Free Essays - Notes on The Great Gatsby :: Great Gatsby Essays

Notes on The Great Gatsby     Chapter 1   Characters Introduced * Nick Carraway - A wealthy mid-westerner in his mid-twenties who fought in world warfare one, currently working in New York city and living next door to Mr.Gastby. * Daisy - Nicks second cousin is very cynical and bored with the rich life, espouse to Tom Buchanan. * Tom Buchanan - Nicks friend from Yale, very wealthy and successful, and very pretentious. * Jordan Baker - A golfer who spends time with the Buchanans, also very snooty.   Literary Period * I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War(7) - World War One is spoken of as the great war * bonny as things grow in fast movies(8) - Stop motion movies were a novelty at that time. * Everybody invests or talks ab emerge stocks.   Style * Complex vocabulary and sentence structure But I didnt c tout ensemble to him for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone - he stretched out his arms to ward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling.(25) Characterization * Its all scientific stuff its been proved.(17) - Tom claims to very educated, but he speaks incorrectly, saying proved instead of  proven * Something was making him nibble at the edge of mothy ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart. - Sums up Toms attitude he wants to be better than someone, so he finds snooty books with illogical ideas to back up his racist feeling of superiority. Literary Devices * secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew(8) - allusion to King Midas and other fables. * their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been winded back in after a short flight around the house.(12) - fiction. * on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon(12) - simile * as if each speech is in arrangement of notes that will never be played again.(13) - simile.   Summary The author, Nick Carraway moves to the New York area to become a bond man. He spends the afternoon with his second cousin, Daisy, and her husband Tom Buchanan, who are very wealthy, and the evening is filled with a lot of talk about nothing, omit that Tom has a mistress somewhere.