Character

Question 1

What are the four paragraphs for a character essay?

Answer 1

1. Trimalchio
2. Meretricious beauty
3. Green Light
4. Love - Idealist

Question 2

Trimalchio character (theme of the American dream) =
a freedman who through hard work and perseverance attained power and wealth. He relates to Gatsby because both of them weren't born rich and both got their wealth through perseverance and they both throw lavish parties.

Answer 2

“I suppose he’d had the name ready for a long time, even then - his imagination never really accepted [his parents] at all”
“He invented the sort of Jay Gatbsy that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, to this conception he was faithful to the end.”
“He hurried the phrase ‘educated at oxford’”
“He was a penniless young man without a past, and at any moment the invisibile cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders.”

~ Gatsby came from an impoverished background and worked his way through the classes by becoming a bootlegger through his partnership with Meyer Wolfsheim.
~ Changed his name from James Gatz to James Gatsby to hide the fact that he came from an impoverished background which would prevent him from coming into the upper classes.
~ He knew he was destined to greatness from a young age which is why he wrote himself a schefule at the back of Hoplang Cassidy’s book and he stuck to it everyday to get somewhere in life and prevented him from becoming a farmer.
~ Owl eyes and books
~ Title “The Great Gatsby”

Question 3

Meretricious beauty (theme of hollow values of the upper classes)

Answer 3

“a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville”
“he certainly must have strained himself to get this menagerie together”
“yellow circus wagon”

~ Trimalchio character even more since he also had bad taste.
~ He always has to go over board with whatever he does: for example his house, parties and when he got loads of flowers in chapter 4 for meeting Daisy.
~ He lacks the refinement of the upper classes which is why he fails to assimilate into it
~ conflict between G and T

Question 4

Optimism (theme of hopes and dreams)

Answer 4

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year reced before us”
“the colossal significance of the green light had now vanished forever… it was again a green light on a dock”
“He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is”

~ shows the symbolic significance this has to the text: money her got for Daisy
~ the hope that he and daisy would reunite
~ when they did in chp 4 it seemed that they did
~ but after turning point they never
~ he lost his hope after the turning point

Question 5

Theme of love (motif of time)

Answer 5

“He was running down like an over-wound clock”

~ Gatsby always “wanted too much” from Daisy and wanted to turn back time but it was too late.
~ Perhaps he only wants Daisy as she is the top of the top.