The Purpose of this Blog

Your task on this blog is to write a brief summary of what we learned in class today. Include enough detail so that someone who was ill or missed the lesson can catch up with what they missed. Over the course of the term, these 'class scribe' posts will grow to be a guide book for the course, written by students for students.

With each post ask yourself the following questions:
1) Is this good enough for our guide book?
2) Will your post enable someone who wasn't here to catch up?
3) Would a graphic/video/link help to illustrate what we have learned?


Tuesday, 15 March 2011

Exploring setting In the Great gatsby 15.03.11


Contents:

1 – Homework
2 - Symbolism
3 – Chapter 2
4 – Symbolism from chapter 2
5 - Appendix

1 – Homework (Due 22nd Tuesday):

(This is a technological homework today e.g. record your voice, make a video etc)

Discuss the settings of Ch1 and 2:
Valley of Ashes
Myrtle’s apartment
East Egg (Chapter 1)

Discuss:
Quotations
Repeated images (Motifs)
Mood & atmosphere (Nick)
Contrasts with East Egg & Tom and Daisy’s house
Explain what you think these shows. (Make links to the rest of the novel)

You can use this to record your voice (kindly found by sir just click on record)
http://www.vocaroo.com/

Send to:
a.sadgrove@londonacademy.org.uk

Aa) Question: On Mariana (30 minutes):

Focusing on Narrative
(Note: Your cherished sheets will help you):

How does Tennyson tell the story in Mariana?

Self asses with Mark scheme (If you don't have this Go to sir)

2 – Symbolism (Represents another idea):

What do you think these words symbolise within The Great Gatsby here are some examples the class came up with:

Green Light:

· New start
· Active/ activity
· Eerie
· Mystery
· Movement
· Jealousy / Envy

Eyes:

· Seeing/ soul
· Vanity (See only through this)
· Beauty
· Seeing isn’t always believing
· Observation
· Intellect/ reason
· Identity

Egg:

· Identity
· Birth (Nick new start)
· Fragility
· Feminine
· Innocence
· Innocent
· Protection
· Youth

Ashes:

· Death/ rebirth
· Hope?
· Desolate
· Black/ grey

Cars:

· Movement of time
· Wealth/ status
· Modernism/ industry
· Materialism
· Mobility


3 – Chapter 2:

Brief summary:
Tom and Nick go to meet Tom’s mistress (Myrtle Wilson) meeting George Wilson owner of Cars bought and sold. Myrtle slips out with Tom and Nick to go to New York her apartment inviting friends round which are filled with lies, furthermore arguments break out, Nick wishes to escape Tom breaks her nose.

Opening Paragraph (First impressions):

· Isolation
· Poverty
· Depression
· Desolation
· Nothing being possible
· Industrialized areas
· Soulless
· Opposite of the “Jazz age”
· Boring/ dull
· Disillusion “Death of American dream”

Take note of the difference between this chapter and the first chapter Fitz has a cinematic writing style. As in chapter one you’re left off with not knowing what happened after when chapter one ends and find yourself in a new scene.

How Characters are portrayed:

Tom: forceful, imperative speech, physical presence, energetic, strong, and aggressive, corrupt, reference to epigraph in front

Nick: Not used to poverty, naive, judgemental,

George Wilson: Dominated by wife, Frail, lost “light in eyes”, “his wife moved straight through him like a ghost,”

Myrtle Wilson: Dominant, classy, vitality, “blocks out light” cause for trouble, tries to fit in, materialistic,

Gatsby: Images of him through enigmas, brief encounters/ glimpses (Chapter 1)

Important Quote to take note:

What do you think this means?

“I was within and without simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life” – Page 42 (green book) & Page 24 (Blue books) The Great Gatsby

Within: A character within the novel
Without: the narrator of the novel

4 - Symbolism from Chapter 2:

The billboard, mentioned in pg 29

“But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic – their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under the sun and rain, brood over the solemn dumping ground.”

Suggests as a godlike figure looking down from the heavens, God is being commercialised.

5 - Appendix

The Jazz Age:

http://academyenglish12.blogspot.com/2011/03/great-gatsby-contextbackground.html


End of Blog

Enjoy and please tell me how to improve them

Thank you

Chris.张
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10 comments:

  1. Chris. 张15 March 2011 at 10:41

    Forgot to add The 30 minute essay Is not for speaking aloud unlike the previous one

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous16 March 2011 at 12:59

    That was an awesome blog. :D

    Well I think that the Valley of Ashes represents the moral and social decay that results from the abandoned pursuit of wealth.

    Esmeralda ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous17 March 2011 at 14:17

    My God Chris. How is anyone going to make their blog to this standard??

    In lesson, my thoughts were that the fact the Nick lives on an "egg" represents his "rebirth" and new life as a "bonds man".

    Roman A.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dylan Hugs21 March 2011 at 03:13

    Methinks that my homework was pretty much done for me... I like the contast between the symbols of the twin Eggs, a chance to be reborn, and the Valley of Ashes, the remains of lost dreams!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sonny.21 March 2011 at 12:31

    Great blog Chris

    I think the the reader needs to be fairly cautious about Nick due to the hints he has dropped about his dishonesty.
    However this may prove difficult as Nick is the narrator of the novel.

    'Sonny.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous21 March 2011 at 15:34

    very good blog. The author seems to add so many themes into one book that one thing can be symbolism for more than one thing, like the green light meaning envy and mystery. The book is good so far.
    Tamsin (sorry for spelling mistakes)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous21 March 2011 at 15:57

    Woah Chris, your blog is so awesome
    I think that symbolism is key in this book, luike the fact that Gatsby lives on West Egg and Daisy on East Egg, representing their two different worlds and the fact that they are so close, yet something comes in between them.
    Btw, i had to record myself like 500 times on that wevsie and i still sound like an idiot.

    Aleksandra

    ReplyDelete
  8. Rosie21 March 2011 at 16:26

    This is an excellent blog chris wow very up to standard going to be very hard to beat for the next person that would write the blog. With symbolizim i believe that the egg is a start to a new life, Green light- Gatspy is the one that seems the most mystreious as we still keeps getting mentioned many rumours about him. Ashes to me reminds me of dirt, death, grey dull imagery.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Dylan Hugs24 March 2011 at 02:10

    Hmm, I reckon that this Gatsby character has rumours created to give him an identity~ perhaps he lurks in the shadows, seeking something that he cannot find with everyone knowing his true motivations.

    Oh, and just in case anyone doesn't know, putting these things around your text will add effects:

    <.i.>HELLO<./i> = Italics,
    <.b.>BYE<./b> = Bold

    Obviously without the full stops.

    ReplyDelete
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