Text - The Great Gatsby Notes | Leaving Cert English

Published in 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is a sharp critique of 1920s American society, charting the collision between romantic idealism and entrenched social privilege during the Jazz Age. Set across Long Island and New York City in the summer of 1922, the novel explores how unbridled capitalism, rigid class barriers, and moral carelessness corrode personal integrity. For the Leaving Certificate Higher Level examination in 2027, the text is prescribed both as a Single Text in Paper II (Section I) and as a comparative text in Section II under the three Higher Level modes: Theme or issue, Cultural Context, and General Vision and Viewpoint. Mastering the novel requires close analysis of narrative perspective, symbolic patterning, and the unbridgeable divide between old and new wealth.

How Paper II Works: Structure, Marks, and Timing

Paper II lasts 3 hours and 20 minutes and carries 200 marks, matching Paper I to complete the 400-mark examination. The paper contains three sections, and you must answer one question in each:

Section I (The Single Text): 60 marks. You choose between two options, (i) or (ii). Answer one option only; answering both wastes time and earns no extra credit.
Section II (The Comparative Study): 70 marks. You answer on one of the comparative modes printed on the paper.
Section III (Poetry): 70 marks. This consists of an unseen poem (20 marks) and a prescribed poet essay (50 marks).

The syllabus refers to these as Sections A, B, and C, but the printed examination paper labels them with Roman numerals (SECTION I, SECTION II, SECTION III). Budget roughly 65 to 70 minutes for the single text, including 5 minutes for planning. A complete single-text answer consists of an introduction, four to five developed analytical paragraphs, and a focused conclusion.

Every answer is assessed using the State Examinations Commission PCLM marking criteria: Clarity of Purpose (30%), Coherence of Delivery (30%), Efficiency of Language Use (30%), and Accuracy of Mechanics (10%). On a 60-mark question, this equates to 18 marks for Purpose, 18 for Coherence, 18 for Language, and 6 for Mechanics. Reserving five minutes to proofread spelling, punctuation, and syntax protects those mechanics marks directly.

There is one crucial syllabus rule to keep in mind: at Higher Level, you must study a Shakespearean drama. If The Great Gatsby is your single text in Section I, your comparative study in Section II must include a prescribed Shakespeare play (Macbeth or Othello for 2027). Only titles printed on the prescribed list may be studied; film adaptations of The Great Gatsby are not on the comparative film list, so all evidence must come directly from Fitzgerald's novel.

Plot Architecture and Narrative Economy

Fitzgerald constructs the novel across nine tightly symmetrical chapters. Rather than unfolding in strict chronological order, the narrative reaches us through Nick Carraway, a first-person narrator who is also a character in the story—Daisy's cousin, Gatsby's neighbour, and eventually his sole loyal companion. Writing retrospectively from the Midwest two years after the summer of 1922, Nick filters the drama through personal memory, deliberately withholding Gatsby's true origins until Chapter 6 to allow the romantic myth to take shape first.

Chapter 5 is the structural hinge of the novel: everything before it moves towards the reunion between Gatsby and Daisy, and everything after it charts the collapse of that illusion.

Chapter	What happens	Why it matters
1	Nick arrives in West Egg, visits Daisy and Tom in East Egg, meets Jordan Baker, and glimpses Gatsby reaching towards a distant green light across the bay.	Establishes the geographic divide between old and new money, introduces domestic restlessness, and presents Gatsby's romantic yearning.
2	Tom takes Nick to the Valley of Ashes to meet his mistress, Myrtle Wilson. At a drunken party in a Manhattan flat, Tom breaks Myrtle's nose.	Contrasts the decadent luxury of the Eggs with industrial destitution; exposes Tom's brutal physical dominance.
3	Nick attends an extravagant Saturday party at Gatsby's mansion, hears wild rumours, and finally meets his host.	Exposes the spectacle of conspicuous consumption and Gatsby's profound isolation amid hundreds of guests.
4	Gatsby drives Nick to New York, relates a questionable personal history, and introduces the gambler Meyer Wolfshiem. Jordan discloses Gatsby's past romance with Daisy.	Binds Gatsby's fortune directly to organised crime while establishing his romantic motive.
5	Nick hosts the awkward tea-party reunion between Gatsby and Daisy; Gatsby shows off his mansion and his English shirts.	The turning point: Gatsby briefly reclaims Daisy, but her real presence begins to fall short of his colossal illusion.
6	Nick reveals Gatsby's real origin as James Gatz of North Dakota and his tutelage under Dan Cody. Tom and Daisy attend one of Gatsby's parties, which Daisy dislikes.	Dissects the mechanics of self-invention; demonstrates that vast wealth cannot bridge the social gulf with old money.
7	On a stifling afternoon at the Plaza Hotel, Tom confronts Gatsby. Daisy cannot state that she never loved Tom. Driving Gatsby's car home, Daisy strikes and kills Myrtle Wilson.	The climax: Gatsby's fantasy shatters; reckless driving exposes the fatal consequences of upper-class carelessness.
8	Gatsby relates his early courtship of Daisy to Nick and waits for her telephone call. Wilson, crazed with grief, shoots Gatsby in his swimming pool and takes his own life.	Completes the tragedy: Fitzgerald leaves Wilson's journey deliberately vague, showing Gatsby abandoned by the woman he shielded.
9	Nick organises Gatsby's poorly attended funeral, confronts Tom and Jordan, leaves New York, and delivers his final lyrical reflection on aspiration and the past.	Delivers a scathing indictment of aristocratic carelessness; broadens Gatsby's longing into a universal human struggle against time.

