Today’s exit ticket is to leave a comment in which you Describe the image above,  Explain how this applies to The Great Gatsby and, Determine why you prefer one (the book, the movie) over the other. Be sure you Organize your thoughts in your comment. 

Today you will be reading Chapter 5 of The Great Gatsby.

All week, we have been talking about and reviewing the FRJ process and your engagement with the text (Fitzgerald’s writing) and Figurative Language.  Read chapter 5 with yesterday’s discussion on figurative language in mind. Why is Fitzgerald so effective at depicting what we have learned was going on in America in the 1920’s? Do you feel that it is what he writes or how he writes it? These are questions that can help guide your FRJ entry after chapter 5.

Vocabulary Test for Chapter 2 & 3 Words on Canvas

Today’s Lesson

Writers use figurative language such as imagery, similes, and metaphors to help the reader visualize and experience events and emotions in a story. Imagery—a word or phrase that refers to sensory experience (sight, sound, smell, touch, or taste)—helps create a physical experience for the reader and adds immediacy to literary language. Some figurative language asks us to stretch our imaginations, finding the likeness in seemingly unrelated things. Simile is a comparison of two things that initially seem quite different but are shown to have significant resemblance. Similes employ connective words, usually “like,” “as,” “than,” or a verb such as “resembles.” A metaphor is a statement that one thing is something else that, in a literal sense, it is not. By asserting that a thing is something else, a metaphor creates a close association that underscores an important similarity between these two things.

Discussion Activities

Each groups. Assign each group a chapter (1–4) and ask them to identify figurative language used in that chapter. You should do a FRJ entry specifically identifying images, similes, and metaphors. In the chapter your group has been assigned, how does the figurative language assist in telling the story? Although you can work together to find and discuss the figurative language found, each FRJ should be unique as it expresses your thoughts and understandings.

 

Review the FRJ Rubric and make sure your journal entries are ready for grading.

CATEGORY	4	3	2	1	Total Points
The student completes the required number of entries (3) per week.	3 entries	2 entries	1 entry	Partial or No entries
The student’s completed entries reach the required length.	Each entry provides enough written work to demonstrate reflection. ¾ to 1 page minimum	Most entries provide enough written work to demonstrate reflection. ½ to 1 page minimum	Few entries provide enough written work to demonstrate reflection. ½ to 1 page minimum	Entries are short and demonstrate less developed reflection
The student’s completed response shows that they have read the assigned reading	Reflection and elaboration consists of specific, developed details and clearly shows understanding of the reading.	Reflection and elaboration consists of some specific details but indicate the entire chapter has not been read	Reflection and elaboration consists of general and/or undeveloped details, which may be presented in a list-like fashion.	Reflection and elaboration is sparse; almost no details. Reader does not address several different key issues inside chapter and misses key information on character.
The student engages the reading in creative ways.	Reflections are personally connected to the reading. Thoughts expressed are individual and fresh.	Reflections show some personal connected to the reading. Thoughts expressed are predictable / safe.	Reflections show no personal connected to the reading. Thoughts are not expressed.	Simple restatement of the text with little personal thought. Summary

Let’s begin with yesterday’s questions:

1. Why is Nick telling this story?
2. Why is Nick “confused and a little disgusted” (p. 20) at the end of the chapter?
3. In the first twenty-one pages of the novel, is Fitzgerald’s depiction consistent with what you have learned from the last two weeks’ lesson about the 1920s? Why or why not?

The Narrator / Chapter 1 Review

The narrator tells the story with a specific perspective informed by his or her beliefs and experiences. Narrators can be major or minor characters, or exist outside the story altogether. The narrator weaves her or his point of view, including ignorance and bias, into telling the tale. A first-person narrator participates in the events of the novel, using “I.” A distanced narrator, often not a character, is removed from the action of the story and uses the third person (he, she, and they). The distanced narrator may be omniscient, able to read the minds of all the characters, or limited, describing only certain characters’ thoughts and feelings. Ultimately, the type of narrator determines the point of view from which the story is told.

The Great Gatsby is told in the first person by Nick Carraway. The novel begins from the point of view of an older Nick, reminiscing on the events of one summer. Nick’s perspective, entangled in the dramatic action, subjectively depicts a series of events.

How did you do on your first FRJ entry?

