Friday 9/30

In class we:

• Read the characterization of Tom from The Great Gatsby.
• Analyzed the strategies Fitzgerald uses to create his character sketch.
• Completed the chart/notes and handed them in to be graded.
• Excerpt and chart are below.

Creative Writing                              Name

Character Sketch

Model Study

 

Directions: The following excerpts are taken from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. They are from the first pages of the novel where we are introduced to Tom Buchanan.

 

Your task is to read the excerpts and to annotate the text for strategies that Fitzgerald uses to create, extend and deepen our sense of Tom’s character.

 

 

 

 

Tom Buchanan Excerpt 1

 

 

Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg

glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins

on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom

Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed and I'd known Tom

in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in

Chicago.

 

Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of

the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven--a

national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute

limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of

anti-climax. His family were enormously wealthy--even in college his

freedom with money was a matter for reproach--but now he'd left Chicago

and come east in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for

instance he'd brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest.

It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy

enough to do that.

 

Why they came east I don't know. They had spent a year in France, for no

particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever

people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move,

said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn't believe it--I had no sight

into Daisy's heart but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking

a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable

football game.

 

And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East

Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was

even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian

Colonial mansion overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach

and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over

sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens--finally when it reached

the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the

momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows,

glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy

afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his

legs apart on the front porch.

He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy, straw haired

man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner.

Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and

gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not

even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous

power of that body--he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he

strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle

shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body

capable of enormous leverage--a cruel body.

His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of

fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in

it, even toward people he liked--and there were men at New Haven who had

hated his guts.

"Now, don't think my opinion on these matters is final," he seemed to

say, "just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are." We

were in the same Senior Society, and while we were never intimate I

always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like

him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.

We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.

 

"I've got a nice place here," he said, his eyes flashing about

restlessly.

Turning me around by one arm he moved a broad flat hand along the

front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half

acre of deep pungent roses and a snub-nosed motor boat that bumped

the tide off shore.

"It belonged to Demaine the oil man." He turned me around again,

politely and abruptly. "We'll go inside."

 

Tom Buchanan Excerpt #2

"Civilization's going to pieces," broke out Tom violently.

"I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read

'The Rise of the Coloured Empires' by this man Goddard?"

"Why, no," I answered, rather surprised by his tone.

"Well, it's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if

we don't look out the white race will be--will be utterly submerged.

It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved."

"Tom's getting very profound," said Daisy with an expression of

unthoughtful sadness. "He reads deep books with long words in them.

What was that word we----"

"Well, these books are all scientific," insisted Tom, glancing at her

impatiently. "This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It's up to us

who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have

control of things."

"We've got to beat them down," whispered Daisy, winking ferociously

toward the fervent sun.

"You ought to live in California--" began Miss Baker but Tom

interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.

"This idea is that we're Nordics. I am, and you are and you are

and----" After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a

slight nod and she winked at me again. "--and we've produced all the

things that go to make civilization--oh, science and art and all that.

Do you see?"

 

Strategy	Examples in the Excerpts	Effects of the Strategy on Characterization
	·            ·            ·	·                ·

 

This note sheet will be graded in conjunction with the class discussion.