Narrative Voice: Nick Carraway as an Unreliable Narrator

Fitzgerald does not present events through an omniscient third-person perspective. Instead, everything reaches us through Nick Carraway, making him both a participating actor and the sole witness. Writing in retrospect, Nick's voice contains significant blind spots and contradictions that mark him as an unreliable narrator.

Nick opens in Chapter 1 by telling us he is 'inclined to reserve all judgements', adding that his father taught him 'a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth'. At the end of Chapter 3 he goes further: 'Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.' The verb 'suspects' is telling; even his claim to honesty is quietly hedged.

His narrative exhibits several distinct biases:

Selective morality: While he expresses disgust at Tom's open infidelity, Nick coordinates Gatsby's private reunion with Daisy and later admires Catherine for lying under oath at the inquest — swearing her sister had never seen Gatsby — to protect Myrtle's reputation.
Compromised observation: At the drunken party in Tom and Myrtle's New York flat in Chapter 2, Nick admits to being intoxicated, and the prose fractures into hazy, disjointed impressions.
The dual stance: Nick describes his ambivalent social position: 'I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.' He is drawn to the glamour of the rich even as his Midwestern moral code recoils from their decadence.
Idealisation of Gatsby: Despite claiming an 'unaffected scorn' for everything Gatsby represented, Nick immediately concedes that 'there was something gorgeous about him', and that Gatsby 'turned out all right at the end'—a retrospective judgement that quietly exempts his friend from the condemnation he pours on East Egg.

The Corruption of the American Dream and the Platonic Ideal

The American Dream originally promised that any individual, regardless of humble birth, could achieve prosperity and fulfilment through industry and moral integrity. Fitzgerald dismantles this myth, showing how 1920s materialism corrupted that promise into an obsession with money and status.

Born James Gatz to impoverished North Dakota farmers, Gatsby consciously invents his persona. Nick explains that he 'sprang from his Platonic conception of himself', creating an idealised self devoted to splendour. After his formative years under the wealthy copper tycoon Dan Cody, Gatz refashions himself as Jay Gatsby. Yet his boundless ambition acquires its singular focus only when he meets Daisy Fay in Louisville. To acquire the palatial West Egg estate required to impress her, Gatsby allies himself with the underworld figure Meyer Wolfshiem, building a fortune through illegal bootlegging during Prohibition.

Gatsby's fatal flaw is his refusal to acknowledge the finality of time. When Nick cautions, 'You can't repeat the past', Gatsby famously replies, 'Why of course you can!' His ambition is not directed towards the future; it is a desperate effort to recover a lost moment. Daisy's actual human limitations inevitably break this illusion. At the Plaza Hotel, she admits she loved Tom as well, telling Gatsby, 'You want too much!' Gatsby's dream collapses because no living person could rival the 'colossal vitality of his illusion'.

Love, Gender, and the Politics of Possession

Relationships in the novel are rarely founded on authentic affection; they function as transactions shaped by social status, masculine power, and financial calculation.

Daisy Buchanan

Daisy embodies the traditional Southern belle who chooses economic preservation over emotional loyalty. With Gatsby still abroad after the war, Daisy married Tom in June 1919 because her life required immediate direction from 'some force—of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality'. Her cynicism surfaces when her daughter is born: 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.' She recognises that within an elite patriarchy, intelligence in a woman only brings misery.

