(PP. 31-35) Literature S3: Chapter 3 → Chapter 4 (ACADEC '25-'26)

What happens at the start of Chapter 3 of The Great Gatsby?

Nick is invited to a party at Gatsby’s mansion

How are Gatsby’s parties described in Chapter 3 of The Great Gatsby?

Wild, bombastic affairs

What does Nick spend the first section of Chapter 3 doing in The Great Gatsby?

Describing the enormous labor that goes into each party, along with the seemingly endless waves of people who attend

What partially inspired the depiction of Jay Gatsby’s mansion in The Great Gatsby?

Oheka Castle

What does Nick Carraway wryly note about about his first night at Gatsby’s house in Chapter 3?

“I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited—they went there. They got into automobiles which bore them out to Long Island, and somehow they ended up at Gatsby’s door”

Who does Nick Carraway look for in vain at Gatsby’s party, and who does he eventually find in Chapter 3 of The Great Gatsby?

He looks for Gatsby, but eventually finds Jordan Baker

Who does Nick Carraway share a few drinks with at the first party he attends at Gatsby’s house?

Jordan Baker

What rumor does one of the guests share with Nick Carraway at his first Gatsby Party in Chapter 3 of The Great Gatsby?

That he treats his guests so well, and tries to avoid any kind of trouble, because he killed a man and is on the run from the law

What is a different explanation a guest gives to Nick Carraway at his first Gatsby party about why Gatsby is so nice?

He was actually a German spy during WWI

What is the rumor that Gatsby was a German spy during WWI countered by?

He couldn’t have been a Germany spy because he was in the U.S. Army during the war

Who does Nick and Jordan find in Gatsby’s library while they go looking for Gatsby?

A man drunkenly admiring his library

Who do Nick and Jordan learn when they encounter a man and a woman at a table at Nick’s first Gatsby party?

Nick and the man discover they that they served in the same military division overseas during the war

Who is the man that Nick finds out served in the same military division overseas during the war?

Jay Gatsby

What does Nick initially think about Gatsby when he meets him?

He has a very compelling smile and demeanor

What did Nick say about Gatsby’s smile when he first met him?

“It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor”

What feelings are suggested by Nick detecting Gatsby is being very deliberate in his actions?

A mix of sincerity and contrivance

What takes Gatsby away when he first meets Nick Carraway in Chapter 3?

A phone call

What info does Jordan have about Gatsby?

Rumors and impartial information, including the doubtful fact that he attended college at Oxford University

What university did Gatsby doubtfully attend?

Oxford University

Does Jordan Baker believe Gatsby went to Oxford?

No

What does Nick feel is inauthentic about Gatsby when he first meets him?

Gatsby’s repeated use of the overly formal phrase “Old Sport”

When are Jordan and Nick separated at Nick’s first Gatsby party?

When Gatsby requests Jordan’s presence for a private meeting

What does Nick do when Gatsby requests Jordan at his first Gatsby party?

He decides to leave the party at the end of a long night

What does Nick stay to watch when he tries to go home during his first Gatsby party?

A drunken car crash in front of Gatsby’s house

What does Nick notice when he’s watching a drunken car crash?

Gatsby is watching all the partiers leave

What does Nick feel when he sees Gatsby watching all the partiers leave?

He felt a “sudden emptiness [that] that seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host”

What sense from Gatsby reappears throughout The Great Gatsby?

Loneliness and isolation

How does Nick end Chapter 3?

By noting to his reader that, while the party scenes occupy a large amount of time in his book, he didn’t only party and binge during this time

What does Nick say that he did besides party at the end of Chapter 3?

He mostly worked and kept a low-profile, but did carry on a short affair with a young woman

What did Nick say he spent most of the summer doing?

He spent it mostly alone, although, as a constant observer of others, he does frequently imagine himself entering the lives of strangers he sees in NY

Who does Nick Carraway admit to having a semi-romantic relationship with after losing track of her at the end of Chapter 3?

Jordan Baker

How did Nick describe his relationship with Jordan Baker at the end of Chapter 3?

“I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity”

What does Nick discover about Jordan that Daisy, Tom, and Gatsby also do?

Jordan is constantly performing for others, concealing her true self through affectations and even frequently outright lying

What does Nick contrast himself with at the end of Chapter 3?