The Great Gatsby Free Response Journal

In order to better understand and appreciate a text, it will be

beneficial to interact with the text by measuring events that

occur within it against your own experience(s). You can also

learn from the emotions a text evokes within you. To

record this process, you will be keeping a digital free response

journal (FRJ) using Google docs.

 

As you are reading, take the time to jot down quotations or

descriptions of an event. Try and be as specific as possible

when you are making these documentations (e.g., page numbers,

specific descriptors, etc.) because these FRJs may function as

a jumping-off-point for another assignment during this unit.

You should allow some or all of the following entry points to enhance your reflection:

 

1. Quotes – Jot down any quotes that you find to be significant, relevant, and/or interesting
2. Art – Incorporate your own drawings or insert external artwork if you find it relevant to something that you have come across in the reading or you are simply inspired by a particular image/passage. Feel free to be creative because the FRJ is your space to really familiarize yourself and wrestle with the text.
3. Words – This assignment does not require you to use correct grammar or complex sentence construction. Rather, I would like you to feel free to write what comes to mind as you read the text.
4. Questions –If you encounter words or references you don’t understand, write them down. If you think you don’t understand a character’s actions or ideas, or if you find yourself confused with the plot, note your confusion in your journal and bring it up in class discussion. Questions lead to understanding, and we can help each other make sense of these texts together!
5. Self-reflection- Note your emotional reactions to the text. Feel free to write what comes to mind when you read the text. Do you find yourself relating to a character or an experience? How are your ideas about the main themes evolving and transforming through reading and class discussion?

 

Use whatever formats help you to get your thoughts on paper. For example, sketches, diagrams, charts, and timelines (or plot lines). Please make a minimum of three entries in your FRJ each week. Each entry should address a different thought, or series of thoughts, that arises when you read. An entry should be close to one page long. Please do not just copy from the text; each entry should mostly comprise of your original thoughts—quotes from the readings do not count as original thought. If you choose to express your thoughts through drawings or charts, please spend at least half a page free writing about these contributions. I will collect journals at the end of each week and will return them to you at the beginning of the next week. Additionally, at the end of class, on occasion, you will write a paragraph on your experiences during class that day. What did you learn today? What did you find most notable in today’s activity/reading/discussion? Did one of your peers say something that really got you thinking? What was it?

Some examples from Monday –

• The first chapter of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald sets the stage for many many happenings, gives you the entire cast of characters, and their beliefs, flaws, and thoughts. Very few people, except the well trained in the English arts, can pick up all the nuances and symbolism of what is being said in the first chapter. There are a few pieces that should jump out immediately, but the others are very subtle and almost inconsequential until the rest of the story is played out.
• There are a few things to remember about literary criticism. First, there are no accidents in writing, the writer put those things in there for a reason. (Especially F. Scott Fitzgerald). Number two, do not read more into the piece of literature than what the words have given us. Starting from the beginning to the end of the chapter, many specific quotes will be listed, and the significance of their being stated.
• • “I’m inclined to reserve all judgments…”(1)
  • Nick states this in the very first page. This is a very bold statement, and one as weighty as “I’m not a liar”, which usually is a lie. Fitzgerald really preferred and wanted a first person narrator in this story. However, as soon as you add a 1st person narrator, the reader must assume he’s right about everything. But we, the English world, were taught never to believe the 1st person narrator, in fact it is a rule of thumb to start out with the assumption he’s lying. In addition, you are locked in the box of only what the narrator sees, nothing else. With Fitzgerald, however; he has immediately taken us out of the problem, by showing Nick to be a perfect factual book keeper. So in this sense, because of Nick’s “facts only rhetoric” there is a 3rd person narrator.
  • “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” (2)
  • Fitzgerald gives us our first glimpse of the title character and the interplay between the two characters right from the start. Btu he also drops a major hint as to the history and personality of Gatsby. Personality being “a series of successful gestures” asks us to see Gatsby as a puppet; going through the motions to enact a reaction from the watcher. So Gatsby is not what he seems to be. But we also must wonder who is the puppet master?
  • “My family have been, prominent well-to-do people in this middle western city for three generations.”
  • We’re introduced to the classes of the right and the difference between the west and the east. In the west Nick’s family was well-to-do, wealthy to say the least. However, when he arrives in New York with his father footing the bill he has to share a house in “West Egg, the less fashionable of the two” (5), and the “egg” reserved for the “wealthy”, not the long time families of money and wealth that can only be called “rich beyond compare” who live on East Egg.
  • “I was amazed that anyone in my own generation was wealthy enough to [bring down a string of polo ponies down from Chicago]”, “Tom would drift forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game”(6)

