Major Works Data Sheet
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Name
The Lost Generation
Reminder: Academic dishonesty includes direct copying of assignments, passing off someone else’s work as your own, and
using others’ intellectual work without giving them credit. Cooperative learning involves asking questions, discussing
potential answers, and working towards understanding… together. While cooperative learning is encouraged, academic
dishonesty is NEVER okay.
World War I
The Jazz Age (including the flapper)
The Lost Generation
Prohibition
1920s: Race in America
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Standard (RL. 11-12.5) Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text,
including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text. Standard (RL.1112.5) Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as
its aesthetic impact. Standard (RL. 11-12.10) By the end year, read and comprehend grade level literature, including stories, dramas, and poems.
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Francis Scott Fitzgerald
Ernest Hemingway
How his life
influenced
his work
relations
with women
death
career
highlights
What was the relationship between the two?
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When they met, Fitzgerald = famous. Hemingway = nobody. They were friends, and F helped H. The more famous H
got, the less he admired F.
Both expatriates living in Paris
Hemingway called Fitzgerald “a drunk, a weakling, a hypochondriac, a fool, an irresponsible writer, a nuisance,
sexually insecure and wife-dominated…”2
H on F: “I never had any respect for him ever except for his lovely, golden, wasted talent.” 3
Matthew J. Bruccoli, Fitzgerald and Hemingway: A Dangerous Friendship (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995) 1.
Ibid, 215
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(1) Exposition
Setting? (Time/Place) Main characters?
(2) Rising Action
What is the conflict? What are some of the events that
seem to make things worse?
(Please provide events in chronological order.)
Gatsby Plot Summary
(3) Climax
What happens during the point of
greatest tension? (Note: this is always
a scene.)
(4) Falling Action
What is the outcome of the climax?
(Chronological order)
(5) Resolution
How does it all work out (or
not) at the end?
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Subject List
(Remember, a subject is an abstract noun. Think of this as a big idea topic,
like “love” or “identity.”) You need at least seven.
The Great Gatsby
By F. Scott Fitzgerald
Published in 1925 to some of the best reviews of Fitzgerald’s
career
Considered the definitive Jazz Age novel:
Potential Themes
Significance of the Opening Scene
(Remember, a theme is the author’s bigger message about life. Your theme
should be a complete sentence. It should include an abstract noun from
above. It should NOT include specifics about plot or character. Example:
“Love conquers all.”)
You need at least five.
Significance of the Closing Scene
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Gatsby Setting: Remember that setting involves both the where and the when. Give me several significant quote descriptors for each place. Compare
and contrast the places. Discuss what the places might signify on a deeper level and why certain action does (or does not) take place in these locales.
East Egg
West Egg
Valley of Ashes
Great Gatsby Characters
Please attach your character map to this Major Works Data Sheet. Your character map should cover Tom, Daisy, Nick, Gatsby, Jordan,
Myrtle, and George. Include:
 Names of the characters
 Brief blurbs to describe characters’ main function or behavior in the story.
 Pictures and names of the actors you’ve chosen to play the characters in a movie.
 Plausible choice of actors.
 Coded arrows to show relationships (friendships, marriages, family, and romance)
 A key to show what the arrows mean
Great Gatsby: Significant Quotes and Author’s Style
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Please attach all of your passage analysis work (passages arranged in chronological order)
Please also attach all of your lecture notes, as well as your Gatsby Discussion Board rubric.
Please also attach your Blue Book Exam essay.
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Please attach all of your lecture notes.
Please also attach your Code Hero notes for Hills Like White Elephants, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, and Soldier’s Home.
Please also attach your Blue Book Exam quote identification.
Hemingway: Significant Quotes and Author’s Style
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12th grade AP Literature Exam: Question 3
The Great Gatsby
Directions: As a senior taking the AP Literature exam, one of your essay prompts will be the infamous “open question.” This
prompt (it’s always #3 on the test) presents you with a broad concept or theme; you must—from memory!—analyze how a
quality work of literature typifies that concept or theme. Great Gatsby is applicable to all of the following prompts, which
come from past AP exams. Be prepared to outline and/or write any of the following essays.
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1982. In great literature, no scene of violence exists for its own sake. Choose a work of literary merit that confronts the reader or audience
with a scene or scenes of violence. In a well-organized essay, explain how the scene or scenes contribute to the meaning of the complete
work. Avoid plot summary.
1983. From a novel or play of literary merit, select an important character who is a villain. Then, in a well-organized essay, analyze the
nature of the character’s villainy and show how it enhances meaning in the work. Do not merely summarize the plot.
1988. Choose a distinguished novel or play in which some of the most significant events are mental or psychological; for example,
awakenings, discoveries, changes in consciousness. In a well-organized essay, describe how the author manages to give these internal
events the sense of excitement, suspense, and climax usually associated with external action. Do not merely summarize the plot.
1991. Many plays and novels use contrasting places (for example, two countries, two cities or towns, two houses, or the land and the sea) to
represent opposed forces or ideas that are central to the meaning of the work. Choose a novel or play that contrasts two such places. Write
an essay explaining how the places differ, what each place represents, and how their contrast contributes to the meaning of the work.
1992. In a novel or play, a confidant (male) or a confidante (female) is a character, often a friend or relative of the hero or heroine, whose
role is to be present when the hero or heroine needs a sympathetic listener to confide in. Frequently the result is, as Henry James remarked,
that the confidant or confidante can be as much “the reader’s friend as the protagonist’s.” However, the author sometimes uses this
character for other purposes as well. Choose a confidant or confidante from a novel or play of recognized literary merit and write an essay
in which you discuss the various ways this character functions in the work.
1997. Novels and plays often include scenes of weddings, funerals, parties, and other social occasions. Such scenes may reveal the values
of the characters and the society in which they live. Select a novel or play that includes such a scene and, in a focused essay, discuss the
contribution the scene makes to the meaning of the work as a whole.
2002. Morally ambiguous characters—characters whose behavior discourages readers from identifying them as purely evil or purely
good—are at the heart of many works of literature. Choose a novel or play in which a morally ambiguous character plays a pivotal role.
Then write an essay in which you explain how the character can be viewed as morally ambiguous and why his or her moral ambiguity is
significant to the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.
2004. Critic Roland Barthes has said, “Literature is the question minus the answer.” Choose a novel, or play, and, considering Barthes’
observation, write an essay in which you analyze a central question the work raises and the extent to which it offers answers. Explain how
the author’s treatment of this question affects your understanding of the work as a whole.
2007. In many works of literature, past events can affect, positively or negatively, the present activities, attitudes, or values of a character.
Choose a work in which a character must contend with some aspect of the past, either personal or societal. Then write an essay in which
you show how the character’s relationship to the past contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.
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