Great Gatsby Ch.4-5

(1) "And then came that disconcerting ride" (Pg. 69).


Here Fitzgerald attempts to persuade the audience to think that Nick isn't sure of how he feels about Gatsby. Although Nick has changed his mind about him after meeting Gatsby at the first party, he is feeling unsettled in this car ride when he has to tell Gatsby how he feels about him. First of all Nick is really surprised when Gatsby pulls up in his driveway saying that they are going to have lunch, and even though this makes Nick quite curious he just goes with it. This quote is Nick telling us ahead about how uncomfortable this ride makes him so that we will understand how he is feeling through out this ride.
(Words:115)


(2) "'Anything can happen now that we've slid over this bridge'... Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder" (Pg. 73).

Here Fitzgerald is trying to persuade us that this maybe be a place of new sights to see and that this place could bring out the real Gatsby. Just as they go over this bridge Nick sees a whole bunch of stuff that he is not use to seeing where he is from. Nick experiences a sorrowful scene as they drive behind this car that is obviously going to the graveyard or a funeral and he sees a limousine being chauffeured by a white man catering to three African American men. All this is so odd to Nick that it makes him wonder  that if the people over this bridge create such a different atmosphere then what if it can create such a different characteristic to Gatsby.
(Words:127)

(3) "'Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay... He wants her to see his house... And your house is right next door'" (Pg. 83&84).

Here Fitzgerald is trying to persuade the audience to understand why Gatsby might be trying to become so close with Nick. All this time Nick has been surprised about everything Gatsby says and or does because it always seems to be sudden. Now Nick probably realized that Gatsby has probably had a lot of this planned out in order for him to get to have Daisy over next door. And in order for Gatsby to have Daisy over next door he needs to be friends with the next door neighbor which is Nick.
(Words:93)

(4) "For a minute there wasn't a sound... 'We haven't met for many years' said Daisy... 'Five years next November.' The automatic quality of Gatsby's answer set us all back at least another minute... Gatsby got himself into a shadow and while Daisy and I talked looked conscientiously from one to the other of us with tense unhappy eyes" (Pg. 91&92).

Here Fitzgerald is trying to persuade the audience of how uncomfortably awkward this tea party is. Gatsby is acting like a little boy with a childish crush on Daisy as he speaks quick and shy like. Nick is having to start all these conversations or events to clear the awkwardness in the room but when if he stops and no one comments it get really uncomfortable again. Gatsby even pulls Nick aside to talk to him and Nick reassures him that he and Daisy are just embarrassed. Gatsby understands and they go into the kitchen with Daisy, Nick leaves the room to let them talk and it still remain awkward and quiet with murmurs every now and then until Nick comes in the room and feels that all the embarrassment was gone.
(Words:132)

(5) "[Gatsby] had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted this way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart"
(Pg. 101).

Here Fitzgerald is trying to persuade the audience that Gatsby had been waiting for this for a very long time and wanted to make it as perfect as possible. This brought out a creative more beautiful characteristic of Gatsby. It kind of makes him seem like a sensitive guy who is really in love with this woman because he is trying so hard to make her like him.
(Words:68)

LET TEENAGERS TRY ADULTHOOD

     Leon Botstein's argument that teenagers around the age of sixteen are ready for adulthood is extremely logical and respectful to those of that age since, as said in the writing, they don't get respected for being that age very often. Botstein goes on to say that school should consist of elementary school and high school and that students should graduate when they're fifteen/sixteen because most fifteen and sixteen year olds have already set their goals in life and are ready to pursue them. He believes that they shouldn't be held back by wasting their time for schooling that they may no longer feel is necessary.


     Sixteen year olds in the twenty-first century are ready to go out in the real world and become adults and be respected like everyone else. "Adults... don't like adolescents... they have used high school to isolate the pubescent and hormonally active adolescent away from both the picture-book idealized innocence of childhood and the more accountable world of adulthood," which doesn't benefit any of them in the long run and really shows that "too much time has been wasted." 


