RE: The Great Gatsby Questions (Chapter 2)
- What do you find is the most crucial in the plot in Chapter 2?
- How does Nick meet Tom’s mistress?
- How does Myrtle react to Tom’s arrival?
- Describe George Wilson. How does he react to Tom’s arrival?
- Describe the setting of the valley of the ashes where George and Myrtle live. What aspects of the valley of the ashes are symbolic, and what do they symbolize? Use a quotation from the text to justify your answer.
- Why does Tom attack Myrtle at the end of the party?
5. “This is a Valley of Ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.”
The Valley of Ashes is a trash dump. The rotting valley represents the rotting American dream.