Room for Feedback

This is the Great Gatsby, and he would like to have some feedback...


1. What do you think about the book?

2. What do you think about this blog activity?

Girls?

Who wants to comment on Daisy's statement about her baby daughter:

"She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool - that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool." (21)

Sophistication?

Do you remember our short story "Sophistication" by Sherwood Anderson?

Who wants to comment on Daisy's "sophistication"? Take the following excerpt from the book as a starting point. Daisy says:

"You see I think everything's terrible anyhow," she went on in a convinced way. "Everybody thinks so - the most advanced people. And I know. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything." Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom's, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. "Sophisticated - God, I'm sophisticated!" (21-22)

Questions for Chat to Choose from

1. Describe the symbolic meaning of one color in the book The Great Gatsby.

2. Which role do the women play in the book? Are they passive, submissive victims, or strong, self-assured "flappers"? Explain with examples.

3. What are the positives of the American Dream?

4. What are the negatives of the American Dream?

5. Is Gatsby's pursuit of Daisy pure?

6. Characterize a person of your choice.

7. Identify and explain a symbol.

8. What can you say about morality in general, and what about Nick's morality?

9. Who does Ecklesburg with his eyes symbolize? Support it.

10. What is the significance of the Valley of ashes?

11. What's the difference between the West Egg and the East Egg?

12. How are Gatsby and George Wilson similar?

13. Does Fitzgerald affirm the value of "the dream," or negate it? Why do you think so (give evidence from the text)?

14. Is Gatsby heroic?

15. Can we regard Nick as a personification of Fitzgerald's stance? How?

16. Which characters are weak, which are strong?

17. Are there "doomed dreams"?

18. Can one "repeat the past"?

19. During his own time of breakdown, Fitzgerald once wrote "One should be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise." Can you see this in the novel? Does this philosophy work for you?

20. What is the lesson / moral of the novel?

21. Girls sometimes like jerks - why???

fun stuff about TGG

Who can find cartoons etc. about The Great Gatsby?

first question: meaning of colors

Below you see one student's analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald's use of the color green.
Who can analyze another color?

The Green Hope of Gatsby

It is arguable that Jay Gatsby values two things above all others – love (particularly his love for Daisy Buchanon) and money (the means by which he hopes to win Daisy’s heart). The two motivations converge in Fitzgerald’s use of the color green, a symbol that represents both love and money as well as Gatsby’s ultimate goal – a spring-like renewal that would put his past behind him and plant the seeds for a future with Daisy. Fitzgerald shows green in its many incarnations, from the promise of a new bud to the decay of a stagnant pond, as Gatsby’s dream progresses from a dim...

Great Gatsby Chatroom

Hi students of 3rd and 4th hour,

We're going to save trees again!

What is this?

This is our Great Gatsby chatroom, instead of handouts for group work.

In this forum, we will post and respond to general questions and comments about the book and the period, as well as our personal reactions.

The purpose of this exercise is

1. to have a Gatsby-related chatroom where we can exchange our ideas with two classes

2. to forward our questions about The Great Gatsby to a multitude of peers, and get different answers

3. to make our ideas availabe to a vast audience

4. to publish meaningful, text-related comments free of error

5. to do some Gatsby-related research on the Internet

6. to have some fun


Rules

At first, we have to establish a chatroom etiquette: When you use this blog, I expect you to take this task seriously. Don't chat about private things, don't use abbreviations or emoticons (this is academic writing, not My Space); stick to the topic, don't offend other people, don't use bad language.... I know you won't do that! If I find anything that doesn't belong in a blog and violates our rules, the respective author will be banned from our blog. That results in a failing grade for this exercise.


Grading

You will receive 30 points for your participation in this blog. This means, I expect everyone to post 7 things:

1. at least one meaningful (research) question about the book, 5 points

2. at least one meaningful answer to a question another student has posted, 5 points

3. at least one response (1 paragraph long) to a question I have posted (choose one from the samples provided), 10 points

4. at least one subjective comment about your own experience with this book (what you think about the book in the connection with our unit about modernism; your criticism, your difficulties, your praises, your complaints, your problems,....), 5 points

5. research: at least one link related to the Roaring Twenties or The Great Gatsby that is interesting to the rest of the class, with a short introduction what it is about, 2 points

6. research: at least one illustration that you have to paste into this blog which reflects the life of people in the "Roaring Twenties," or refers to the story of The Great Gatsby in some way. In order to do this, you have to save the image from the Web that you selected on your computer, then click on the "Add Image" symbol in our blog menu list, and upload it. It should have a relatively small size. You should hyperlink your picture, to indicate the source. 2 points

7. one short statement of what you think about this blog activity. 1 point

What you have to hand in

Because so many people are participating in the blog, and everyone has a different email address that sometimes might not reveal the name of the sender, I need to keep track of what you wrote. This is why you have to copy the 7 texts you wrote, paste them into a word document, print them out, and hand them in to me. Don't print them out from the blog directly, since you might print endless pages with all the other students' comments attached. I just want yours. If you do more than the required 7 things, that's very nice, but they won't be graded. So choose the best ones that you want me to grade.

How to post

You have to log in with your email address. When you write a post, don't make it too long, just convey the precise point you want to talk about in one paragraph. We don't have the time and space for a whole novel, and we are 46 participants.

Quotations: If you post a text that is not your own, indicate the source (e.g., insert the link of the website where you got your information from, or the page of the book), so that others can access your source, and it's not plagiarism.

I'll grade the quality of your comments, not the quantity (you have to have 7; if you do more, that's fine but it won't be extra credit). So make sure you have some "deep thoughts" in your chat history (at least in the posts you hand in to me; you can use shorter and more personal comments when you want to react to other students' writing in addition).

How much time do we have for this exercise?

One in-class period. If you don't get your 7 assignments done in that time, you're welcome to post after school, if you have the resources. The assignments are due at the end of the class period (printed out); if you don't get done, you can hand in the missing ones the day after.

Ok, get started.... I hope you have some fun!