AGENDA- APRIL 23RD, 2014

• Freshmen:• Works Cited Review• Renaissance Festival

• Juniors:• Works Cited Review• Great Gatsby

Discussion

GREAT GATSBY

• 1. Does the novel, The Great Gatsby, end the way you expected? How? Why?

• 2. What are the conflicts in The Great Gatsby? What types of conflict (physical, moral, intellectual, or emotional) are in this novel? Are they resolved? 

GREAT GATSBY

• 3. Is Gatsby a strong character in The Great Gatsby? Is he "great"? Do find any of the other characters stronger? How? Why?

GREAT GATSBY

• 4. How does The Great Gatsby relate to current society? How well did it represent the Jazz Age (society and literature at the time it was published)? Is the novel still relevant?

GREAT GATSBY• 5. Can

Gatsby ever get what he truly wants – or are all of his dreams really just an illusion?

GREAT GATSBY

• 6. What does Daisy perceive that Tom has that Gatsby does not? What can Tom offer her that Gatsby never could?

GREAT GATSBY• 7. ‘I was within and without.’ – Nick

Carraway

The film’s framing device, in which Nick narrates Gatsby’s story from a sanatorium, is not present in the novel.• Why might screenwriter Craig Pearce

have chosen to add this framing device, and what – if anything – does it add? • What kind of narrator is Nick, and

how does his role compare and contrast with that of other famous film narrators?

GREAT GATSBY• 8. We were born different.

It’s in our blood.’ – Tom Buchanan

How significant is the issue of class in The Great Gatsby, and how does it contribute to Gatsby’s downfall? • What exactly is the ‘vision

of himself’ which Gatsby ‘poured into loving Daisy’, and how does it relate to his status in society? • To what extent is true social

mobility possible in our own culture?

GREAT GATSBY

• 9. Daisy Buchanan is often considered to be a purely symbolic character. What might she symbolize within the story, and to what extent does Carey Mulligan play her as a real person, with ordinary human emotions and motivations? What did you make of Daisy’s actions and decisions throughout the story?

GREAT GATSBY• 10. ‘If I could just get back

to the start . . .’ – Gatsby

What makes Gatsby obsess over the past, and is he right to think that it can be recaptured? How nostalgic are we – as a culture and as individuals – and why? What is appealing about nostalgia, and what might make it dangerous or damaging?

GREAT GATSBY• 11. ‘My life has got to be

like this. It’s got to keep going up.’ – Gatsby

What did young James Gatz really go in search of when he left the poverty of his childhood home, and what does the green light represent to the older Gatsby? What is the essence of the American Dream, and how might Gatsby’s dream be tied to his sense of shame, and his search for hope and significance?