     Botstein is right. Most Juniors could probably say that they already have senioritis with two years of high school left because they are ready for the world with their careers in mind and are being held against their will in these high schools that may or may not benefit them. This is similar to the situation of those who have reached puberty but are still being treated like children in middle school. Once a kid starts puberty, they should be treated like they're growing up. They could attend a highschool that would start at 7th grade and go to 10th grade, in which case they would be amongst a greater number of peers who share their maturity, instead of sharing a school with those who are not as advanced as they are. Our current system, based on age instead of maturity, causes students to stay in the same mind set that they had when they were still children, thus not letting them move on as fast as they should be able to. Making kids go through twelve years of schooling is almost an insult to their intelligence. Our system implies that students aren't smart enough for college because they're not eighteen, which is what our society considers an adult, even though kids are advancing much quicker than they used to. 


     Another good point that Botstein makes is that the school system also seems to think that everybody is going to have a job where they would need to have these twelve years of specific credits. The fact is that people are starting to follow their dreams more, which in a lot of cases require few to none of these credits. It is a system that was probably built for the greater good, but some of the time it's just a waste. If kids feel like our educational system is a waste of time, students will give up on their dreams or decide against college to avoid staying in the educational system for a longer amount of time. For many, they do not realize that "the rules of high school turn out not to be the rules of life" and give up on education too soon.
      More people need to start questioning this system like Botstein has, but on a larger scale, so that the government, school board, or who ever is in charge might starting thinking about making the necessary changes in order to benefit everybody, not just the majority. Decision makers need to realize that times have changed and that teenagers are way more advanced and should be treated like it.

Great Gatsby Ch.1-3

(1) "...my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over my mind ever since. 'Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone... just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.' In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgements.... [making] me the victim of not a few veteran bores" (Pg. 5).

Here the author attempts to show that as Nick was growing up his dad always tried to remind him that he shouldn't judge people because one doesn't know everyone's background story. Nick says that he lives reserving all his judgements of people to a point where he is the victim to various boring people. The only problem with this is that even though the author describes Nick as a non-judgmental man, he actually exposes him as someone who is the utmost hypocrite. When a new character comes in the first thing Nick does is judge every little aspect of them, and since they're a new character you know that he does not know their background stories.
(Words:116)

(2) "... a certain desolate area of land. This is the valley of ashes... where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and... men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air... the solemn dumping ground" (Pg. 27-28).

Here the author points out how hypocritical Nick is by the way he can look down at all the people in the whole valley of ashes. Nick uses a farm metaphor where ash can grow like wheat. He describes the buildings as if they're not even real buildings, but just images made by clouds of smokey ash. He describes these people to be grim and ghoul like, where they even move in an already crumbling manner. He basically describes them as the living dead, just spitting in the face of their dark and disgusting valley that might as well be a large dumping ground. If he  can condescend to a whole portion of society just by their location he proves himself to be quite judgmental.
(Words:125)

(3) "She smiled slowly and walk[ed] through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom" (Pg. 30).

Here the author is trying to show how far some people will go in order to obtain money. The "she" in this quote is Myrtle Wilson. She is a poor woman married to a boring man who is having an affair with Tom. Whenever she sees Tom she gets excited because she knows she is about to have a lot more fun with him than she does with her boring husband and she is about to get to act like she has money, which she desperately wants. That's the reason that she would ignore her husband, walking though him to get to Tom more excitedly.
(Words:105)

(4) "There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whispers and the champagne and the stars" (Pg. 43).

Here the author is showing how low Nick thinks of those who party all the time. In the visual of this quote Nick is looking from above at the people arriving to Gatsby's party, so Nick is literally and metaphorically looking down upon these people. When he explains that there was music coming from his neighbor's house every night he was saying it in a way that makes him sound like he is annoyed of this music. The way he describes the people is by comparing them to moths attracted by "the light." This is kind of an insult to them because it's just explaining how they are acting like mindless drones just being pulled in to the party scene.
(Words:120)

(5) "I had expected that Mr.Gatsby would be a florid and corpulent person in his middle years" (Pg. 53).

Here the author is trying to show how Nick judged Gatsby just by what he witnessed from next door. Nick didn't give Gatsby a chance in his mind until he actually met him and found him to be a well groomed, attractive man the same age as himself. Nick was surprised after seeing and hearing all these parties to find out that Gatsby had not actually participated or engaged in them at all, he just threw them.
(Words:76)