WORD LISTS

The Great Gatsby, Chapters 6-7 hc

Mon Jan 04 05:37:20 EST 2016
By Helen C. (Switzerland)
F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic "The Great Gatsby" is a glittering parade of parties and excess, but at its heart it is about identity and whether being wealthy in America can help you change who you really are. Learn this word list that focuses on physical and emotional temperatures. Here are links to all our word lists for the novel: Chapter 1, Chapters 2-3, Chapters 4-5, Chapters 6-7, Chapters 8-9
notoriety
Gatsby's notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his hospitality and so become authorities on his past, had increased all summer until he fell just short of being news.
persistent
Contemporary legends such as the "underground pipe-line to Canada" attached themselves to him, and there was one persistent story that he didn't live in a house at all, but in a boat that looked like a house and was moved secretly up and down the Long Island shore.
ingratiate
For several weeks I didn't see him or hear his voice on the phone--mostly I was in New York, trotting around with Jordan and trying to ingratiate myself with her senile aunt--but finally I went over to his house one Sunday afternoon.
perturbed
Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy's running around alone, for on the following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby's party.
pervade
There were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same profusion of champagne, the same many-colored, many-keyed commotion, but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn't been there before.
septic
But what had amused me then turned septic on the air now.
proximity
It occurred to me that he had been very slowly bending toward her all evening to attain this proximity, and even while I watched I saw him stoop one ultimate degree and kiss at her cheek.
chafe
She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented "place" that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village--appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short cut from nothing to nothing.
obliterate
After she had obliterated three years with that sentence they could decide upon the more practical measures to be taken.
harrowing
And yet I couldn't believe that they would choose this occasion for a scene--especially for the rather harrowing scene that Gatsby had outlined in the garden.
desolate
The straw seats of the car hovered on the edge of combustion; the woman next to me perspired delicately for a while into her white shirtwaist, and then, as her newspaper dampened under her fingers, lapsed despairingly into deep heat with a desolate cry.
affront
In this heat every extra gesture was an affront to the common store of life.
genial
"I read somewhere that the sun's getting hotter every year," said Tom genially.
stagnant
On the green Sound, stagnant in the heat, one small sail crawled slowly toward the fresher sea.
boisterous
Another definition of "boisterous" is "violently agitated and turbulent"--Nick noticed that was Tom's reaction to discovering that his wife is having an affair. But in the example sentence, Tom is trying to give the impression that he's willing to go along with Daisy's suggestion to have fun in town. Insisting that he drive Daisy in Gatsby's car was his attempt at belittling his rival and regaining control.
"Plenty of gas," said Tom boisterously.
oppressive
Earlier in the chapter, Nick noticed the air at one of Gatsby's party had a "peculiar quality of oppressiveness" that was not due to the weather but to the presence of Tom and Daisy. This connects to the definition of "oppressive" as "marked by unjust severity or arbitrary behavior."
Jordan and Tom and I got into the front seat of Gatsby's car, Tom pushed the unfamiliar gears tentatively and we shot off into the oppressive heat leaving them out of sight behind.
relentless
The relentless beating heat was beginning to confuse me and I had a bad moment there before I realized that so far his suspicions hadn't alighted on Tom.
inexplicable
Her expression was curiously familiar--it was an expression I had often seen on women's faces but on Myrtle Wilson's face it seemed purposeless and inexplicable until I realized that her eyes, wide with jealous terror, were fixed not on Tom, but on Jordan Baker, whom she took to be his wife.
intermittent
The prolonged and tumultuous argument that ended by herding us into that room eludes me, though I have a sharp physical memory that, in the course of it, my underwear kept climbing like a damp snake around my legs and intermittent beads of sweat raced cool across my back.
stifling
The room was large and stifling, and, though it was already four o'clock, opening the windows admitted only a gust of hot shrubbery from the Park.
portentous
The wedding march is portentous to the couple getting married at the moment, who contrast with Tom and Daisy breaking apart upstairs (it could also foreshadow their reunion). Nick uses the adjective again to accompany his realization that he had turned thirty, which is significant because he was getting closer to death and to the responsibilities of being a man (which could include marriage).
As Tom took up the receiver the compressed heat exploded into sound and we were listening to the portentous chords of Mendelssohn's Wedding March from the ballroom below.
vicariously
At this point Jordan and I tried to go but Tom and Gatsby insisted with competitive firmness that we remain--as though neither of them had anything to conceal and it would be a privilege to partake vicariously of their emotions.
magnanimous
"Magnanimous" is not usually used to describe "scorn" but here, Tom can magnanimously give Gatsby the chance to be alone with Daisy because he knows that he had already succeeded in driving them apart with his scornful accusations. Nick could also be mocking the generous extent of Tom's scornful nature.
She looked at Tom, alarmed now, but he insisted with magnanimous scorn.
clamorous
At first I couldn't find the source of the high, groaning words that echoed clamorously through the bare garage--then I saw Wilson standing on the raised threshold of his office, swaying back and forth and holding to the doorposts with both hands.
truculent
Only the Negro and I were near enough to hear what he said but the policeman caught something in the tone and looked over with truculent eyes.

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