Tom Buchanan

Tom exercises a domineering masculinity grounded in inherited wealth and physical intimidation. Fitzgerald describes him as possessing 'a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner', with 'two shining arrogant eyes' and a body 'capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body'. Tom treats marriage as a property right. When his mistress Myrtle Wilson defies his authority by chanting Daisy's name, he breaks her nose with an open hand, demonstrating the casual brutality behind his patrician polish.

Jordan Baker

Jordan represents the modern 1920s woman: an athletic tournament golfer who smokes, drives, and lives independently. Yet her autonomy is bankrolled by her aunt's old money, and Nick notes the rumour that she once cheated in a tournament, remaining 'incurably dishonest' behind her cool, detached posture.

Myrtle Wilson

Myrtle seeks to escape the Valley of Ashes by entering an affair with Tom, revelling in the consumer goods he buys her. Yet she remains merely an expendable diversion to him. When Myrtle runs towards the speeding yellow car thinking Tom is inside, she is obliterated, illustrating how the working class absorbs the fatal fallout of elite amusement.

Symbolic Patterning and Prose Style

Fitzgerald's lyrical prose relies on recurrent motifs and sensory imagery that deepen the novel's thematic texture:

The Green Light: At the end of Daisy's East Egg dock, the light initially symbolises Gatsby's physical and emotional longing across the water. In Chapter 5, once Daisy is reunited with him, Nick notes that 'the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever'. By Chapter 9, the green light broadens into a national metaphor for human longing: 'the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us'.
The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg: A faded commercial advertisement overlooking the Valley of Ashes, featuring enormous spectacles without a face. When George Wilson stares at the billboard and mutters 'God sees everything', Michaelis points out that it is merely an advertisement. It stands as an empty, commercial substitute for an absent moral judge in a godless consumer society.
The Defunct Mantelpiece Clock: During Gatsby and Daisy's awkward reunion at Nick's cottage in Chapter 5, Gatsby leans against an old timepiece and nearly knocks it down, catching it with trembling fingers. This physical act dramatises his futile effort to stop and reverse the flow of five lost years.
Colour Symbolism: Fitzgerald uses white to evoke the deceptive purity of East Egg ('high in a white palace the king's daughter'), gold and yellow to signal ostentatious commercial wealth (Gatsby's 'yellow car', his 'gold-coloured tie'), and grey to mark the human decay of the Valley of Ashes.
Synaesthesia and Prose Rhythm: Fitzgerald mixes up the senses—describing sound as if it had colour and scent as if it had weight—to capture the giddy, tipsy feel of a Jazz Age party: 'yellow cocktail music', the 'pale gold odour' of the garden. In Chapter 9, he uses anaphora to convey the moral confusion of the East: 'Even when the East excited me most, even when I was most keenly aware of its superiority … even then it had always for me a quality of distortion.'

Cultural Context: The World of the Text

In the comparative study, Cultural Context examines the social world the characters inhabit: the values, class codes, gender expectations, and power structures that dictate what they can and cannot do. Rather than reciting external biographical facts about Fitzgerald, focus squarely on the internal rules governing the world of the novel.

Class and power: Wealth dictates authority. Tom's label 'Mr. Nobody from Nowhere' shows that money alone cannot secure entry into established society. Gatsby's pink suit and flashy parties brand him as new money in a hierarchy dominated by inherited capital.
The position of women: Daisy's fate is sealed by social pragmatism; she knows a woman's safest condition is to be 'a beautiful little fool'. Myrtle possesses no path upward except through Tom's patronage, and has no legal protection when he assaults her. Jordan enjoys independence as a tournament golfer, but her lifestyle is funded by family money.
Work and money: The leisure class does not engage in productive labour. Tom lives off inherited trust funds, Gatsby's fortune derives from illicit bootlegging with Wolfshiem, and George Wilson, the only character engaged in hard physical work, is ground into poverty.
Religion and moral authority: There is no functioning spiritual order. Traditional religion is replaced by consumer advertising, encapsulated when Wilson mistakes the billboard eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg for God.
Race and prejudice: Tom openly champions racial supremacy, warning that 'civilization's going to pieces' and quoting racist literature ('The Rise of the Coloured Empires'). This reflects how the ruling class invokes pseudo-science to protect its privileges against immigrants and minorities.
Violence and the law: Myrtle's broken nose, the fatal hit-and-run, and the double shooting in Gatsby's garden produce no legal consequences for the Buchanans, who slip away untouched.