With those who exhibit duplicitous behavior by declaring himself to be “one of the few honest people I have ever known”

How does Chapter 4 of The Great Gatsby begin?

Nick overhearing yet another rumor about Gatsby: that he’s a bootlegger and a murderer who once killed a man because he threatened to reveal that Gatsby was Paul von Hindenburg’s nephew

Who told Nick that Gatsby killed someone because they threatened to reveal that he was was Paul von Hindenburg’s nephew?

A group of women

Who was rumored to be Gatsby’s uncle in The Great Gatsby?

Paul von Hindenburg

What kind of list does Nick read off at the start of Chapter 4?

A list he created during the summer of all the guests who came to one of Gatsby’s parties

What is the list of invented names that Nick reads off at the start of Chapter 4 deliberately intended to tell readers?

East Egg families are “old money” and in important, enduring businesses, while West Egg families are “new money” and in less respectable businesses, like filmmaking

Who was Paul von Hindenburg?

A German military leader and statesman

When was Paul von Hindenburg photographed?

1925

Where is the photo of Paul von Hindenburg housed?

The Bundesarchiv

What does Gatsby insist when he goes to Nick’s house in Chapter 4?

They go into the city for lunch

What kind of car is Gatsby driving into the city when he and Nick go to get lunch in Chapter 4?

A custom-made car: “It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shield that mirrored a dozen suns”

What is Gatsby’s car he drives into the city when he and Nick go for lunch an example of?

Conspicuous consumption

What is conspicuous consumption?

The deliberate flaunting of consumer goods as a way of declaring your wealth and status

What is Gatsby’s custom-made car ultimately a tool to do?

Get closer to Daisy

What is Gatsby’s custom-made car a symbol of?

Power and worth

What was Fitzgerald very interested in the curious psychology behind?

Symbols of power and wealth

What is Nick’s description of Gatsby’s custom-made car, reflecting Fitzgerald’s judgment?

“Swollen” and “monstrous”

What does Gatsby ask Nick when they drive into the city to eat lunch in Chapter 4?

Gatsby asked Nick what he thinks of him

What does Gatsby offer when Nick gives him an evasive, polite answer to answering what Nick thinks of Gatsby?

To tell him the “truth” of his life story—a story that Nick is initially suspicious

What does Gatsby say is the “truth” of his life story?

He is the son of a wealthy family from the “Middle West” who came into a large sum of money after his parents’ death and lived like “a young rajah in all the capitals of Europe”

What does Gatsby compare himself to when he’s telling Nick the “truth” of his life story?

A “young rajah in all the capitals of Europe”

What does Gatsby say the capitals of Europe are?

Paris, Venice, Rome

What does Gatsby say he was doing in Europe while telling Nick the “truth” of his life story?

Collecting jewels, chiefly rubies, hunting big game, painting a little, things for myself and only, and trying to forget something very sad that had happened to me long ago

Does Nick initially believe Gatsby when he tells him his life story?

No, it sound rehearsed and invented, as if Gatsby were simply reciting lines from a script

What are Nick’s suspicions about Gatsby’s “true” life story enhanced by?

Gatsby claims to have received multiple commendations for his bravery in WWI, including even “an award from Montenegro, little Montenegro down on the Adriatic Sea!”

Where does Gatsby say Montenegro is located?

The Adriatic Sea

What kind of character were the phrases Gatsby was claiming about the “truth” of his past evocative of, according to Nick?

They “were worn so threadbare that they evoked no image except that of a turbaned ‘character’”

What was hearing Gatsby’s phrases about the “truth” of his life like to Nick?

“Skimming hastily through a dozen magazines”

What is Nick shocked by after Gatsby claims the “truth” of his life story?

When he produces the medal that the government of Montenegro gave him for his military valor, as well as a picture of him at Oxford surrounded by famous British men

When does Nick start believing that Gatsby is legitimately rich and powerful and not faking it?

When he shows a picture of him at Oxford and his Montenegro medal

What reinforces Nick’s belief that Gatsby is legitimately rich and powerful and not faking it?

When Gatsby is pulled over by police but, after showing the officer a business card, is allowed to go without a ticket or even a warning

What does the police officer that pulls over Gatsby say?