  Tom Buchannan is from a very long line of very rich people. He has never had to do anything in all his life, and everything has been given to him all his life. He has been able to take on vacation with him his horses for polo, a feet in today’s money that would be about 5-10 million dollars. However, like most of the very rich, which Tom is symbolizing; Tom is bored. He’s got everything he has ever wanted, and the only time he felt his blood boil and his heart race was

  • when he became “a national figure as the most powerful end that New Haven had ever seen”(6)
  • “The rise of the colored Empire….If we don’t look out, the entire white race will be utterly submerged”(12-13)
    Again, Tom being the symbol for all very rich and their views of the world. Showing the dichotomy of the classes and the races in one fell swoop. Tom’s separation and racism, as well as Daisy’s bubble headed response about”deep books with long words” shows just how unconnected these people are, especially in the midst of a cultural revolution such as the Harlem Renaissance and Jazz.
  • “The kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.” “an excitement in her voice that men who cared for her found difficult to forget….it held a promise that she had done gay exciting things in the past, and there were gay exciting things hovering in the next hour” (9)
    This description of daisy’s voice is better than any description that has ever been written. A point about her voice that everyone who hears it is immediately drawn to her, and promised grand fun and enjoyment in the very near future. This is a description of a type of woman every man would want. What would happen if she met a man with those exact attributes – this is the reason for this fact being brought up. For in reality, Daisy is just a “poor little fool”, exactly what she wants her daughter to be called. Daisy is the same woman who only has to worry about the coming of the longest day, yet she always misses it.
  • “She was extended full length at her end of the deivan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little as if she was balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall.” (8)
  • This is the first bit of information we have of Jordan, Nick’s soon to be girlfriend. Jordan is yet another example of the old rich, but the younger crowd. Jordan has the look of full and complete snobbery, which is pointed out with her nose in the air look. She won’t speak to Nick, for she sees herself as above him and there is no reason to speak to someone like that; Nick might as well be a servant. It’s not till she find out that he is part of the family that she accepts and speaks to him
  • ” ‘No thanks, ‘said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry…” (10)
  • The drinks came in and Jordan refused them. This is a very important part. The drinks come out, but there is no body associated with the drinks. This is to point out the actual view of the old rich of the servants. They might as well not exist, these servants are merely a means to getting what they want. This is very important, since this motif of the old rich seeing all people who are not part of their class as lower than them, is a large point in the novel. However, it’s not just lower than them, but so low that they are merely tools to get exactly what they want at all times.
  • “The butler whispers in Tom’s ear…..murmur trembled on the verge of incoherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased all together…. Miss Jordan leaned forward unashamed ……Tom’s got some woman in New York” (14-15)
  • With the hushed fight, we find out that Daisy knows about this other woman and is upset, but does nothing except just get upset. Why isn’t she more upset? Is she ok with Tom’s adultery? A lot of these answers can be summed up in Nick’s comment that he’s going to “the Tom Buchanan’s”. He is the man who has the money, he is the leader, he is the man who runs the show. So she has to be ok with everything, unless Daisy wants to lose the life she has..
    This idea of Daisy having to accept Tom dating someone else, comes up again. The novel is setting up the age old question: If it’s ok with the man, why is it not ok with the woman? This was an idea that was questioned a lot during the female superiority jazz age.
  • Gatsby “stretched out his arms toward the dark water is a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling….[nick could] distinguish nothing but a green light…at the end of the dock(20-21)
  • The first real look at Gatsby. A man reaching so far and so hard that he’s literally trembling. What is he reaching for? The green light, the symbol of the person who lives there. The ominous “go” sign, stating this is when it will happen. This foreshadows Gatsby’s relentless pursuit of Daisy that he has been on for decades, and now he is so close he can see her house and her dock. this green light has become a symbol for him to work towards and reach towards.

 

Explain – Clarify * Demonstrate * Discuss

Mon. Jan 18

Vocabulary Test for Chapter 1 words will be on Thursday this week.

Read Chapter 1 (p 1 – 21) of The Great Gatsby

As you read,  consider these questions:

1. Why is Nick telling this story?
2. Why is Nick “confused and a little disgusted” (p. 20) at the end of the chapter?
3. In the first twenty-one pages of the novel, is Fitzgerald’s depiction consistent with what they have learned from yesterdays lesson? Why or why not?

