Gatsby Discussion Questions

As a closing activity to Gatsby, address one of the discussion topics, below. (You do not need to respond to classmates' blogs.)  Responses should be a minimum of 250 words and should make frequent references to the text.  No more than FIVE students should respond to any one prompt. Assignment must be posted by Thursday, 3.1.12 at 7:30am.

1. Should The Great Gatsby be classified as a tragedy?  If so, what is the fatal flaw?  If not, how should it be classified?
2. How does Fitzgerald's selection of names enhance characterization?  Select a character and explain.
3. One of Fitzgerald's strengths is his imagistic style.  Consider the moods created in his description of the Buchanan's mansion, Gatsby's mansion, etc. How do the moods contribute to the theme of new money vs. old money?
4. Discuss the irony of the title for the book.  Who actually names Gatsby? Suggest an alternate title.
5. According to The Great Gatsby, what traits constitute the zeitgeist (spirit of the time) of the 1920's?

Helpful Verbs for Literary Analysis

Helpful Verbs for Literary Analysis

Always strive for active voice and present tense when analyzing a short story, a novel, a passage from a novel, an essay, a play, or a poem.

The writer…

        asserts that wisdom resides in simplicity

        creates a world where robots

          constructs family life sans TV and video games

          reconstructs his father’s memories

          relives the adventures of his youth

          traces the boy’s family history

          tracks the evil results of greed

          probes the innate cruelty of human nature

          explores how one lie leads to legions

          criticizes negligent parents

          blames fate for his brother’s illness

          accuses society of apathy and selfishness

          attacks the authority figures

          argues the merits of honest humiliation

          establishes a mood of dissatisfied sarcasm

          presents a childhood story

          seeks to explain the inexplicable

          finds ruptured relationships to be the cause

          reveals how love can change lives

          thinks love’s merits are overrated

          believes all people want to feel significant

          feels people too often succumb to despair

          suggests that all families have secrets

          points out the confusion

          considers the historical period

          examines the idealism of youth

          exposes the hypocrisy of the self-righteous

          dissects the underlying reasons

          focuses on the cruelty of racist remarks

          concentrates on motives behind decisions

          reflects on a long walk in the woods

          recalls a time when Americans relied on

          reminisces about his grandfather’s fiddle

          commiserates with  families of soldiers

          recreates the blurred landscape of a blind man

           refers to her own childhood

 illuminates the character’s thoughts

 tells how he escaped into another world

 shows how education defines social status

 portrays a young athlete  

 depicts the hardships of the Depression

 illustrates the struggles of migrant workers

 paints a portrait of society’s forgotten

           describes the courage of ordinary people

 provides a glimpse into  

           cries out for social justice

           pleads for acceptance

           appeals for understanding

           expresses the pain of loss 

           confides her sense of guilt                                 

           rages against the materialistic rat race              

           questions conventional wisdom   

           marvels at nature’s resilience

           ignites the reader’s imagination

           uses examples of broken things

           pinpoints the moment of epiphany

           hints that irony taunts our every move

           implies that his despair stemmed from

           makes clear the bristling resentment

           surprises the reader

           searches for answers to

           empties his heart

           produces two very different views

           sorts through raw memories

           inspires the reader to take a stand

           chisels careful images of disappointments

           encourages following whims

           insists on facing mortality

Literary Analysis Power Point

http://www.slideshare.net/Jennabates/how-to-write-a-literary-analysis-essay

Week of Feb. 21-24 Assignments & Homework

Week of Feb. 21-24 Due Dates/Homework: 

Analysis of "Between the World and Me" Opening paragraphs.  Must be posted by 7:30 am on Wednesday in order to be eligible for full credit.  Due: Wednesday, 2/22/12

Reading and annotations of chapters 7 & 8 of Gatsby due. Due: Thursday, 2.23.12

In class Part III A.P. Essay.  You are allowed to have your poetry packet with you for this task. Friday, 2.24.12

"Between the World and Me" Opening Paragraphs - Student samples

On Friday, you read "Between the World and Me," by Richard Wright.  This task (Part III, question 1) asks students to, "...analyze how the speaker uses the varied imagery of the poem to reveal his attitude toward what he has found and how it affects him, paying particular attention to the shifting point of view of the narrator."

Begin by reading the following excerpt from an A.P. guide:

Passage One: Richard Wright's "Between the World and Me"

One of the rewards of looking for passages for a new edition of our AP book is the discovery of wonderful but obscure pieces such as "Between the World and Me." Wright, whose representation in high school syllabi usually consists of either his poignant autobiography Black Boy or his powerful novel Native Son, is seldom anthologized as a poet. However, as this haunting poem attests, his powers in this genre were equally impressive. "Between the World and Me" describes how a Thoreau-or-Frost-like foray into the woods does not always yield a pacific experience. In this case the speaker stumbles upon a gruesome site-the remains of a scene of horrific violence. The evidence that remains-a skeleton, blood-soaked articles of clothing, a pile of ashes, and an empty liquor flask among other things-is all dormant, a fact reflected by the tranquil diction such as "slumbering" (line 4), "cushion" (line 4), "vacant" (line 7), and "empty" (line 7). Still, the aura of the place of execution, particularly the "Scattered traces of tar, restless arrays of feathers, and the lingering smell of gasoline" (line 9), brings the experience powerfully to life in both the speaker's and the reader's imaginations. Though the speaker comes upon the site in the morning, just as "the sun poured yellow surprise into the eye sockets of a stony skull" (line 10), he feels the ground grip his feet and his heart being "circled by icy walls of fear-" (line 12). Those readers familiar with Toni Morrison's Beloved may recognize this experience as similar to what Sethe calls her "rememory," a powerful association of a particular place with the actions associated with it. While pondering the skull and the remnants of that tragic night, the speaker is transported back to that awful moment. In his dark reverie he imaginatively becomes the unfortunate victim: shivering in the cold of the night wind, hearing the yelps of the pursuing hounds, surrounded by the crowd of cruel faces, bloodied and tortured by callous and inhumane hands. The ignominies he vicariously suffers-beating, sexual humiliation, tarring-and-feathering, and incineration-drive home the horrors of the actual African-American experience in a shockingly immediate way. Lines 18-25, which climactically juxtapose images of violence, religion, and childhood innocence, are brilliantly contrasted by the understated ending in which speaker and skeleton quietly become one. For some this poem may be too powerful, but as classroom teachers we have always felt it our moral duty to situate students in the real world. One reads Night or watches Schindler's List with the same purpose: to recognize the human capacity for evil, to be appalled by its callous manifestations, and to promote the necessary vigilance to deter such horrible episodes from ever happening again.As literature, Wright's poem is a powerful pedagogical tool, providing insight into a sordid historical epoch and a window into one African-American's response to it.

