Task 1. Replace each highlighted word with an appropriate synonym.
THE GREAT GATSBY (CHAPTER 4)
Cultural background
Task 1. Write comments on the words in bold. If possible, make your comments relevant to the USA of the 1920s (the book setting).
1. ‘He’s a bootlegger,’ said the young ladies, moving somewhere between his cocktails and his flowers.
a person who makes or sells goods, especially alcohol, illegally
2. ‘One time he killed a man who had found out that he was nephew to Von Hindenburg.’
a German general and statesman who led the Imperial German Army during World War I and later became President of Germany from 1925 until his death
3. ‘What part of Middle West?’ I inquired casually.
‘San Francisco.’
It is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. On April 18, 1906, the San Andreas Fault slipped more than 10 feet, unleashing a massive earthquake. The city rebuilt quickly with an improved city center and hosted the lavish Panama International Exposition just nine years later
4. ‘Meyer Wolfsheim? No, he’s a gambler. He’s the man who fixed the World Series back in 1919.’
The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball. Baseball's gambling problems came to a head in 1919, when eight players of the Chicago White Sox were alleged to have conspired to throw the 1919 World Series. Gandil, in collaboration with gambler Joseph "Sport" Sullivan, approached his teammates and got six of them to agree to throw the Series
5. ‘Here’s another thing I always carry. A souvenir of Oxford days. It was taken in Trinity Quad.’
It is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Trinity has produced three British prime ministers, placing it third after Christ Church and Balliol in terms of former students who have held the office
Vocabulary
Task 1. Replace each highlighted word with an appropriate synonym.
| 1. And then came that disconcerting ride. We hadn’t reached West Egg Village before Gatsby began leaving his elegant sentences unfinished and slapping himself indecisively on the knee of his caramel-colored suit. |
Synonym for disconcerting: confusing
| 2. He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American–that comes, I suppose, with the absence of lifting work or rigid sitting in youth and, even more, with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games. |
Synonym for sporadic: occasional
| 3. I saw them in Santa Barbara when they came back and I thought I’d never seen a girl so mad about her husband. If he left the room for a minute, she’d look around uneasily and say “Where’s Tom gone?” and wear the most abstracted expression until she saw him coming in the door. |
Synonym for abstracted: absent
| 4. She used to sit on the sand with his head in her lap by the hour rubbing her fingers over his eyes and looking at him with unfathomable delight. |
Synonym for unfathomable: difficult to understand
| 5. His voice was solemn, as if the sudden extinction of a clan still haunted him. For a moment I suspected that he was pulling my leg, but a glance at him convinced me otherwise. |
Synonym for he was pulling my leg: was making fun of me
| 6. ‘After that I lived like a young rajah in all the capitals of Europe….’ With an effort I managed to restrain my incredulous laughter. The very phrases were worn so threadbare that that they evoked no image. |
Synonym for incredulous: sceptical
| 7. ‘Don’t hurry, Meyer,’ said Gatsby, without enthusiasm. Mr Wolfsheim raised his hand in a sort of benediction. |
Synonym for benediction: praying
| 8. ‘Oh, it’s nothing underhand,’ he assured me. ‘Miss Baker’s a great sportswoman, you know, and she’d never do anything that wasn’t all right.’ |
Synonym for underhand: tricky
| 9. Suddenly I wasn’t thinking of Gatsby and Daisy any more, but of this clean, hard, limited person, who dealt in universal skepticism, and who leaned jauntily just within the circle of my arm. |
Synonym for skepticism: disbelief
| 10. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people–with single-mindedness of a burglar blowing the safe. |
Synonym for single-mindedness: sense of purpose
Task 2. Use a dictionary and give English definitions for the words in bold.
1. ‘They came to gamble, and when Ferret wandered into the garden it meant he was cleaned out and Associated Traction would have to fluctuate profitably next day.’ эти ездили ради карт, и если Феррет выходил в сад и в одиночку разгуливал по дорожкам, это означало, что он проигрался и что завтра
«Ассошиэйтед транспорт» подскочит в цене.
Definition for fluctuate: to change, especially continuously and between one level or thing and another:
2. ‘This quality breaking through his punctilious manner in the shape of restlessness.’ У Гэтсби это выражалось в постоянном беспокойстве, нарушавшем обычную сдержанность его манер.