Homework: Complete reading and FRJ for Chapter 1 

FRJ is an assignment on Canvas. You may do the assignment directly on Canvas or in any other form you like and then simply upload the file to canvas. Read the direction on Canvas and make sure you have at least 3 entries done and submitted through Canvas by Friday.

This week is all about the ability to effectively describe something.

Telling what we see and experience is a key piece of learning. Describing something involves reporting what one observes or does in order to capture and convey to others a process, impression, or a sequence of events in a narrative.

Today, we took a quiz over the background information presented last week, in which you had to describe key factors that should have been in your notes and the Cornell Notes system we are learning.

Your graded notes were returned to you with a copy of my notes covering the same material. The two areas that we need to work on are the Cue Questions and the Summaries. Take some time to review your Cue Questions and Summaries with those on my notes. This will help you understand how important it is to narrow your cue questions as a study aid and write stronger more specific and detailed summaries.

Remember to review the Cornell Notes page as well as the Weekly Lesson Plans to be prepared for the rest of this week.

Read the following directions and then follow them in the exact order indicated.

1. Click on the link for The Great Gatsby Free Response Journal at the bottom of this post.
2. When the google doc opens, click on File in the top left hand corner.
3. In the File drop down menu, select Make a copy.
4. In the box below Enter a new document name:  change Copy of The Great Gatsby Free Response Journal to Your Last Name The Great Gatsby Free Response Journal. It would look like Scales The Great Gatsby Free Response Journal with your last name instead of Scales.
5. When you click OK your own document will open.
6. Check the upper left white space above the File command to make sure you are in your newly created document.
7. Now you can take the Pre-unit survey by highlighting your response to each question.
8. Once you have finished your survey, click the blue Share button in the upper right hand corner of the page.
9. In the Share with others box type in my email jscales@libertyperry.org
10. Make sure can edit is selected in the drop down menu to the right of the email box.
11. Click Done.

The Great Gatsby Free Response Journal

Why an entire grading period on one very short novel?

Not all individuals inherently look to literature for comfort, enjoyment, personal growth, or knowledge, so an underlying component of my teaching during this unit will focus on revealing how literature can provide some or all of these things. We will study the 1920s history of the novel, but we will also draw connections between Fitzgerald’s world and the 21st century present. We will read the novel critically, but we will also watch the new film as a literary text to be enjoyed and interpreted. My goal is for this unit to foster a classroom of students who see the timeless qualities of the tale and feel confident enough to explore your own interpretations of the text.

On Teaching a Classic American Novel – What exactly is a classic novel, and why should The Great Gatsby continue to be taught in high schools today?

Gatsby is not merely a point of insight into the American Dream but of dreams in general: their terrible necessity, their built-in futility. The novel’s best lines on the subject – “the high price of living too long with a single dream” (Gatsby 128); “No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart” (76) – have an almost scriptural quality, reverberating far beyond their immediate context (Allen). Consider Nick Carraway, for example: He’s jaded, and he feels distanced from everyone he meets. Furthermore, he becomes entangled in a party culture of people who drink illegally to avoid reality, who foolishly believe in their own youthful immortality, and who somehow cannot see that the choices they make now will affect them for the rest of their lives. He may be thirty years old, but his mentality is easily relatable for many adolescent aged students. Though nearly a century has come and gone since Fitzgerald penned this novel, the story, the themes, and the characters are all still very much alive and relevant today.

Louise Rosenblatt writes about the existence of an insuppressible pervasiveness of human tendencies to identify with something outside of one’s own personal experience (Rosenblatt 2005:37). Through the natural empathy that a person feels when reading about a character’s or his/her situation, the process of reading becomes not an acquisition of additional information but of additional experience. Rosenblatt describes this phenomenon as literature’s ability to provide a “living through, not simply knowledge about” (38). With this in mind, I argue that The Great Gatsby, in addition to other “classics” and next to Young Adult novels, is rightfully taught to students of your age across the United States each year. The problem, then, is the method by which this novel is introduced. As your teacher, I will not merely stands at the front of a class declaring The Great Gatsby as the classic American novel, expecting you to grab at the opportunity of poring over the pages, that approach is not likely to result in much success. Classic American novels cannot just be handed over on a platter like exquisitely garnished hors d’oeuvres – perfectly proportionate and bite-sized for easy swallowing. I intend to show, and not just tell, you the reasons behind why this novel has garnered its longstanding status and acclaim. I really like Rosenblatt’s explanation that the enjoyment and understanding of literature is more than the individual components – the author’s “intention,” the reader’s reaction, and the text itself. Rather, a transactional relationship bridges all of them into a complex experience that “stirs up both referential and affective aspects of consciousness” (Rosenblatt 2005:33).

