Monday 22 October 2012

Group 1 - Question 3

Question 3:  Nick meets Gatsby's friend, Meyer Wolfsheim, and on page 71, says, "The juxtaposition of these two remarks was startling." Explain and comment on how this is significant in the novel.

Answer:  The quote on this page refers to the ideas of death and money ("these two remarks"), which are indeed "startling".  This quote, along with the fact that he is a businessman, hints that Meyer Wolfsheim has a greedy personality (shown by how money was mentioned in the quote) and that he is careless about deaths.  Together, this shows that Meyer Wolfsheim is a ruthless individual who wants to obtain money regardless of who gets hurt or dies along the way.  In addition, Wolfsheim quickly changed the topic to business right after casually talking about his friends' deaths, showing he is uncaring and indifferent to those supposedly tragic events and only cares about money.  This is significant to the novel because Wolfsheim is shown to be a good friend of Gatsby, who is supposedly a high class man.  This shows that Gatsby may also participate in illegal activities along with Wolfsheim, which is a severe contrast to his public image (a rich, law-abiding man).  This shows that Gatsby is so determined on reaching his goal that he does not care about the methods he uses to achieve them, which could end up being his downfall.

Tony Wang


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