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The Great Gatsby Notes – Nick Carraway
Comprehensive close reading notes
Important to note that this is written after his experience so he is speaking about how he is
now after his journey of change would be complete
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This passage has four significant parts and one overarching theme
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The opening paragraph foreshadows the last, uses a circular narrative style

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Fitzgerald could be using a chiastic structure/palistrophe

‘Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, ‘he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this
world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had
...


1

Nick is giving the reading his point of view as a telepathic relationship with his father, but
could he just be interpreting things the way he wants to? The advice is like that of a
philanthropist, like John D
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Rockefeller was reserved, had an under-inflated ego, had a purpose beyond wealth
and was frugal
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Nick appears to infer that reserving judgment is pointless as his thoughts will proved
right eventually

I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth
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He now contradicts his earlier statement is manner that suggest the reading audience
should understand him
2

When I came back from the East last autumn, I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a
sort of moral attention forever
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Nick despises the American dream, upstarts, libertines, honesty without
euphemisms, showiness
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Just like tom with Myrtle

If personality is an unbroken series of gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him
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Wholesale hardware business
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Wholesale means they supplied businesses

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During a boom period

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No mention that he got a scholarship to Yale

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He has a rich cousin and many connections

I Graduated from New Haven in 1915
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New Haven is Yale and it is in Long Island
...

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Nick loves conflict which why he does not exert more effort to stop Tom’s and
Daisy’s affairs

Instead of being the warm center of the world, the Middle West now seemed now seemed like the
ragged edge of the universe
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He yearns for the more modern world away from traditions and values associated
with his class
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He has tasted the big city and wants more

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A bit like Gatsby Nick is chasing after an old memory from years before

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Tom, Nick and Gatsby are all about 30 years old

Everyone I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man
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He has a maid, an expensive house and an expensive used car

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He assumes his maid is muttering wisdom, who she could in fact be complaining
about life as we later learn she lives in poverty
4

I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler
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P Morgan, who died in 1913, would have been in recent memory

I was very literary in college
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On the contrary, he appears to show deference it

Arrogant eyes
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He is transferring his feelings to Tom’s thoughts

We were never intimate
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This annoyed me
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As though he were moving a checker to another square
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what is Nick’s square?

It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things
There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old,
was not enough to him anymore
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It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort
to exact a contributory emotion from me
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6

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Tom knew him at Yale and the same way his father tells him not judge Tom tells him
not be gullible

‘it’s libel
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Poor in comparison to Tom, but he may be the heir to his family business

We heard it from three people, so it must be true
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The rule of three

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Common knowledge

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What would indicate this if it were not true

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Nick understands the social queues

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Has he been misleading the girl in the Mid-West?

I wasn’t vaguely engaged
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Would his fiancé agree with him?

It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house
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Apart from Tom’s speech about race and his mistress calling, there does not appear
to be further reason for her to run away except that she is unhappy

But I didn’t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone
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Still making assumptions or was he being cowardly?

7

Chapter 2
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
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Described in a pastoral way

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Makes it sound like some kind primordial village

The supercilious assumption was that on Saturday afternoon I had nothing better to do
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He sort of attaches himself to people
and groups
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A romantic idea, finding it hard to believe that this reality is acceptable, as his father
alluded, he does not really understand that others are less fortunate, he only comes
across poor people in a service capacity

I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon; so, everything that
happened was dim
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This refers to euphemistic type language used by the less powerful to avoid the
reality of their situation, he should not surprise, he should understand the
requirement to find an excuse to maintain an illusion

I was within and without, simultaneously ench

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