English III
Study Guide-Final Exam
Spring 2011
The Great Gatsby: Identify characters by their personalities, roles in the story, and status as a dynamic or static (unchanging) character. Also identify symbols and settings. The first example (Nick Carraway) is done for you.
NickCarraway / The narrator of the story, Nick is a 29-year old bond salesman from the Midwest who has recently moved to Long Island. He believes himself to be a person who has more than his share of the “fundamental decencies,” thus he is somewhat surprised when he begins to admire his next-door neighbor, the mysterious, wealthy, and obsessed Jay Gatsby. Nick is a dynamic character who learns a lot about life during the summer he knows Gatsby. His statement to Gatsby near the end of the novel, “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together,” is evidence of his change of heart.
Tom Buchanan
Daisy
Buchanan
Jordan
Baker
Jay Gatsby
Myrtle
Wilson
George Wilson
Meyer Wolfsheim
Owl- Eyes
Henry Gatz
West Egg
East Egg
Gatsby’s House
The Valley of Ashes
The Midwest
The green light
The eyes of
Dr. T. J.
Eckleburg
Myrtle’s diamond dog collar
Gatsby’s yellow car
Gatsby’s pink suit
Daisy’s voice
The hot weather on the day of the trip
to the Plaza Hotel
Identify the speaker of each quote, and explain its significance in terms of plot, characterization, or mood.
1. “I was so excited that when I got into a taxi with him I didn’t hardly know I wasn’t getting into a subway train. All I dept thinking about over and over was ‘You can’t live forever, you can’t live forever.”
2. “I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited.”
3. “They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—such beautiful shirts before.”
4. “Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!”
5. “Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly.
6. “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”
7. “Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead,” he suggested. “After that my own rule is to let everything alone.”
Questions on characters, settings, literary techniques, and themes from The Great Gatsby.
1. How is the theme of conflict between appearance and reality carried out in The Great Gatsby?
2. What are the similarities and the differences between Nick and Gatsby?
3. What are three American social evils criticized in the novel? Which characters and incidents are used to criticize American society?
4. The Great Gatsby is told from the first-person point of view by a man who is not the main character. How does this technique shape the novel?
5. What role do the women characters play in the novel?
6. What are the roles of minor characters, including Jordan Baker, Meyer Wolfsheim, and George Wilson, in the novel?
7. Is Gatsby “great” or did Fitzgerald intend his title to be ironic?
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Style Analysis: Be able to write a paragraph analyzing the style of a passage from The Great Gatsby. Elements of style analysis include diction, sentence structure, imagery, and figurative language. Below is a passage for practice analysis.
There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his tow motor boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On weekends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city, between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants including an extra gardener toiled all day with mops and scrubbing brushes and hammers and garden shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.
Black Boy: Characters, Settings, Symbols, Themes, Techniques (identify in at least two ways.)
RichardWright / Narrator and main subject of Black Boy. The work is a record of his coming-of-age in the South, and is a testament to the power of the individual to rebel against repression.
Ella Wright
(mother)
Granny
Grandpa
Aunt Addie
Uncle
Hoskins
Aunt Maggie
Professor
Matthews
Betsy
Uncle Tom
Griggs
Mr. Crane
Mrs. Moss
Mr. Olin
Mr. Falk
Harrison
Shorty
Setting fire
To his house
Jackson,
Mississippi
Memphis,
Tennessee
Chicago,
Ill.
Writing
Stories
The writing of journalist
H.L. Mencken
Committing crimes (selling
Theater tickets twice)
Quotes: Understand the context and significance of each quote.
1. “We were now large enough for the white boys to fear us and both of us, the white boys and the black boys, began to play our traditional racial roles as though we had been born to them, as thought it were in our blood, as though we were being guided by instinct.”
2. “My mother’s suffering grew into a symbol in my mind, gathering into itself all the poverty, the ignorance, the helplessness; the painful, baffling, hunger-ridden days and hours; the restless moving, the futile seeking, the uncertainty, the fear, the dread; the meaningless pain and endless suffering.”
3. “All right,” she said. “If you want to go to hell, then go. But God’ll know that it was not my fault. He’ll forgive me, but He won’t forgive you.”
4. “You need a lesson in how to live with people,’ he said.”
5. “Could words be weapons? Well, yes, for here they were. Then, maybe, perhaps, I could use them as a weapon? No. It frightened me. I read on and what amazed me was not what he said, but how on earth anybody had the courage to say it.”
Questions on characters, settings, themes, and techniques:
1. What is existentialism, and how is Black Boy an existential work of art?
2. Discuss how physical, emotional, and intellectual hunger affects Richard as he grows up.
3. Discuss the role his Granny and Uncle Tom play in Richard’s upbringing.
4. Relate two jobs Richard takes in Jackson and tell what he learns from each job.
5. Relate three incidents from Richard’s life that help you understand his fascination with language.
6. Richard is a rebel. Pick one instance in which he rebels against what is expected of him. What does he gain? What does he lose?
Style Analysis: Write a paragraph that shows how Wright uses parallel structure and metaphor to help express his meaning.
“I was in my fifteenth year; in terms of schooling I was far behind the average youth of the nation, but I did not know that. In me was shaping a yearning for a kind of consciousness, a mode of being that the way of life about me had said could not be, must not be, and upon which the penalty of death had been placed. Somewhere in the dead of the southern night my life had switched onto the wrong track and, without my knowing it, the locomotive of my heart was rushing down a dangerously steep slope, heading for a collision, heedless of the warning red lights that blinked all around me, the sirens and the bells and the screams that filled the air.”