The Great Gatsby: Comprehension Quiz

1.What can the reader infer from the following lines?

“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

• A. Nick most likely comes from a wealthy background.

• B. The characters in the story are surrounded by poverty.

• C. Nick’s father is not very honest.

• D. Nick despised his father for giving out unwanted advice.

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2.What is most likely the author’s intent by having Nick tell the reader that he is “inclined to reserve all judgments”?

• A. To justify why he succeeded in politics.

• B. To make the reader feel that he is a credible narrator.

• C. To show how loyal he is to his family.

• D. To show Nick’s hypocrisy.

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3.Which of the following words best describes the scene at Gatsby’s party in Paragraph 5?

By midnight the hilarity had increased. A celebrated tenor had sung in Italian, and a notorious contralto had sung in jazz, and between the numbers people were doing “stunts” all over the garden, while happy, vacuous bursts of laughter rose toward the summer sky. A pair of stage twins, who turned out to be the girls in yellow, did a baby act in costume, and champagne was served in glasses bigger than finger-bowls. The moon had risen higher, and floating in the Sound was a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drip of the banjoes on the lawn.

• A. tranquil

• B. subdued

• C. violent

• D. extravagant

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4.How do the following lines from Chapter 3 add to the development of Gatsby’s character?

He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.

• A. Gatsby is a normal, common man.

• B. Gatsby is charismatic and mysterious, which draws Nick and many others to him.

• C. Gatsby sees people for who they truly are.

• C. Gatsby sees people for who they truly are.

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5.Which of these inferences about Gatsby is best supported by the text?

• A. Nick appreciates how foolish Gatsby acts around his guests.

• B. His wealthy air and charming manners seems to be a well-crafted persona or act.

• C. People think Gatsby’s parties are boring.

• D. He wishes that he did not have to host these grand parties.

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6.Which sentence from the text most strongly supports the answer to question 5?

• A. “Almost at the moment when Mr. Gatsby identified himself, a butler hurried toward him with the information that Chicago was calling him on the wire.”

• B. “Some time before he introduced himself I’d got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care.”

• C. “It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.”

• D. “And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit.”

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7.What is a central idea from chapter 1 of the excerpt?

• A. Nick is more judgmental than he intends to be, despite trying to be tolerant.

• B. Nick’s father would have given different advice if he had met Gatsby.

• C. Nick feels like he was duped by Gatsby.

• D. Nick is writing this story because he finds himself yearning for his New York life.

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8.Which sentence from the excerpt most strongly supports the answer to question 7?

• A. “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.”

• B. “If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away.”

• C. “Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon—for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions.”

• D. “When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.”

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