The Great GatsbyConnecting Device to Meaning Grid Activity [Major Grade] writing memorial service speech Ch| Device/ Strategy [2]| Passage/p.
# [2]| Connect to Meaning [8]| 1| Juxtaposition| ??? There??™s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He??™s singing away ??“ ??? her voice sang. ??? It??™s romantic, isn??™t it, Tom?????¦ The telephone rang inside, startingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom, the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air.
(20)| The purpose of Juxtaposition in this passage is to highlight Daisy??™s and Tom??™s marital bond and the relationship between them. The author achieves this by implying soft, charming qualities of Daisy and comparing it to the harsh nature of Tom. The device is also used to show the contrast between the nightingale and the mysterious shrill phone call. The call cracks the happy atmosphere and further shows Tom??™s negativity and hostility toward his wife. This passage also shows how weak and fragile the relationship between Tom and Daisy is as just one phone call and the entire romantic atmosphere between them disappears. The relationship is kind of confusing as they bluntly show that they do not love each other yet they stay together.
| 2| Setting(a setting specific to the novel, not ??“ for ex., NYC)| “ 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)| This reference to the valley of ashes paints of picture of entire poverty and never ending sadness. The valley of ashes is a place of uninterrupted desolation.
This places lies in the middle of West Egg and New York. This setting suggests that underneath all the ornamentation of the East Egg and the materialism and artificiality of the West egg lays the same ugly corrupt valley. A metaphor is used to describe this setting of the valley of ashes and it is used to explain the human corruption and the fakeness of the area. The author??™s purpose in using this strategy is to make the reader see that even though this may be a place where life is present the place is really dead and the people there seem to have dead dreams of shallowness and materialism.| 3| Paradox| ??? Anyhow, he gives large parties,??? said Jordan, changing the subject with an urban distaste for the concrete.
??? And I like large parties. They??™re so intimate. At small parties there isn??™t any privacy.??? (54)| 1.
Jordan Baker??™s comment on how the intimacy of the party relates to the size of the party seems contradicting but is very true. Her comment about disliking small parties due to lack of intimacy reveal more of her personality.? She is attracted to Nick and she likes being able to talk with him without people noticing as they would at a small gathering where everyone is noticed since the numbers are small.? Jordan likes living by her own rules and private conversations allow more of that for her. Jordan is revealed to be one of those shallow socialites who prefer large parties because smaller parties give you no room for escape.
The use of words urban distaste for the concrete means that beneath the distaste for truth is the fear that an honest opinion is not popular and it reveals ignorance. These people use urbanity as a mask to hide their true faces. | 4| Allusion| Meyer Wolfsheim No, he??™s a gambler.
??? Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly: ??? He??™s the man who fixed the World??™s Series back in 1919.?????? Fixed the World??™s Series??? I repeated. The idea staggered me.
I remembered, of course, that the World??™s Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely HAPPENED, the end of some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people ??” with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.| The inclusion of this reference serves a number of purposes.
First, the reference helps to characterize Gatsby and the men with whom he associates. Knowing this bit of history, Fitzgerald??™s readers also put the men into the category of criminals in powerful organizations. We are given some of our first hints at just how Gatsby may have acquired his fortune, yet the mystery is also heightened with this prospect. In addition, the reference helps to characterize our narrator, Nick, as we see his reaction to the implication made on Wolfsheim.
Nick feels he has been blown into reality, somehow coming face to face with a person he previously only thought of as an enigma. This can also describe Nick??™s changing feelings about Gatsby. He is at first intrigued and impressed by his mysterious neighbor, but as more details are revealed, Nick??™s incredulity and even annoyance grow.
Finally, the detail creates a strong realism for the reader. Anyone familiar with this period in American history will know of this event and likely have a connection with it.| 5| Tone shift#1 = EAGER#2 = SHY#3 = LOVING| He waited a moment longer, hoping I??™d begin a conversation, but I was too absorbed to be responsive, so he went unwillingly home.
However, as calmness wasn??™t an end in itself, I made an excuse at the first possible moment, and got to my feet. His hand took hold of hers, and as she said something low in his ear he turned her with a rush of emotion| The tone shift for the first one is significant because it shows how enthusiastic Gatsby was to talk to Nick. This is important because it shows how this will lead to a strong friendship between the two. The second tone shift is the time when Daisy, Gatsby and Nick are having conversation, but Nick feels as if he??™s the third wheel. He feels like he is intruding on them and thus is extremely timid and shy to take part in the conversation. The third tone shift shows the rekindled love and passion between Daisy and Gatsby. It shows that even though Daisy was married she loved Gatsby and it clearly reflected by their obvious actions of love. | 6| Flashback| Cody was fifty years old then, a product of the Nevada silver fields, of the Yukon, of every rush for metal since seventy-five.
