Name____________________________________ Date ________ Period ________
Unpacking Passages
Gatsby Chapter 89
DIRECTIONS: Pick 3 of the following passages. Include the following elements in a well‐ organized explication for each. It is important that you include all of the following elements. Speaker identify the speaker of the passage Event what is going on when this passage is reported? Literary devices & language identify important uses of literary devices and language. Explain the significance and reason for usage of meaningful words in this passage. Context show how this relates to the rest of the book Themes identify relevant themes of the work.
CHAPTER 8 Quote 1 P. 151 Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the season; suddenly she was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with half a dozen men, and drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor beside her bed.
Quote 2 P. 150
Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.
Quote 3 P. 149
But he didn’t despise himself and it didn’t turn out as he had imagined. He had intended, probably, to take what he could and go—but now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail.
Quote 4 P. 152
The shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves.
Quote 5 P. 154
“They’re a rotten crowd,” I shouted across the lawn. “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”
Quote 6 P. 157 Michaelis and several other men were with him; first, four or five men, later two or three men. Still later Michaelis had to ask the last stranger to wait there fifteen minutes longer, while he went back to his own place and made a pot of coffee. After that, he stayed there alone with Wilson until dawn. (SEE Matthew 26:40-45 on the last page of this handout.)
Quote 7 P. 159
This was a forlorn hope—he was almost sure that Wilson had no friend: there was not enough of him for his wife.
Quote 8 P. 161 Gatsby shouldered the mattress and started for the pool. Once he stopped and shifted it a little, and the chauffeur asked him if he needed help, but he shook his head and in a moment disappeared among the yellowing trees. (SEE Mark 15: 21 on the last page of this handout.)
Quote 9 P. 161
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.
Quote 10 P. 162
There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water as the fresh flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other. with little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden mattress moved irregularly down the pool. A small gust of wind that scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental course with its accidental burden. The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of compass, a thin red circle in the water.
CHAPTER 9 Quote 11 P. 165 “Look here, old sport, you’ve got to get somebody for me. You’ve got to try hard. I can’t go through this alone.”
Quote 12 P. 166 The “death car,” as the newspapers called it, didn’t stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment, and then disappeared around the next bend.
Quote 13 P. 177
“You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn’t I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.”
Quote 14 P. 179
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. . . .
Quote 15 P. 180
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.
Created by Ben Davis
Name____________________________________ Date ________ Period ________
Quote 14 P. 180 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.
Biblical Allusion in The Great Gatsby conduct founded on hard rock or wet marshes, p. 2 [Luke 6.48-49] His Father's Business, p. 98 [Luke 2.49] Michaelis and others wait up with Wilson, p. 156 [Matthew 26.40-45] chauffeur asked him if he needed help, p. 161 [Mark 15.21]
Luke 6.4849
48He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. 49But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete."
Luke 2.49
49"Why were you searching for me?" he asked. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?"
Matthew 26:4045 40Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. "Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?" he asked Peter. 41"Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak." 42He went away a second time and prayed, "My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done." 43When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. 44So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing. 45Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour is near, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.
Mark 15.21 21A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross.