great gatsby writing assignment

• Info & Policies

Writing Prompts for THE GREAT GATSBY

Here are 40 writing prompts for The Great Gatsby . The list includes prompts for quick writing activities (by chapter) as well as extended The Great Gatsby writing assignments.

Before Reading

• We will be investing considerable time reading a famous novel that many consider “literature.” What makes a book “literature?” What gives a text “superior or lasting value?”
• What is the point of reading fiction? Be honest. If you see no point, explain your views.
• Many consider The Great Gatsby a timeless masterpiece of American literature. What would be your criteria or requirements for “The Great American Novel?”
• Fitzgerald’s works critique American society in the 1920s. Think about our society today. What are the shortcomings of our society today? What are the strengths and successes of our society?
• When it comes to romance, do you believe in the idea of finding a soulmate or perfect match? Explain your view.
• Fortune favors some with wealth and privilege. This position may be earned or unearned.  What responsibility, if any, do the more fortunate have to the greater society? Explain your view.
• At the very start of the novel, Nick Carraway explains a quality imparted by his father. What is the quality? Do you think that this trait is a blessing or a curse?
• After the birth of her daughter, Daisy says, “And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” (20) What does she mean? What does this indicate about her worldview?
• Upon meeting Jordan Baker, Nick explains that “Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.” (12) What are your thoughts on Nick’s reaction?
• What is “the valley of ashes?” (26) Describe the scene in plain language.
• Why do you think Tom Buchanan reacts so violently to Myrtle saying his wife’s name? What do you imagine is the nature of his objection?
• According to our narrator, Tom has always wanted Nick to like him. Why might someone like Tom Buchanan care if someone such as Nick Carraway liked him?
• Which details stand out to you in the descriptions of Gatsby’s parties? What impression of the parties does Fitzgerald create?
• Literary luminaries laude Fitzgerald’s style. Describe it. What are the key features in how he uses language?
• What are your initial thoughts on Nick Carraway? Do you like him? Would you trust him?
• Why are the people in the novel so fascinated by the mystery surrounding Gatsby’s past? What does this say about human nature in general?
• A linguist might interpret the name “Wolfshiem.” The German / Norwegian root “heim” (not an exact match) means home or world. What might be the meaning behind this name?
• What clues indicate that Gatsby’s “God’s truth” about his life history may be fabricated? Why would Gatsby care if Nick Carraway believes his supposed life story?

Related Post: The Great Gatsby Unit Plan: 23 Lessons with Materials

• Describe Gatsby’s convoluted (overly complex) plan for reuniting with Daisy. What might be the reasons behind him taking this approach?
• What does the narrator mean by saying, “Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry”? (88) Do you agree?
• Throughout The Great Gatsby , Fitzgerald gives great attention to Daisy’s unusual voice. What impression does he create? (See the very end of Chapter 5.)
• Would James Gatz have become Jay Gatsby without the influence of Dan Cody? Explain.
• How does Daisy’s presence diminish Gatsby’s party for Nick? Have you ever experienced a change in perspective like this?
• Nick and Gatsby disagree about recapturing the past. What is your view?
• In Chapter 7 as in Chapter 2, Fitzgerald gives inordinate attention to a random billboard for an optometrist (Dr. T.J. Eckleburg). What could possibly be the meaning of this emphasis?
• Why does Gatsby continually call people “old sport?” Why does Tom make this an issue?
• What details indicate that Gatsby’s personality has a darker side?
• In Chapter 8, Gatsby reveals the truth he has worked for years to conceal. Why does Gatsby suddenly decide to tell Nick Carraway the truth about his past?
• Why does Gatsby refuse to accept that Daisy ever loved Tom Buchanan?
• Of Gatsby Nick says, “…I disapproved of him from beginning to end.” Yet, he is glad he told Gatsby, “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.” (164) What can we make of this?
• Why doesn’t anyone want to come to Gatsby’s funeral? Why is Nick so concerned that people show up for the ceremony?
• Why does Nick suddenly lose interest in Jordan Baker? What changed?
• Why do you think people who have “old money” are sometimes prejudiced against those with “new money?” Afterall, wealth is something that they have in common.

Final Writing Assignments for The Great Gatsby

• In The Great Gatsby , color is more than color (especially green, white, gray, and yellow). How does Fitzgerald use color in the novel?
• Many consider The Great Gatsby “the great American novel.” What do you think inspires some to hold this high opinion of Fitzgerald’s work?
• Fitzgerald uses Nick’s point of view in telling the story. What are the effects of this choice? How do Nick’s perspectives, biases, and opinions impact narrative?
• The character names in The Great Gatsby contain layers of meaning. Choose three names to analyze.
• “ The Great Gatsby is a morality tale for America.” Sounds great, but what is the moral? What lessons are we supposed to learn from deaths of George, Myrtle, and Jay Gatsby?
• Choose one symbolic element from the novel and explain its development and purpose.
• Which theme has prominence in the novel? How do you know?

Thanks for stopping by 40 The Great Gatsby Writing Prompts!

I hope that you have found some The Great Gatsby writing prompts that will aid you in your teaching.  If you have found these writing activities / assignments helpful, consider following The Great Gatsby Unit Plan . For more creative and engaging project and essay ideas, check out Top 10 THE GREAT GATSBY Project Options .

Browse Course Material

Course info.

• Rosa Martínez

Departments

As taught in, learning resource types, writing about literature: writing about love, the great gatsby.

The assignment is a short and focused exercise in what is commonly phrased as close reading . Only 250 words are required; however, this is enough for you to work on a small piece of text in detail . The objective is for you to begin developing a practice of sustained textual analysis with a primary text, but also, for me to see how you engage with the text , or rather, how you read and how you interpret . The attached passage that you’ll be studying is from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby . The scene: Nick Carraway’s seeing of Jordan Baker and his moment of “I thought I loved her.”

A few words to get the wheels turning …

In class we discussed the original 1925 cover art of The Great Gatsby by Francis Cugart , focusing on my question: “What are the categories through which you see and read the figure?” In an effort to complicate notions of gender representation (specifically femininity), I prodded you to re-think how you read the feminine figure’s eyes, her lips, her mascara, her eyeliner, and her missing nose. To extend our reading outside of gender , I cued us to think how a nose doesn’t reveal gender but how it might reveal race (or, to challenge us further, class ). You might also consider the tear, the cityscape, and/or why the woman’s eyes reflect nude female figures.

Drawing a parallel between our reading of the cover art, I prodded you to examine character portraits of Nick Carraway and Tom Buchanan (as a class we read the middle of page 6 and top of page 7 for passages related to Tom).

For your writing assignment I want you to concentrate on the character of Jordan Baker. The passage you’ll be providing your own close reading from, pages 57–58 (end of Chapter Three), starts with, “For a while I lost sight of Jordan Baker … " and concludes with, “It was on that same house party that we had a curious conversation …”

For your assignment, although you may use concepts from lecture, please do not treat this passage as a mere demonstration of these themes. Any claim you make about this passage must proceed from a very close attention to its voice, language, and structure. (You might find helpful to recall our in-class readings of the cover art and of Tom Buchanan’s character). Remember, close reading is about effective reading. Go deep with your thinking. “If you were an artist, you’d be painting with a fine brush here, and not a roller,” as a friend-scholar once put it.

One common weakness of student writing is its tendency to paraphrase or generalize. In an effort to make meaningful statements, students sometimes end up making broad pronouncements meant to apply to all mankind. Steer clear from this type of distant reading. Another pitfall is “padding,” or saying the same thing over and over again in slightly different ways, as if an argument could be made through sheer repetition. Close reading is a remedy to both these well-meaning mistakes.

Put simply: close reading is at the heart of literary analysis. It is a deep engagement with language itself, or rather with the words on the page and what they are doing there . When we read for plot or summary, it sometimes seems that words get in the way, pushing literary language aside so that comprehension can plow its way through the details. This is often the first way we learn how to interact with a text: you are asked to “tell the story in your own words.” But to paraphrase is always to stay on the surface, and satisfying literary criticism is never a surface phenomenon—that’s why I call literary analysis a deep reading . Paraphrasing is exactly the opposite of close reading . In fact, it makes close reading impossible. Remember the primary text is not a “message” but an act of representation . As such, it displays thousands of choices about how to use language. Therefore, instead of moving alongside of (and eventually outpacing) the text, you will enter the text itself, and thus enter into a world of expression, manner, language, and meaning in all its richness and complexity. In this moment of entering the passage of Jordan Baker then, I want you to enter the world of reading gender through Nick Carraway’s eyes—in his seeing Jordan Baker, Nick even states, “for a moment I thought I loved her.” You might also think about what seeing and love have to do with each other. But, please, show me how you are reading gender in this passage.

Please bring two copies of your “Close Reading” to class on Session 3, AND please email me your 250 words (as a Word document or throw it in the body of an email) no later than Session 3 at 12 p.m.—you can still revise your 250 words after you submit it to me by email. I only want to read these before Session 3. Only your hard copy will be graded.

Useful vocabulary:

• Gender criticism

For a definition of “gender criticism” and/or “feminist and gender criticism” see:

Gardner, Janet E. Reading and Writing About Literature: A Portable Guide . 3rd edition. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012, p. 189. ISBN: 9781457606496. [Preview with Google Books ]

You are leaving MIT OpenCourseWare

The Great Gatsby Essay TDA Writing Prompts, Grading Rubrics, & Prewriting Tasks

Description.

In this resource, students will conduct a literary analysis of  The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald  and write a  TDA Essay  using textual evidence to support their responses.

There are TWO writing options students can choose from for this Response to Literature/TDA essay.

Included in this product you will get one copy of the following each as PDFs  (ready to print)  as well as one copy of the following each as WORD Documents (as to be  editable   for teachers ).

• Essay Prompts for two different topics on the novel  The Great Gatsby
• Two Prewriting Graphic Organizers for students to brainstorm ideas, thesis, examples, and textual evidence
• TDA Essay Rubric broken down into categories: content, focus, organization, style, conventions, and format

PMT Education is hiring a full-time Customer Support Specialist

The Great Gatsby

Royal Holloway University of London - MA Creative Writing

An enthusiastic English tutor with a BA in English Literature & MA in Creative Writing.

Notes || Exam Prep || Character Profiles || Themes || Additional Reading & Videos

This text is included in  Paper 1 . You can find notes and guides for it below.

• Literary Form

Additional Reading & Videos:

• Thesis: Jordan Baker’s Role as the Modern Woman of the 1920s
• Thesis: The Great Gatsby, Gender, and Masculine Anxiety
• Thesis: ‘Good girls’ and ‘bad girls’ in The Great Gatsby
• Video: The Great Gatsby: Why Nick is Not Your Friend
• Video: Living the Dream in the Valley of Ashes
• Film: The Great Gatsby (dir. Robert Markowitz, 2000)

Character Profiles

• Daisy Buchanan
• George Wilson
• Jordan Baker
• Myrtle Wilson
• Nick Carraway
• Tom Buchanan
• Class and Wealth

Connect with PMT Education!

• Revision Courses
• Past Papers
• Solution Banks
• University Admissions
• Numerical Reasoning
• Legal Notices

Help shape PMT's new features. Please take a moment to fill out our short survey.