The transactions inMontana copper that made him many times a millionaire found him physically robust but on the verge of soft-mindedness, and, suspecting this, an infinite number of women tried to separate him from his money. The none too savory ramifications by which Ella Kaye, the newspaper woman, played Madame de Maintenon to his weakness and sent him to sea in a yacht, were common knowledge to the turgid sub-journalism of 1902. He had been coasting along all too hospitable shores for five years when he turned up as James Gatz??™s destiny at Little Girls Point.
| The author??™s purpose in using flashback as a strategy is to help the reader comprehend Gatsby??™s character in more depth. His past helps the reader understand why he is the way he is. . Nicks description of Gatsbys early life reveals the sympathy to status that urge Gatsby on. His embarrassment at having to work as a janitor in college contrasts with the promise that he experiences when he meets Dan Cody, who represents the accomplishment of everything that Gatsby wants.
Gatsby was very aware of his family??™s poverty when he was young and so from the very start he builds up the obsession with wealth and social status. His desire to become wealthy and throw away his old poor identity is shown through his determination in getting what he wanted. The grateful Cody took young Gatz who gave his name as Jay Gatsby, on board his yacht as his personal assistant. Traveling with Cody, Gatsby fell in love with wealth and luxury. This time of work greatly shaped Gatsby new identity and his new personality of artificiality.
| 7| #1 = logos#2 = ethos#3 = pathosHint: you need to provide a clear example of each appeal in the argument to ??? win??? Daisy| 1)??? I found out what your ??? drug-stores??™ were.??? He turned to us and spoke rapidly. ??? He and this Wolfsheim bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That??™s one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn??™t far wrong.
??? (133)2)??? You??™re one of that bunch that hangs around with Meyer Wolfsheim ??” that much I happen to know. I??™ve made a little investigation into your affairs ??” and I??™ll carry it further to-morrow.??? (133)3)??? Not that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes dry??? There was a husky tenderness in his tone. . .
. ??? Daisy?????? Please don??™t.??? Her voice was cold, but the rancor was gone from it. She looked at Gatsby. ??? There, Jay,??? she said ??” but her hand as she tried to light a cigarette was trembling. Suddenly she threw the cigarette and the burning match on the carpet.??? Oh, you want too much!??? she cried to Gatsby. ??? I love you now ??” isn??™t that enough I can??™t help what??™s past.
??? She began to sob helplessly. ??? I did love him once ??” but I loved you too.??? Gatsby??™s eyes opened and closed.??? You loved me TOO??? he repeated.??? Even that??™s a lie,??? said Tom savagely. ??? She didn??™t know you were alive.
Why ??” there??™re things between Daisy and me that you??™ll never know, things that neither of us can ever forget.??? (132)| 1) Tom claims that Gatsby wealth was not honest money and that he had acquired it all by bootlegging. It soon becomes clear that Gatsby has spun many different webs of deception. Tom uses the unraveling truths to his advantage because he knows as the truth comes to light Daisy??™s idealized conception of Gatsby will diminish and so will her love for him2) This passage represents an appeal to ethos because Tom has done his background research on Gatsby and that gives him credibility when he talks about Gatsby??™s past and how he was deceitful. This makes it easy for him to break Daisy??™s trust on him and crush her idealized perception of Gatsby.
3) Tom uses an appeal to pathos in order to appeal to daisy vulnerability. He opens up his emotions and makes her think that she??™s hurting him and after all they had been through she was throwing it all away for Gatsby! This makes it really easy for him to convince her to change her mind. Daisy??™s feelings about love are ever-changing and it is very easy to sway her. She easily gives in and when Tom pulls the wrong strings and tugs her heart she can do nothing but fall for his trap and say that she did love him. The appeal to pathos was a good trick on Tom??™s part as it got him to basically win the argument. | 8| Analogy| I have an idea the Gatsby himself didn??™t believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true, he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream.
He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about??¦like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees. (169)| This passage is referring to the recurring theme of Appearance vs reality. Gatsby wanted to believe in something that was not real and when it was slipping away it seemed to Nick that he longer cared. He compares dreams to fantastic figure and ghosts and how his dreams vanished into thin air just the way ghosts disappear.
His dream was now dead and he felt as though he has nothing to live for. I also feel that this was a sort of foreshadowing of Gatsby??™s death as he no longer had anything to live for. Daisy was everything for him his past love, his present strive and his future aspiration and when that dream of making her his girl died, he died with it. Fitzgerald also uses the description of a rose. Roses are a symbol of love but Nick states that Gatsby must realize that even roses have thorns and just because we see or want something someway it will stay that way. Roses were the way they seemed to us because people describe it in that way and in the novel Daisy was like a rose to Gatsby and he perceived her that way. In the five years of their separation Gatsby had created this mythical being in his head that was perfect and that??™s what he described Daisy to be.
But when the realization that this dream of his has died he had nothing left to live for as his only purpose was to marry his one ??? true love???. | 9| Hyperbole| After Gatsby??™s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes??™ power of correction.| The purpose of the hyperbole is to help the reader understand the state of mind of the narrator; he is sad and depressed thus the east no longer appeals to him after the death of Gatsby. He went for his dream and at the end it is easy for the readers to come the conclusion that Nick will always have a bad impression of the East considering the events he has seen and the corrupt people he has interacted with. The East was a place where he went to run away from rumors and it became a place where he lost a friend. He had seen so much corruption there in the people that he thought that there was no power in the world that could correct it.
The east has forever become a bad place in Nick??™s mind and the past haunted him there and reminded him of Gatsby. |
