The Great Gatsby Chapter 6

1. The Great GatsbyChapter 6

2. Look at Language • 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 .

3. Look at Language • 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 .

4. Look at Language • 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 .

5. James Gatz • 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)

6. “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?

7. “He talked a lot about the past…” (117/110) • 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?

8. Last paragraph of the chapter • How does this last paragraph perfectly summarize this chapter? Examine how the language of the paragraph supports the ideas.