

Candidates characteristically:

a) analyse and evaluate connections or points of comparison between literary texts

b) engage sensitively and with different readings and interpretations demonstrating clear understanding.

AO4

Candidates characteristically:

a) explore and comment on the significance of the relationships between specific literary texts and their contexts

b) evaluate the influence of culture, text type, literary genre or historical period on the ways inwhich literary texts were written and were – and are – received.

E/U boundary performance descriptions

AO1

Candidates characteristically:

a) communicate knowledge and some understanding of literary texts

b) present responses, making some use of appropriate terminology and examples to support interpretations

c) communicate content and meaning using straightforward language accurately.

AO2

Candidates characteristically:

a) identify some aspects of structure, form or language in literary texts

b) comment on specific aspects with reference to how they shape meaning

c) make some reference to texts to support their responses.

AO3

Candidates characteristically:

a) make connections between literary texts or note comparisons

b) communicate understanding of the views expressed in other interpretations or readings.

AO4

Candidates characteristically:

a) comment on some of the relationships between texts and their contexts

b) comment on how culture, text type, literary genre or historical period influence the reading of literary texts.

Sample Questions

Part A
'How is the story told in Chapter [...]?'

Part B

• The Great Gatsby is a true love story. To what extent do you agree?
• Nick Carraway is an unreliable narrator. How far do you agree with this statement?
• The Great Gatsby is more about Nick than Gatsby himself. Discuss.
• The Great Gatsby is about one man's search for the American Dream. Do you agree?

Themes...

Themes;

Love - “short winded elations of men”- (chapter 1)

              “I even had a short affair with a girl who lived in New Jersey”- (chapter 3)

            “For a moment I thought I loved her”- (chapter 3)

             “Gatsby?  What Gatsby?”  - (chapter 1)

             “I looked outdoors for a minute… It’s romantic isn’t it Tom?”  (Chapter 1)

             “Tom’s got some woman in New York” (chapter 1- bringing in idea of adultery also)

             “I’d get a divorce and get married to each other”- (chapter 1- adultery also)

              “Girls were swooning backwards playfully into men’s arms”- (chapter 3)

            “But his heart was in a constant turbulent riot”- (Chapter 6)

Class- “He wasn’t fit to lick my shoe”- (chapter 2)

            “I knew he was below me”- (chapter2)

            “A man of fine breeding”- (chapter 4)

            “He would never so much as look at a friend’s wife”- (chapter 4)

            “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such- such beautiful shirts before” (chapter 5)

            “I’ve never met so many celebrities”- (Chapter 6)

            “I raised him out of nothing, right out of the gutter”- (Chapter 9)

Money- “All they think of is money”- (chapter 2)

            “I came into a great deal of money”- (chapter 4)

            “He was at present, a penniless man”- (Chapter 8) 

Murder/death- “He killed a man once”- (chapter 3)

                           “It takes two to cause an accident”- (chapter 3)

                        “Then came the war”- (chapter 4)

                        “I lost most of it in the big panic- the panic of the war” (chapter 5)

“Then he killed her”- (Chapter 8)

“it was an accident George”- (Chapter8)

“The Holocaust was complete”- (Chapter 8)

     

Adultery- “Tom’s got some woman in New York” (chapter 1)

             “I’d get a divorce and get married to each other”- (chapter 1)

Narrative Techniques Chapters One - Three

Chapter One

-          Context for Nick where rest of novel has none

-          West/East “Egg” – imagery, springing new and exciting life?

-          Glittering houses, reflections but also aura/ambiance/atmosphere.

-          Time: Goes back within Nick’s life so that we are not just joining a random character on his journey moving.

-          Gatsby- fleeting mention, continues with mystery.

-          Paints picture of Tom as a proper man’s man, with power and intimidation.  Bit like horse, shining eyes.  Daisy as weak butterfly who doesn’t know what she’s doing from the start.

 

-          Imagery of women flying: birds, butterflies, angels?  Different interpretations, some very strong, some very weak.

-          White dresses, female innocence?

-          Daisy portrayed as more innocent that Jordan, as Jordan keeps quiet and doesn’t show naivety where as Daisy tries to join in.

Chapter Two

-          DR ECKLEBERG.  You get him by now.  Eyes of God.  Omnipresent.  So on, so forth.

-          Valley of ashes.  Ashes of dreams?  Ashes of hopes?  Ashes of forgotten… stuff.

-          Myrtle changing clothes, attempting to fit in with richer company who may change clothes for every meal, event, pastime etc.

-          Myrtle flower, Daisy flower.  Daisy prettier, yet considered weed?

-          Tom punches Myrtle.  Breakdown of common morals, i.e. do not hit women, do not cheat on wife, do not disobey law by drinking so much alcohol you lost track of yourself and hit your mistress.

-          Dog- hardy coat.  Myrtle hardy having lived in a garage all her married life?  Comparison to be made?

-          Lots more people, little detail.  Air of unimportance to general context of novel,  as with guests at parties.

-          Daisy’s Catholic??!!??  Yet more dishonesty.

