Chapter+8+Questions+and+Answers

1**. Some of the characters in the novel symbolize a production ethic; others symbolize a consumption ethic. Classify the characters accordingly, and draw a conclusion about the American Dream, as you understand it, from Fitzgerald.**

The characters in the novel that symbolize the production ethic is of course, Gatsby, who gives people his riches through his parties, Wilson is also a production ethic because he is the symbol of the lower class that work for the rich. Also Wilson serves as Tom's tool because Tom utilizes him to not only take his wife away but to help him get rid of Gatsby. The characters that symbolize the consumption product would be Tom who takes advantage of everyone, Jordan is also a consumption product because she feeds off of other peoples business and their wealth. Daisy is also a consumption product because she takes advantage of Gatsby without ever having the intention of leaving her husband.

//"... He had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he let her believe that he was a person from much the same stratum as herself—that he was fully able to take care of her."//

//"... he was almost sure that Wilson had no friend: there was not enough of him for his wife."//

2. **Eyes and sight recur frequently in the novel. What is Fitzgerald’s statement about the ability to distinguish between illusion and reality?**

Throughout the book many characters, mainly Gatsby cannot distinguish between reality and illusion. His love for Daisy blinds him of the fact that she will never abandon her husband and that she is merely using him for her enjoyment. Fitzgerald is trying to make it clear that sometimes our heart's biggest desire will blind us of the truth and that if we loose sight of reality it will ultimately lead to our destruction, maybe not to death exactly but we will not truly be living, because like Gatsby who's biggest desire was Daisy he stopped living for her, his entire life was led to have her in his arms once again and because he never wanted to realize that he and Daisy were over forever he was doomed to bring his own death upon him.

//“ 'Of course she might have loved him just for a minute, when they were first married—and loved me more even then, do you see?' ”//

//"He left feeling that if he had searched harder, he might have found her—that he was leaving her behind."//

//“ 'God sees everything,' repeated Wilson.// //'That’s an advertisement,' Michaelis assured him."//

3. **How is this story an ironic inversion of a knightly quest for the grail?**

The story is like the quest of a knight for a grail because in the story a knight will give his life for a grail and in the novel Gatsby dies for Daisy not technically but in his search for her love and in trying to keep a love that has been over for years it eventually leads to his murder. //"Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor."//

//"...but now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail. He knew that Daisy was extraordinary, but he didn’t realize just how extraordinary a 'nice' girl could be. She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing. He felt married to her, that was all."//



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