Choose ONE of the following characters from The Great Gatsby:
Daisy
Tom
Gatsby
Nick
Jordan
Myrtle
Describe the key characteristics of the character. What is their personality like? What are their values? What are some important actions we associate with them in the novel? Then choose a key quote that is either about that character or said by the character. Give the full quote (and note which chapter it appears in) and give your brief analysis of that quote. What does it tell us about the character?
Post 1
Hi Everyone,
Jay Gatsby is the novel’s center of attention in a weird way. This is despite that the novel is not narrated from his perspective. On top of that, Gatsby’s emergence into the novel was not only slow, but much of his introduction did not physically involve him altogether. Early on in the book, most of the information we learn about Gatsby is through Nick Carraway’s indirect accounts and Jordan Baker mentioning him at dinner. The novel’s slow physical inclusion of Gatsby plays hand-in-hand with his mysterious personality. Gatsby’s mysterious personality is more secondary because his main characteristic is that he calls everybody “old sport.” In my opinion, Gatsby’s most important action is his parties, which we learned were to lure in Daisy Buchanan as part of his quest to reclaim his lost love.
Gatsby’s mysterious personality and unimaginable wealth have an unintended consequence on how others perceive him. This resulted in gossiping and various rumors. For example, when a partygoer asserted, “You look at him sometimes when he thinks nobody’s looking at him. I’ll bet he killed a man” (Fitzgerald 44). This quote shows that Gatsby’s strange and elusive private life opens the door for any unsubstantiated claims. Gatsby was also dishonest about his personal life, not only the partygoers who gossiped about him; take page 65 as an example. Gatsby told Nick he is the son of wealthy people in the Middle West. When Nick asked where in the Middle West, I had to laugh out loud when Gatsby said San Francisco (San Francisco is on the West Coast, not the Middle West). It is not until chapter 6 when Nick tells us about Gatsby’s early life, showing that neither the gossiping partygoers’ nor Gatsby’s claims were true. In addition to that, it was relatively easy to tell that Gatsby was being dishonest when telling Nick about his early life; he was having a hard time telling the “story” (Fitzgerald 65). Both the partygoer’s gossip and Gatsby’s own account tell us that Gatsby is not only mysterious but also flagrantly dishonest.
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