Narrowing the Gap Between Past and Present

Alongside the primary text in this unit, The Great Gatsby (novel), we will be incorporating an in-school field trip film viewing of Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 production of Gatsby as well as an overview of a few songs from the soundtrack. The inclusion of these two controversial contemporary texts is where I anticipate the most opposition in my unit – some strongly oppose Luhrmann’s creative deviation from the original text through his over-the-top visuals and hastily dismiss popular music, namely the hip hop genre, as a text to be unpacked in the literature  classroom. My questions, for you as students then, are as follows: how else was Luhrmann to make the audience truly feel and experience the atmosphere of the 1920s upper class party scene – to convey the sheer grandeur, frivolousness, and recklessness of it all? And, to those who are severely opposed to the content of the novel itself, with its elements of shady bootlegging, material extravagance, alcohol, drugs and partying, adultery, racism and more, it has been argued that readers need to see the plot of Gatsby as more than just a glorified anecdote.

Amidst the green screen and CGI infused visuals, Luhrmann knew exactly what he was doing, that each element of the film was meticulously and intentionally crafted. Movies are so effective and enjoyable because they act as an outlet for escape. Suneal Bedi argues that, in the same vein, “Luhrmann has tried to recreate Carraway’s experience of escapism on the big screen for all of us to partake in – this is why the music, dance, visuals, and general sentiment of the film must be awkward, jarring, and provocative at the same time – it’s exactly how Carraway experienced it as his own therapy.” Bedi provides just one interpretation of Luhrmann’s work, and I would like you as my students to come out of this unit with the ability to intelligently construct and evidence interpretations of your own.

The soundtrack (featuring icons such as Jay-Z himself, will.i.am, Beyoncé, Lana del Rey, Florence + the Machine, and more) provides a brilliant segue between past and present in Luhrmann’s film – “distilling the essence of the Jazz Age though never completely reflecting it, this soundtrack is as much an event as the film that inspired it” (Powers). Rather than commissioning for updated versions of popular 1920s songs, Luhrmann draws a parallel between the jazz-influenced pop songs that Fitzgerald references and his own soundtrack, ultimately aiming to show how deeply hip-hop has come to inform rock, pop, and dance music. The 20s were the apex of the Jazz Age. Jazz’s lewd and provocative beats/tunes and dances permeated underground clubs and house parties. Yet, today, jazz is refined and sophisticated – “even the Charleston has become an innocent dance done in jest at weddings” (Bedi). Thus, in order for Luhrmann to provide a renewed authenticity for the 21st century audience, he traded in 1920s jazz for modern hip-hop. And, in doing so, he effectively evoked the emotion and imagery that audiences would not have bought into as easily had he used actual period music. In this way, Luhrmann shows us all a glimpse of the roaring twenties that Gatsby, Carraway, and the Buchanans lived and breathed in. My intention is for you to consider the film and the soundtrack as more than just entertainment. I want you to examine the messages and images embedded into the texts and realize the efficacy of these two mediums for transmitting old, but timeless, ideas to a fresh, new audience.

You may absolutely love the new perspective on Gatsby, while others may prefer the solidarity of the original text. Regardless, I think students should understand that any text holds a countless number of interpretations. Also, these interpretations differ from person to person based on his/her own values, beliefs, biases, knowledge, and personal experience(s).

Understanding the diversity of interpretations, then, relates back to Rosenblatt’s concept of the ‘transactional relationship’ between the reader and the text. Rather than constantly questioning what can be extracted from the text, I want you to consider what you bring to the text.

Whether or not you appreciate hip-hop music yourselves and/or agree with Luhrmann’s use of it, you need to be able to articulate your understanding of how Fitzgerald’s novel and the historical context of Gatsby inform these contemporary texts. Therefore, you will be encouraged to:

reflect on how the novel is significant to you today and direct your efforts towards examining an issue, such as the juxtaposition of the heavily commercialized and commoditized 21st century world and that of the 1920s or Nick’s difficulty in coping with the irrationalities and inequities he is surrounded by as the story’s unreliable narrator.