He apologizes to Gatsby

How does Gatsby explain the interaction with a police officer who pulled him over?

He once did a favor for the police commissioner

How does Gatsby conclude the “truth” of his life story to Nick?

Telling Nick that he’s arranged for Jordan Baker to provide him with more crucial information about Gatsby’s backstory at tea in the afternoon; specifically, something about “the sad thing that happened to [him]”

Who was the model for the character of Meyer Wolfshiem?

Arnold Rothstein

What chapter includes some of the more troubling scenes in The Great Gatsby involving race and ethnicity?

Chapter 4

What chapter in The Great Gatsby helps illustrate the anxieties about immigration and racial integration that permeated throughout the 1920s?

Chapter 4

The world represented in The Great Gatsby is defined by assumptions about what types of people are “______”

“Normal”

What unspoken assumption is behind the rules about which types of wealth are more significant or meaningful?

Real wealth and power are reserved for white Americans

What do Gatsby and Nick encounter as they cross into NY in Chapter 4 of The Great Gatsby?

A funeral procession

What does Nick note as he and Gatsby drive past a funeral procession in Chapter 4?

The mourners have the “tragic eyes and short upper lips of southeastern Europe,” and he is “glad that the sight of Gatsby’s splendid car was included in their somber holiday”

What does Nick note about a limousine that passes by him and Gatsby while they cross into New York in Chapter 4?

It’s driven by a white chauffeur but occupied by “three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl”

The use of what to describe Black Americans was relatively common during the 1920s, despite being outdated and inappropriate now?

The word “negro”

What does Nick’s description of Black men as “bucks” a deliberate use of?

A racist epithet, and this racist, dehumanizing caricature continues when Nick “laugh[s] aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry”

What key points does the scene when Nick calls Black men “bucks” illustrate about American society and its complex racial and class dynamics of the period?

Economic growth and the social possibilities created by urbanization allowed for scenes that were once impossible in American history

How does Nick see himself in comparison to wealthy non-white Americans or immigrants?

Fundamentally superior

What were thought to be equalizing forces in America, though those affirmative notions were countered by deep-seated prosperity?

Wealth and prosperity

How does Nick often act in his descriptions of the appearance of other?

He’s casually dismissive and biting

What does Peter Gregg Slater point out about Nick?

He “tends to point out the ethnic affiliation of the individuals with whom he comes in contact whenever their ethnicity is not of an Old American type as is his own”

Who says Nick “tends to point out the ethnic affiliation of the individuals with whom he comes in contact whenever their ethnicity is not of an Old American type as is his own”?

Peter Gregg Slater

What do Nick’s descriptions of the appearances of others help us understand?

How he perceives the world, as well as what sort of people warrant his respect and attention

Who is Meyer Wolfshiem?

A Jewish gangster that Gatsby takes Nick to visit for lunch in the city

What ethnoreligious group is Meyer Wolfshiem from?

He’s Jewish

Who is Arnold Rothstein?

A notorious gangster and bootlegger who ran major crime networks in NYC during the 1920s

What does Wolfshiem do after making his introductions?

He leaves the restaurant, allowing Nick to notice Tom Buchanan sitting at a different table in the restaurant

How does Gatsby feel in meeting Tom at the restaurant in Chapter 4?

He’s uncomfortable and after a brief greeting, Gatsby disappears

What does Jordan tell Nick about Gatsby in Chapter 4?

How she first came to know Gatsby

What was Daisy known as when she was growing up?

Daisy Fay

Where did Daisy and Jordan grow up?

Louisville

How did Jordan describe Daisy when they were growing up?

She was popular and outgoing, and Jordan often admired her from afar

Who did Jordan come upon Daisy hanging out with when they were growing up?

A young lieutenant sitting in a car outside of Daisy’s house, Jay Gatsby

Who made a portrait of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in 1923?

Alfred Cheney Johnston

When did Alfred Cheney Johnston photograph Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

1923

What was clear when Daisy and Gatsby met?

They had a strong connection

What causes Daisy and Gatsby to grow apart?

He was deployed overseas, and Daisy marries Tom Buchanan

What kind of wedding does Daisy have with Tom Buchanan?

A massive, opulent wedding

What was Tom Buchanan’s wedding gift to Daisy?

A string of pearls worth $350,000 in 1919