1. Write down the words according to the definition.
1) ascertain: to find out something
2) cataract: an abundant, usually overwhelming flow or fall, as of a river or rain
3) contemptuous: showing that you think someone or something deserves no respect
4) cynical: unwilling to believe that people have good, honest, or sincere reasons for doing something
5) escort: a man who accompanies a woman to a particular social event
6) homogeneity: (formal) the quality of being homogeneous
7) innuendo: an indirect remark about sb/sth, usually suggesting sth bad or rude; the use of remarks like this
8) orchestra: a large group of people who play various musical instruments together, led by a conductor
9)saunter: to walk in a slow relaxed way, especially so that you look confident or proud
10) testimony: a formal statement saying that something is true, especially one a witness makes in a court of law
2. Fill in the blanks in the following sentences.
1) There was machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour.
2) The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun.
3) They were at least agonizingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few words in the right key.
4) That was for the golf tournament. She had lost in the finals the week before.
5) With Jordan’s slender golden arm resting in mine, we descended the steps and sauntered about garden.
6) The two girls and Jordan leaned together confidentially .
7) As our credulity switched back to her she leaned forward with enthusiasm.
8) The undergraduate nodded in a cynical, melancholy way.
9) “What do you think?” he demanded impetuously .
10) He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf.
3.Answer the following questions in short..
1. Novels: This Side of Paradise(1920), The Beautiful and Damned(1922), The Great Gatsby(1925), and Tender Is the Night(1934). A fifth, unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon(1941).
Short stories: Flappers and Philosophers(1920), Tales of the Jazz Age(1922), All the Sad Young Men(1926), Taps at Reveille(1935), and The Pat Hobby Stories(1962).
2. The “Lost Generation” refers to a group of early-20th-century American writers, notably Earnest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hart Crane, Sherwood Anderson, William Faulkner, E. E. Cummings, John Dos Passos, and T. S. Eliot, whose experiences in World War I undermined their belief in justice, morality, manhood, and love.
3. The Prohibition era began with the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution in January 1919, which made it legal to forbid by law the selling of alcoholic drinks. With the passage of the Volstead Act in the same year, it become illegal to sell. Manufacture, and transport alcohol. Prohibition ended in December 1933 with the passage of the Twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution, repealing in the Eighteenth.
1. Fill in the blanks
1) Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality , tipped out at a cheerful word.
2) Gatsby engages himself in bootlegging and other shady activities.
3) The crowds hardly know their host; many come and go without invitation.
4) Fitzgerald was essentially a 1920s person.
5) Fitzgerald was one of the great stylists in American literature.
6) The wealthy become the symbol of hope and optimism and success.
7)“You can’t repeat the past,” Nick says to Gatsby.
8) Through this first-person (“I”) narrative technique, we also gain insight into the author’s perspective.
9) Tom sees no wrongdoing in having an affair with Myrtle Wilson.
10) It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it.
2.Answer the following questions in short.
1.Honesty is does not seem to determine which characters are sympathetic and which are not in this novel in quite the same way that it does in others. Nick is able to admire Gatsby despite his knowledge of the man’s illegal dealings and bootlegging. Ironically, it is the corrupt Daisy who takes pause at Gatsby’s sordid past. Her indignation at his “dishonesty,” however, is less moral than class-based. Her sense of why Gatsby should not behave in an immoral manner is based on what she expects from members of her milieu, rather than what she believes to be intrinsically right. The standards for honesty and morality seem to be dependent on class and gender in this novel. Tom finds his wife’s infidelity intolerable, however, he does not hesitate to lie to her about his own affair.
2.Decay is a word that constantly comes up in The Great Gatsby, which is appropriate in a novel which centers around the death of the American Dream. Decay is most evident in the so-called “valley of ashes.” With great virtuosity, Fitzgerald describes a barren wasteland which probably has little to do with the New York landscape and instead serves to comment on the downfall of American society. It seems that the American dream has been perverted, reversed. Gatsby lives in West Egg and Daisy in East Egg; therefore, Gatsby looks East with yearning, rather than West, the traditional direction of American frontier ambitions. Fitzgerald portrays the chauvinistic and racist Tom in a very negative light, clearly scoffing at his apocalyptic vision of the races intermarrying. Fitzgerald’s implication seems to be that society has already decayed enough and requires no new twist.
3.The American Dream promised the deepest and richest self-fulfillment for those who would make the most of their natural abilities. It was, of course, partly about money and comfort, but it was also bout achievement and dignity. All that is left of it in Fitzgerald’s novel is a crude pursuit of wealth and the superficial glamor that wealth provides. Those who have wealth, like the Buchanans, are shallow, empty, bored, unhappy people. Gatsby’s tragedy is that his vague yearning for greatness has taken the only form available to him—a passion for the world of Daisy Buchanan.