Resource for Teaching The Great Gatsby

Parent Resource

Teaching The Great Gatsby: We offer a variety of resources to help you teach F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel and help students understand its historical context and literary impact.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (PDF)

The Great Gatsby (2013) Movie Purchase Option

The Great Gatsby Paired Poems

If and When Dreams Come True

You'll find yourself in still water,
Full moon silhouetting the sky.
The long train of desire, having gone,
Pulled out from this quiet pool of shadow,
Will have left you at peace with your hands,
A few flowers moving in the breeze.
There will be music in the wind,
A future found in some alcove of blossoming trees;
Each highway will have driven itself away,
And so you will be left, finally, alone:
Abandoned, even, by any word you've ever cared
    to read.
The moon will shine as it always has;
A cool seep will rise from the lake.

   W.S. Merk

Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich - yes, richer than a king -
And admirably schooled in every grace;
In fine we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
-    Edwin Arlington Robinson -

We Wear the Mask

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,-
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream other-wise,
We wear the mask!
        --Paul Laurence Dunbar

Dorothy Parker - 20s female poet

Social Note

Lady, lady, should you meet
One whose ways are all discreet,
One who murmurs that his wife
Is the lodestar of his life,
One who keeps assuring you
That he never was untrue,
Never loved another one . . .
  Lady, lady, better run!

    --Dorothy Parker

The Hollow Men

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rat's feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar.

Shape without form, shade without color,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us - if at all - not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer.

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom.

III

This is the dead land
This is the cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdom.
In the last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper.

- T. S. Ellot (1925)

Name_________________________ Date ___________________

The Great Gatsby Paired Poems Activity

Answer the following questions on a separate sheet of paper for each poem.  Answer the questions separately for each poem. 

1. What is the dramatic situation of the poem? (What is taking place literally?)

2. Who is the speaker in the poem? (Or, at least, what do we know about him/her?)

3. To whom is he or she speaking? Who is the audience of the poem?  Is it a specific person or to the general reader?

4. What is a possible theme of the poem?  Write one line from the poem that you think tells the theme the poem.

5. What kinds of patterns are there in the poem? Does the poem rhyme? Does it have a particular rhythm or beat? Does it have a visual pattern when you look at it?

6. How does the poet use language? Is it elevated or fancier language? Is it more vernacular, colloquial, or casual? Does the poet use a particular dialect or accent?

7. What do you think is the most important line of the poem? Why do you think so?

8. What images does the poet use to make his or her point?

9. What is the tone (mood) of the poem at the beginning, at the end, and overall?

10.  How does this poem relate to The Great Gatsby?  Consider the characters (especially Gatsby) and the overall themes of The Great Gatsby.  Which themes does the poem illuminate?