Definition for punctilious: very careful to behave correctly or to give attention to details
3. ‘It was a photograph of half a dozen young men in blazers.’ На фотографии несколько молодых людей в спортивных куртках
Definition for blazer: a type of formal jacket that is a different colour from the trousers or skirt that are worn with it. In the UK a blazer often has the symbol of a school or organization sewn on the front pocket and is worn as part of a uniform
4. ‘The juxtaposition of these two remarks was startling. Gatsby answered for me.’ Я растерялся, ошарашенный таким переходом.
Definition for juxtaposition: the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect сопоставление
5. ‘A succulent hash arrived, and Mr Wolfsheim, forgetting the more sentimental atmosphere of the old Metropole, began to eat with ferocious delicacy.’ Подали аппетитный гуляш с овощами, и мистер Вулфшим, позабыв о волнующих преимуществах старого
Definition for succulent: tender, juicy, and tasty
Definition for ferocious: very aggressive or violent; very strong
6. ‘Fixed the World Series? The idea staggered me.’
Definition for to stagger: to shock or surprise somebody very much
7. ‘They were so engrossed in each other that she didn’t see me until I was five feet away.’
Definition for to engross: if something engrosses you, it is so interesting that you give it all your attention and time
8. ‘In February she was presumably engaged to a man from New Orleans.’
Definition for presumably: used to say that you think that something is probably true
9. ‘He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendor.’
Definition for womb: the organ in women and female animals in which babies or young animals develop before they are born
Definition for splendor: grand and impressive beauty
10. ‘When I said you were a particular friend of Tom’s, he started to abandon the whole idea.’
Definition for to abandon: to stop doing something, especially before it is finished
Task 3. Find in the text English equivalents to the following phrases. Write out from the text the sentences with these phrases.
Гибкость движения
He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American Он балансировал, стоя на подножке автомобиля с той удивительной свободой движения, которая так характерна для американцев
охота на крупного зверя,
hunting big game collecting jewels, chiefly rubies, hunting big game, painting a little, things for myself only запонки,
“I see you’re looking at my cuff buttons.”
коренной зуб,
“Finest specimens of human molars,” he informed me.
терзания разбитого сердца,
I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease, with their crimson-lighted depths, the drawings of his broken heart.
пансионер (квартирант с питанием)
A man named Klipspringer was there so often and so long that he became known as “the boarder”—I doubt if he had any other home.
жемчужное колье,
and the day before the wedding he gave her a string of pearls
наградить орденом,
I was promoted to be a major, and every Allied government gave me a decoration
владелец,
So my first impression, that he was a person of some undefined consequence, had gradually faded and he had become simply the proprietor of an elaborate road-house next door.
каменная подъездная дорога
Snell was there three days before he went to the penitentiary, so drunk out on the gravel drive that Mrs. Ulysses Swett’s automobile ran over his right hand.
оранжерея,
Sitting down behind many layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservatory, we started to town.
искоса посмотрел на меня
He looked at me sideways—and I knew why Jordan Baker had believed he was lying.
пулеметная рота,
In the Argonne Forest I took two machine-gun detachments so far forward that there was a half mile gap on either side of us where the infantry couldn’t advance.
знаки различия трех немецких дивизий
We stayed there two days and two nights, a hundred and thirty men with sixteen Lewis guns, and when the infantry came up at last they found the insignia of three German divisions among the piles of dead.
взять под козырек, хорошо проветриваемый,
виски с содовой и льдом,
“Highballs?”
завсегдатай,
He’s quite a character around New York—a denizen of Broadway
двухместный открытый автомобиль,
She dressed in white, and had a little white roadster
как ни в чем не бывало,
Next day at five o’clock she married Tom Buchanan without so much as a shiver, and started off on a three months’ trip to the South Seas.
двухместный конный экипаж,
A dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms, followed by two carriages with drawn blinds, and by more cheerful carriages for friends.
темный карниз,
Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, I had no girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs
молодые люди с плоскостопием и близорукостью
After that she didn’t play around with the soldiers any more, but only with a few flat-footed, short-sighted young men in town, who couldn’t get into the army at all.