Your assignment:
Read the following student writing samples A, B, C & D.  For each sample, provide:

1.  A general assessment/impression
2.  A comment on clarity of purpose (thesis statement) & whether or not you have a clear sense of where the writer was going to go in his/her body paragraphs.
3.  A compliment (something the writer did well)
4.  A concern/suggestion (something missing, over or under-developed, off-track, vague, wordy, grammatical flaws, formatting issues, etc.)

Assignment Due Date: 2.22.12

Sample A:

In Richard Wright's "Between the World and Me" the narrator stumbles across the scene of a long-gone lynching. This discovery shocks him to his core, and part of the poem was him just reeling from the blow dealt by the sight. The narrator changes throughout the piece, representing the author's feeling as time progressed, and how it affects him. Wright also uses powerful imagery to illustrate his emotions, altogether making a powerful piece of literature.

*Effects of imagery
*Effects of Point of view
*Author's emotions at the scene

Sample B:

The speakers uses of varied imagery helps to show the reader exactly how he felt in a descriptive and memorable way. As the speaker stumbles over the body there is disbelief of what eh sees. Toward the beginning he spoke about how seeing this body affected both him and the world but as he starts to get focused on the "scattered traces of tar, restless array of feathers, and lingering smell of gasoline" he started to see himself in the actual situation. The more the imagery is filled with details the more personal the scene feels to him.

*What he found and how the varied imagery made it more personal to him.
*How his attitude changed based on the varied imagery.

Sample C:

Throughout "Between the World and Me," by Richard Wright, the author uses imagery to communicate his attitude toward what he found in the woods.  Towards the start of the poem, he is surprised by the scene of destruction that he finds in an otherwise peaceful forrest.  As he examines the scene, he begins to feel the emotions that the victim of the scene would have felt. His fear transitions into almost a flashback of what happened as his viewpoint shifts to that of the skull he finds at the scene.  However, at the conclusion of the poem, the narrator brings his feelings together with those of the skull through repetition of the imagery.

*The imagery in the second stanza- compares the forest to a human, then showing a human- "tiny veins of burnt leaves" & "charred stump of a sapling pointing a blunt finger accusingly at the sky"

*Description of his feeling "icy walls of fear"

*The flashback

*Repetition of "yellow surprise at the sun"

Sample D:

The poem "between the world and me" written by richard wright gives great examples of imagery and similes/metaphores such as the metaphore in line 6, "There was a torn tree....of greasy hemp." This metaphore is comparing this torn tree with the narrator himself.  When he is referring to the "torn tree" he is basically saying that the narrator is torn from the inside.  Throughout this poem the narrator is constantly shifting his POV, point of view. he goes from first person point of view to 3rd person pov, when he was revealing how torn up he is, by saying, "yellow suprise into the eye sockets of the stony skull," when he was referring to himself.

*shifting POV

A Map of NY (East & West Egg) in Gatsby...

Click on the link or cut/paste the address to see a map made of the Hamptons, as described by Fitzgerald, in The Great Gatsby.

http://www.swisseduc.ch/english/readinglist/fitzgerald_fscott/gatsby/map.html

2008 Free Response Question 3

In class you have received 3 student essays.  Your homework assignment is to edit/critique the samples.  (A random sample of essays has been selected and they are xeroxed in random order.)  You are to read the 3 essays and annotate (keep track of observations, suggestions, strengths, weaknesses and adherence to the prompt.)  After Reading all three essays post your blog response to the the following task:

Your Task:
For each essay, provide:

•   A general reaction to the selected literature
•   A comment on the strength of the thesis statement (opening paragraph)
•   A reaction to the writer's one sentence overview of the selected literature
•   A reaction to how well the writer did or didn't support the identified thesis
•   A general compliment (something the writer did well)
•   A general suggestion (something the writer could do to improve his/her essay)

In your blog, refer to the samples as essay 1, essay 2 and essay 3. Blogs must be posted by 7:30 am on Tuesday, 2/14/12.

February 2012

The Great Gatsby

Due Dates & Upcoming Assignments

2/9/12 - Chapters 1-3 of The Great Gatsby Read and Annotated

2/10/12 - In-class AP Free Response Essay
____________________________________________________________


2/13/12:  We will finish our discussion of Gatsby chapters 1-3. HW is to post a blog response to the sample Free Response Essays given to you in class.  The blog response must be posted by 7:30 am on Tuesday, 2/14/12.

2/14/12:  We will discuss your analysis of the sample Free Response Essays. HW is to read and annotate chapters 4&5 of Gatsby. Due: Thursday, 2/16/12.


2/16/12: We will be writing an in-class (mini) Free Response Essay for an AP Part III Question I.