Worked comparative paragraph (Cultural Context): In The Great Gatsby, social class operates as an unyielding barrier that mercilessly crushes the outsider who attempts to transcend it. Tom Buchanan's contemptuous dismissal of Gatsby as 'Mr. Nobody from Nowhere' makes it plain that vast wealth cannot compensate for the lack of inherited pedigree. Gatsby's gaudy West Egg mansion and pink suit only serve to advertise his exclusion from the established elite. Even after his death, this social division remains absolute: Daisy and Tom retreat behind their fortune without attending his funeral, leaving the dead bootlegger abandoned by the very class he sacrificed his life to enter. In contrast to my second text, where social standing can be altered through community solidarity, Fitzgerald depicts a rigid, transactional culture where power is locked within inherited dynasties, and any attempt to breach that boundary results in social and physical destruction.

Theme or Issue: Constructing Linked Comparisons

For the comparative mode Theme or issue, you trace a single central idea across all your texts, maintaining identical terminology throughout your answer. Excellent themes to pair with The Great Gatsby include: the corruption of the American Dream, the destructive grip of the past, social class as an insurmountable wall, and the hollowness behind material wealth.

When exploring 'the destructive grip of the past', your key textual moments in The Great Gatsby are:

Gatsby's naive assertion to Nick: 'Why of course you can!'
The Chapter 5 reunion where the green light loses its magic: 'the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever'.
The Plaza Hotel showdown in Chapter 7, where Daisy shatters Gatsby's dream by confessing she loved Tom too.
The novel's closing line: 'borne back ceaselessly into the past'.

When writing a comparative paragraph, never present three separate summaries. State the precise facet of the theme, demonstrate it in text one with exact quotation, and then move across to your other texts using clear comparative connectors: 'A similar tension operates in...', 'Where Fitzgerald presents an irrecoverable past, my second text...', 'In sharp contrast to Gatsby's delusion...'.

Worked comparative paragraph (Theme or issue: The destructive grip of the past): In The Great Gatsby, an obsessive devotion to recapturing the past blinds the protagonist to reality and leads straight to tragedy. Gatsby genuinely believes that five intervening years of separation and marriage can be erased by sheer willpower, incredulously insisting to Nick, 'Why of course you can!' repeat the past. However, this nostalgic fixation proves tyrannical. When Daisy weeps at the Plaza Hotel that he asks 'too much' because she did love Tom once, Gatsby's rigid dream instantly fractures against the messy reality of time. His inability to live in the present leaves him isolated, clutching at a fantasy until Wilson's bullet ends his life. A similar destructive nostalgia emerges in my second text, where the protagonist also remains emotionally paralysed by former glories. Yet while Fitzgerald frames Gatsby's backward gaze as a tragic, poetic delusion rooted in romantic hope, my second text presents the past as an oppressive cultural debt that characters must consciously renounce if they are to survive.

Comparative Essay Structure and Recurring Examination Angles

The Format of Section II

In recent Higher Level examination papers, each comparative mode provides a choice: either a single 70-mark essay comparing all three texts together, or a two-part question split into part (a) (30 marks) on one text, and part (b) (40 marks) comparing the other two texts. Always read the marks in brackets and follow instructions strictly. If part (a) asks for one text, discussing three will cost you substantial Clarity of Purpose marks. Allocate your time in proportion: roughly 25 minutes for a 30-mark task, and 35 to 40 minutes for a 40-mark task.

Recurring Single-Text Angles and Answer Plans

Past examination questions on The Great Gatsby consistently return to the same core issues. You can prepare adaptable paragraph plans around these common angles:

Love and marriage: Contrast Tom and Daisy's transactional, self-preserving union with Tom and Myrtle's abusive affair, and Gatsby's idealised, possessive obsession with Daisy. Test whether authentic love exists anywhere in the text.
Critique of society versus study of selfish people: Argue that the personal selfishness of Tom, Daisy, and Jordan does not weaken the social critique; rather, their callous behaviour is the very evidence Fitzgerald uses to expose the moral bankruptcy of Jazz Age capitalism. Use the Valley of Ashes and Gatsby's lonely funeral as key evidence.
Contrasts and inequality: Structure your essay around geographical contrasts (East Egg vs West Egg vs Valley of Ashes), class contrasts (inherited pedigree vs underworld wealth vs grinding labour), and tonal contrasts (dazzling parties vs desolate graveyard).
What shapes Gatsby's character?: Trace the sequence of formative influences: North Dakota poverty, self-invention, Dan Cody's tutelage, military uniform, meeting Daisy, Prohibition bootlegging with Wolfshiem, and exclusion by the old money elite.
Is Gatsby 'great'?: Explore the deliberate irony of the title: magnificent in his capacity for hope and chivalric loyalty, yet corrupt in his methods and tragically misguided in the unworthy object of his devotion.

