Question

In paragraph 2 why does Fitzgerald personify the Georgia city as sleeping?

Answer 1

C) This suggests that nothing lively has really ever occurred in the city.

Explanation:

I would go for C mainly because of the way he describes Jim Powell- he says that "to make [Jim] an appealing character" would be deceptive, then goes on to describe Jim with words that make him sound boring and static- Jim is "bred-in-the-bone" and "dyed-in-the-wool", and he "[grows] lazily all during Jelly-bean season, which is every season".

(Background information: "bred-in-the-bone" and "dyed-in-the-wool" both mean "unlikely to change", more or less, and "Jelly-bean" is '20s slang for a man who dresses well but has nothing else to offer women, i.e., a fop or a dandy.)

These details are not the only ones that support C being the answer, but they are the easiest to spot.

So, Fitzgerald writes in paragraph 1, Jim is boring. Then, he describes his hometown as a place that has been "[dozing] sleepily" for "forty thousand years". Just based on the fact that Jim is a boring Jelly-bean and his hometown is a sleeping "Jelly-bean patch", I would say that, by "sleeping", Fitzgerald means "boring and uneventful".