Great Gatsby Outline

Essay Outline

Introduction: ANT

A=Attention Getter:

N=Necessary Information: In “The Great Gatsby,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nick Carroway, the narrator, has recently moved from the midwest to start his career in New York. He lives on the island of West Egg, next door to a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby. Nick becomes friends with him and learns that Gatsby is in love with his cousin Daisy. They never married because Gatsby had to go off into the military and he was not rich enough for her, so when Gatsby was shipped overseas, Daisy married another man named Tom Buchanan. When Gatsby returns from his service and discovers this, he begins bootlegging to make enough money to try to impress her and win her over. After Gatsby uses Nick to capture Daisy’s attention, Tom becomes suspicious of Daisy and Gatsby. He confronts Gatsby, and after learning the truth, he misleads a man named George Wilson to believe that Gatsby ran over his wife- who conveniently had an affair with Tom- and then George kills Gatsby.

T=Thesis: Jay Gatsby fits the mold of the Modernist tragic hero through the presence of a flaw within him that leads to his demise, the fact that he suffers more than he needs to, and the portrayal of Gatsby as doomed to fail from the beginning.

First Body: Gatsby refuses to understand that he can not relive the past.

“I feel far away from her. It’s hard to make her understand” (109).

Purpose- Gatsby thinks that Daisy and him can be together like they were five years prior to the beginning of the novel.

Significance- Daisy is not the one who does not understand, Gatsby is. They can not be together- Tom and Daisy had a child, and a lot of things have changed. Their lives are both so different now that their relationship would never...

... middle of paper ...

...he had committed himself to the following of a grail” (156).

The romantic pursuit of Daisy is being compared to the impossible task of finding the Holy Grail.

The comparison alone shows that Daisy was never going to marry a man like Gatsby. She wanted someone who was wealthy and who could take care of her.

“She wanted her life shaped now, immediately- and the decision must be made by some force- of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality- that was close at hand. That force took shape in the middle of spring with the arrival of Tom Buchanan) (159).

Daisy did not wait for Gatsby to come back from the war to get married because she was impatient. She took the first opportunity that made sense to get married.

Daisy did not really love Tom, but her vanity and desire to be a social climber made her forget about Gatsby’s existence.

Conclusion

Restate your thesis