Chapter Three

-          Gatsby’s party

-          WAAAAAAY up there with imagery, Synesthesia.  "Yellow" music has connotations of joy

-          “Corps of caterers” – military image, gives parties a regimented, every week feel.

-          Dancing, general aura of joy.

-          Alcohol even in prohibition.

-          Shows massive amount of money available before Wall Street Crash.

-          Gatsby – because of such glittering reputation, actual introduction makes him seem small and somehow less significant.

-           Nick interrupts with a moment of self-absorption, speaks about what he has written so far.  Makes it seem much more like a diary than a novel, enhancing common opinion that Nick is an 'unreliable narrator'.  Speaks of what HE was doing at the time.  Hmm.  Boring!  Speaks of himself entirely until the end of the novel.  Egotistical, annoying, disrupts from the flow of the novel.  Could discuss different forms of novel from dreamy section during party to back to the "hard graft", with general working and boredom of real life.

Book in Context

Context of The Great Gatsby

The Roaring Twenties is a phrase used to describe the 1920s, principally in North America but also in London and Paris.

The phrase was meant to emphasize the period's social, artistic, and cultural dynamism.

Jazz music blossomed, the “flapper” redefined modern womanhood, Art Deco peaked, and finally the Wall Street Crash of 1929 served to punctuate the end of the era, as The Great Depression set in.

Politics returned to normal in the wake of World War I (which ended in 1918).

The Lost Generation were young people who came out of World War I disillusioned and cynical about the world. The term usually refers to American literary notables who lived in Paris at the time. Famous members included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein. These authors, also referred to as expatriates, wrote novels and short stories expressing their resentment towards the materialism and individualism that permeated during this era.

Music and Dance

Jazz became associated with all things modern, sophisticated, and also decadent.
Dance clubs became enormously popular in the 1920s. Their popularity peaked in the late 1920s and reached into the early 1930s. Dance music came to dominate all forms of popular music by the late 1920s. Classical pieces, operettas, folk music, etc. were all transformed into popular dance melodies in order to satiate the public craze for dancing much as the disco phenomena would later do in the late 1970s.

Women
On August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the last of 36 states needed to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women the right to vote.
"Flapper" in the 1920s was a term applied to a "new breed" of young Western women who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. Flappers were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms
Immortalized in movies and magazine covers, young women’s fashion of the 1920s was both a trend and a social statement, a breaking-off from the rigid Victorian way of life. These young, rebellious, middle-class women, labeled ‘flappers’ by older generations, did away with the corset and donned slinky knee-length dresses, which exposed their legs and arms. The hairstyle of the decade was a chin-length bob, of which there were several popular variations. Cosmetics, which until the 1920s was not typically accepted in American society because of its association with prostitution became, for the first time, extremely popular

Prohibition
In 1920, the manufacture, sale, import and export of alcohol was prohibited by the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in an attempt to alleviate various social problems; this came to be known as "Prohibition".

Chapter Summaries

The Great Gatsby Chapter Summaries

Chapter 1

·         We learn about Nick – he was in the war etc.

·         Nick, Tom, Daisy and Jordan meet for dinner.

·         We learn that Tom has a mistress.

Chapter 2

·         Tom takes Nick on a trip to New York to visit Myrtle.

·         Myrtle wants to throw a party.

·         Nick gets drunk.

Chapter 3

·         Gatsby has a party to which Nick is invited.

·         Jordan is there. We finally meet Gatsby.

Chapter 4

·         Gatsby takes Nick for a ride in his car.

·         He brags a lot about his role in the war and Oxford.

·         He offers Nick a job.

·         Mr Wolfsheim.

·         Nick introduces Tom to Gatsby.

·         Flashback to Jordan meeting Daisy for the first time, and their friendship thereafter (Jordan recalls Gatsby as a soldier, Daisy’s wedding and the letter from Gatsby, Daisy getting drunk, the fact that Gatsby still loves Daisy etc.)

Chapter 5

·         Nick sets up a meeting between Daisy and Gatsby, at his house.

·         After a nervous/tearful reunion, they walk to Gatsby’s house.

·         Daisy thoroughly impressed by the house – cries into shirts etc.

Chapter 6

·         We flash back to Gatsby’s past, his upbringing/name change etc.

·         Daisy finally comes to one of Gatsby’s parties.

·         Gatsby doesn’t think that Daisy enjoyed herself.

·         Tom becomes suspicious.

Chapter 7

·         Gatsby’s house is very quiet; he fires all his servants to avoid suspicions and gossip.

·         They all decide to go to New York for the day.

·         Tom confronts Daisy and Gatsby.

·         Daisy runs Myrtle over.

Chapter 8

·         We learn how Gatsby met Daisy from his eyes.

·         Wilson compares TJ Eckleberg’s eyes to the eyes of God.

·         Wilson kills Gatsby and himself.

Chapter 9

·         Gatsby’s funeral.

·         Nick runs into Daisy and Tom.

·         Gatsby’s dad appears, and we learn about the lengths Gatsby took to win over Daisy.