1. What line(s) stand out for you in these chapters and why?

“I wanted no more righteous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart” (6) the narrator Nick seems to think he is morally above everyone in the book. With lines like this sounds like he is doomed to whatever fate other people will choose for him. Nick is an interesting character I want to dislike him but so far he's the only person that doesn't seem hideous in the book. The board vacant people in the novel seem very familiar to me I can look up in any class and find the wealthy Bainbridge Island youth kind of fit this bill. I think I'll enjoy this book if only so I can find some new adjectives to describe the bored wealthy beautiful empty people of Bainbridge Island I hate so much.

“Everybody I knew was in the bond business so I suppose it could support one more single man” (7). “All my hits and uncles talked it over asked if they were choosing a prep school for me and finally said why yes with very grave hesitant faces” (7). I find the narrator interesting because he doesn't seem to make a single decision by himself. Nick is watching his whole life unfold because of other people's decisions about what he should do. The book is called the great Gatsby although the narrator is named Nick so I guess were going to get an outside review of who the great Gatsby actually is. Nick seems bored and he believes he is morally superior to everyone around him. I guess that's supposed to be ironic because later he talks about thinking racism sounds like fun to him. So far I don't like anyone in this book. The when he talks about people, especially men, it seems like perhaps he's gay, maybe that's why he seems so unhappy I don't know if your allowed to be gay during this time.


 

  1. What can you tell me about Fitzgerald's writing style? What specific lines give you this impression?

    “His speaking voice of gruff husky tenor added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed” (11) It seems like F Scott Fitzgerald is going out of his way to make everything sound very fluffy. If I'm going to understand the story at all I'm going to have to get my thesaurus out. I don't enjoy his writing at all so far, when people try so hard to sound intelligent I think it just makes them sound ostentatious, which really just means trying to act smart when you're not.

    “Sometimes she and Ms. Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter that was a cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire.” (17) So far all of these people sound vacant and bored. There wealthy and beautiful and completely empty. If I was Nick I would have run out that door and keep running until I found some actual humans to talk to. Obviously Tom is having an affair and he doesn't even attempt to cover it up and Daisy doesn't seem to give a darn. To be fair if Fitzgerald was trying to showcase exactly who these people are he's doing a damn good job. Just because I don't like his writing style doesn't mean it's not an effective style to portray the deep ugliness of these people, so in that regard he's a very good writer to tell this particular story, even if I don't like the story, its effective.