Key terms

The American Dream: The national ethos asserting that individual merit and hard work guarantee upward social mobility and fulfilment; critiqued by Fitzgerald as corrupted by Jazz Age materialism.
Old Money: Inherited, generational wealth associated with family pedigree, effortless social codes, and institutional power, embodied by East Egg and the Buchanans.
New Money: Recently acquired wealth derived from post-war enterprise, speculation, or crime, characterised by conspicuous consumerism and lack of aristocratic acceptance, embodied by West Egg and Gatsby.
The Valley of Ashes: The industrial wasteland situated between Long Island and New York City that symbolises the moral decay, social neglect, and human cost of unchecked capitalism.
Unreliable Narrator: A first-person narrator whose credibility is compromised by personal bias, retrospective memory, selective morality, or limited perspective, such as Nick Carraway.
Conspicuous Consumption: The extravagant public purchase and display of luxury goods to advertise wealth and claim social status.
Lost Generation: The post-World War I generation that experienced profound disillusionment, moral aimlessness, and spiritual emptiness following the devastation of the conflict.
The Green Light: The light situated at the end of Daisy's dock, symbolising Gatsby's personal longing, the allure of wealth, and universal human yearning for an elusive future.
The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg: A faded commercial billboard in the Valley of Ashes representing the gaze of an absent moral or divine authority in a secular, consumer-driven society.
Platonic Conception: An idealised, perfect vision of oneself that an individual strives to actualise, referenced by Nick when explaining James Gatz's transformation into Jay Gatsby.
PCLM: The State Examinations Commission marking criteria for Leaving Certificate English: Clarity of Purpose (30%), Coherence of Delivery (30%), Efficiency of Language Use (30%), and Accuracy of Mechanics (10%).
Cultural Context: A comparative mode analysing the world of the text: the social, economic, religious, and gender structures that govern characters' choices and values.
General Vision and Viewpoint: A comparative mode examining the overall outlook or philosophy of life conveyed by a text, evaluated along a spectrum between optimism and despair.
Theme or Issue: A comparative mode where a central idea or human concern (such as ambition, love, or class) is traced and contrasted across multiple texts using identical terms.

Check yourself

A Single Text question asks whether Fitzgerald's portrayal of love and marriage is 'entirely negative'. Which single word must dictate the balance of your argument, and why?
The word 'entirely'. It invites you to agree with the bleak portrayal of cynical marriages (Tom and Daisy) while establishing an essential counter-argument: Gatsby's noble, transcendent 'romantic readiness', which prevents the vision from being wholly negative.
What is the structural turning point of the novel and what key event takes place there?
Chapter 5 is the structural hinge, staging the awkward tea-party reunion between Gatsby and Daisy at Nick's cottage, which marks both the peak of Gatsby's romantic dream and the beginning of its inevitable disillusionment.
What are the three geographical locations reflecting class divisions in the novel, and what social tier does each represent?
East Egg represents Old Money (inherited aristocratic dynasties), West Egg represents New Money (newly acquired fortunes lacking social pedigree), and the Valley of Ashes represents No Money (the exploited, invisible working class).
Where does Nick claim to be 'one of the few honest people that I have ever known', and why is that claim complicated?
It appears at the end of Chapter 3. It is complicated because Nick hedges it with the verb 'suspects' ('Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues'), and his subsequent actions show selective morality and bias.
What do the billboard eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg symbolise in the Valley of Ashes?
They represent the hollow commercial substitute for an absent divine or moral judge in a secular, consumerist society where advertising has replaced spiritual authority.
Which three comparative modes are prescribed for Leaving Certificate English Higher Level candidates in 2027?
Theme or issue, Cultural Context, and General Vision and Viewpoint.
How are marks distributed under the PCLM system for a 60-mark Single Text question on Paper II?
Clarity of Purpose: 18 marks (30%); Coherence of Delivery: 18 marks (30%); Efficiency of Language Use: 18 marks (30%); Accuracy of Mechanics: 6 marks (10%).

Text - The Great Gatsby