Book: The Great Gatsby

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
First published: 1925, America
Original Language: English
Topics: Marriage, high society, New York, America, adultery, deception

In A Nutshell: The story is told by one Nick Carraway, who has recently moved to a post district of New York. He visits a relation, Daisy, and her husband, Tom, where he meets golf champion Jordan Baker, who tells him that Tom has a mistress. Nick later goes to the city with Jordan and Tom and meets Tom's mistress, the wife of a garage owner. Meanwhile, Nick has been observing the decadent parties thrown by his next-door neighbor, the mysterious and elusive Jay Gatsby. Nick is eventually invited to one of Gatsby's parties, where he spends most of the time talking to Miss Baker, who is there as well. He eventually meets Gatsby, around whom many dark rumors circulate, and in the course of conversation reveals that he knows Daisy. Gatsby and Nick become friends, and Gatsby reveals to Nick that he was in love with Daisy and still is, and asks Nick to set up a meeting between the two of them. Gatsby and Daisy begin an affair which culminates in the whole group--Nick, Tom, Daisy, Gatsby, and Jordan--going to the city together, where Tom confronts Daisy and Gatsby about the whole thing and accuses Gatsby of being a bootlegger. Gatsby urges Daisy to leave Tom and say that she never loved him, but she can't quite bring herself to do it. Upset, Daisy leaves with Gatsby following, and on the way back, hits and kills Myrtle, Tom's mistress, in Gatsby's car by accident. Back at home, Tom and Daisy talk together and then leave town, leaving a distressed and pathetically hopeful Gatsby. Myrtle's husband, driven mad by grief, finds out from Tom who the car belongs to, shoots Gatsby in his pool, then kills himself. Despite his best efforts, Nick can't find anyone to come to Gatsby's funeral except Gatsby's father and a guest that he met at one of Gatsby's parties. After the funeral, Nick resolves to leave New York and return to the midwest.

Thinking Makes It So: As Holden Caulfield would say, all of the people in this book (with the possible exception of Nick Carraway) are "phonies." Everybody lies, everybody has affairs and secrets, and everybody tries to pretend that it's normal and okay. I couldn't bring myself to like or really care about any of the characters except Nick, who is a minimal presence in the narrative and the plot. Of course, this might be part of the point. Aren't we all deceivers, liars, and pretenders on some level?
     Anyway, despite the rampant infidelity and wild partying, morality never really enters the equation. It's never mentioned, really, whether the actions of the characters are right or wrong, only how they affect the other characters, as if their actions take place in a moral void. It feels like a carnival: full of bright lights and loud music, chatter and laughter and shiny things, which are all a cheap facade to hide the fact that there is nothing of value underneath and nothing of importance to say.
     Gatsby apparently buys the house, throws the parties, and moves in society sheerly for the opportunity to find and steal away Daisy. He stares across the water at a distant green light on her dock, but when he finally finds her, he's disappointed, rejected, and ultimately ruined. Heavy-handed lesson in "careful what you wish for"? Illustration of the power of desire to magnify and distort its object, so that nothing but letdown can follow when you actually obtain it?
     I hesitate to try to read into the symbolism and metaphor in this book, since I haven't studied or read about it, and I'll probably just sound naive and foolish. But reading it left me feeling slightly sick, like I'd eaten nothing but cotton candy for a day. The glitz and shine of the high life certainly didn't help any of the characters to be fulfilled or happy, and their story left me feeling just as empty.

That You Must Teach Me: What would I focus on in this book would be the actual story itself and the method used to tell it:

• Deception and lack of morality
• Flashy facade vs rotten core
• Use of symbolism and metaphor in storytelling (the green light, the eyes)
• Poetic justice

I hope I don't have to, because I don't really like it. But anyway, the book itself is not too complicated; high intermediate could probably handle it.

Resources:
WebEnglishTeacher: Full text, lesson plans, vocab
EDSITEment: Lesson plan
Discovery: Lesson plan
Teacher Vision: projects, skills, references