American lit critics

Question 1

Reynolds on Nick

Answer 1

he is both a symptom and analyst of a class based society

Question 2

Kazin on Daisy

Answer 2

vulgar and inhuman

Question 3

Edwin Clarke on Fitzgerald

Answer 3

Fitzgerald discloses in these people a means of spirit, carelessness and absence of loyalties

Question 4

RW Stallman on Gatsby

Answer 4

Gatsby is a modern Icarus

Question 5

Congressman of Oklahoma on grapes

Answer 5

exposes nothing but the total depravity, vulgarity, and degraded mentality of the author

Question 6

Crockett on California

Answer 6

not a promised land but a blighted Eden

Question 7

Coffman on the Joads

Answer 7

the Joad family are at the mercy of forces beyond their control

Question 8

Kronenberger on grapes

Answer 8

document of protest and compassion

Question 9

Alan Yucas on grapes

Answer 9

Steinbeck did not want us to lose hope, he wanted us to get angry at those who would strip hope from us

Question 10

Haslam on Ma

Answer 10

the family’s core

Question 11

Cowley on grapes

Answer 11

what one remembers most of all is Steinbecks sympathy for the migrants

Question 12

John Bicknell on grapes

Answer 12

explores the modern corruption in contrast to a lost rather than emergent ideal

Question 13

Lisca on grapes

Answer 13

man’s spiritual brotherhood must express itself in a social unity

Question 14

Singh on Tom

Answer 14

Tom aspires to be Jim Casy

Question 15

Robert J. Wiersema on religion

Answer 15

Jim Casy makes the case often that religious faith offers little more than hypocrisy and conflict

Question 16

Railton on grapes

Answer 16

Steinbeck’s antagonist in the novel is not the group of large owners, but rather the idea of ownership itself

Question 17

Steinbeck on anger

Answer 17

anger is the healthiest thing in the world… anger is a symbol of thought evaluation and reaction; without it what have we got?

Question 18

Cowley on Steinbeck

Answer 18

has the force of the headlong anger that drives ahead from the first chapter to last

Question 19

Collins on Steinbeck

Answer 19

tied to the marxist loom but feels outrage at the violation of the bond between man and soil

Question 20

Yardley on Fitzgerald

Answer 20

this country’s most central ideas… the quest for new life, the preoccupation with class, the hunger for riches

Question 21

Stocks on Nick

Answer 21

nick wants to portray Gatsby as ‘great’ and to ignore anything that , right undermine that image

Question 22

A.E Dyson on Gatsby

Answer 22

in one sense Gatsby is the apotheosis of his rootlesss society… he really believe in himself and his illusions

Question 23

Flanagan on Gatsby

Answer 23

Gatsby is somewhat vague. The readers eyes can never quite focus upon him, his outlines are dim

Question 24

Bewley on Daisy

Answer 24

an emptiness that we see curdling into the viciousness of a monstrous moral indifference

Question 25

Ramos on Tom B

Answer 25

tom has reduced whole people to ashes without any thought of consequences

Question 26

Orstein on American society

Answer 26

the coming tragedy of a nation grown decadent without achieving maturity

Question 27

H.L Mencken on Gatsby characters

Answer 27

idiotic pursuit of sensation, their almost incredible stupidity

Question 28

Morton on Daisy

Answer 28

Daisy represents a blank canvas that men can project their desires onto

Question 29

Cavender on Myrtle

Answer 29

a pathetic figure desperate to escape her conflicted circumstances

Question 30

Motley on the joads

Answer 30

the Joad family shifts from a patriarchal structure to a predominantly matriarchal one

Question 31

Page on the car

Answer 31

it exacerbates social divisions in the novel