The Great Gatsby: Chapters 4-5

Mr. Heape, I used the online textbook website you gave us so I do not have the page numbers. However, I can give you the chapters.

(1) "I’d seen it. Everybody had seen it. It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns." (Chapter 4)

Before this, Gatsby had recognized Nick Carraway was eyeing his car. Gatsby says “It’s pretty, isn’t it?”…”haven’t you seen it before?” to suggest that Nick is not wealthy enough or educated to know the car or be expected to know what is so great about it. This quote argues that the speaker is more intelligent than people may give him credit for, but also that people are more intelligent than Gatsby gives them credit for. He used the short sentence “I’d seen it” to give off some attitude toward Gatsby and used familiar words to describe the car such as “swollen here and there” and “mirrored a dozen suns” to show how he had seen it before and analyzed it with much depth.

(2)” I had talked with him perhaps half a dozen times in the past month and found, to my disappointment, that he had little to say: So my first impression, that he was a person of some undefined consequence, had gradually faded and he had become simply the proprietor of an elaborate road-house next door.” (Chapter 4)

            Here the speaker argues the fact that besides Gatsby’s reputation and how highly people think of this man or how mysterious he may be, he is genuinely just like any other person. At first, he was a shadow in the knowledge of people, but then the speaker had started spending more time with this character and he became less dark and more boring. There is not much to him, and this makes Nick upset because he finally broke the awkwardness that no one gets emotionally close to this man but there is not a lot in the shell of his body.

(3)” Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, I had no girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs, and so I drew up the girl beside me, tightening my arms. Her wan, scornful mouth smiled, and so I drew her up again closer, this time to my face.” (Chapter4)

            Carraway comparing himself to the great Gatsby and the one and only Tom Buchanan put him on a very high scale of reputation and wealth. The argument is of how he is technically a better man than both Jay and Tom because he knows how to treat a girl right. He only has one girl, and does not have to keep her in the dark or a secret from the rest of the is setting very high expectations for himself and now believes to be superior to the men who are shaming other woman, or in Daisy and Jay’s situation, disobeying her and Tom’s marriage.

(4)” An hour later the front door opened nervously, and Gatsby, in a white flannel suit, silver shirt, and gold-colored tie, hurried in. He was pale, and there were dark signs of sleeplessness beneath his eyes.” (Chapter 5)

            Here, the speaker attempts to show the readers what Gatsby’s condition looked like in order to persuade them to feel like Jay is just another nervous male about to meet a woman and has been wanting to talk to for ages. He said that Gatsby opened the door “nervously” to show how it is taking a toll on his body. Then it describes his looks, he is wearing a suit with a tie, which makes men look superior and tough, but Jay is not carrying himself as so. Nick describes Jay as pale and sleepless eyes to persuade the readers that Jay is obviously nervous about reuniting with Daisy, but more importantly a regular person with feelings.

(5) “I tried to go then, but they wouldn’t hear of it; perhaps my presence made them feel more satisfactorily alone.” (Chapter 5)

            The argument here is how Nick extremely wants to leave the area with Jay and Daisy in it after the awkward statement Daisy made about wanting to push around Jay in a big pink fluffy cloud. Nick felt like it was his time to go. He is trying to persuade the readers to understand that he wants to go, but that for some odd reason the happy couple wants him to stay in the room. They don’t want to be alone so that Daisy isn’t exactly alone with one man while married to another, therefore needing Nick around. It does not last though, and Nick finally escapes.

           

Week 1.3 Let Teenagers Try Adulthood

Non-Fiction Reading Response

          

                Leon Botstein's “Let Teenagers Try Adulthood”, says that high school is not anywhere near what the tradition used to be. The typical American high school in earlier times was for the transition of children, but it is now holding back young adults from what their full potential could possibly be. In fact, teenagers are maturing faster in modern days in such a rush to grow up, having sexual activities sooner than anticipated, and even puberty is occurring earlier in kids lives, especially girls. His argument throughout the paper is how teenagers should be put into college and the world at age sixteen rather than the normal American high school age of graduation, 18. I agree with this argument, because coming from a teenager, I would much rather be in college and have the freedoms I have heard of for the past couple years now, at my age of sixteen. I have the ability to work hard and live on my own because my parents have raised me up to be and independent person and take care of myself without mommy and daddy’s help all the time. If other people have raised their children to do things by themselves and make something of themselves at a young age, why not let them? All it takes would be motivation and proper training for all sixteen year olds to be put in the real world.

            In addition, I agree with Botstein’s position on who runs the high schools. Jocks, attractive students, and the popular by association people are the ones who own the school. If the fact, if the outsider of the high school is usually the most successful one, why let them suffer for a couple more years instead of letting them bloom outside high school? Yes, there are exceptions, such as sports stars who go pro, singers, successful doctors who were popular in high school, but wouldn’t that just make everyone shine their greatness onto their community sooner? This situation goes right along with Thomas Paine’s argument in “The Rights of Man”. In his attack on Edmund Burke, who did not want to change the original style of government because it had worked previously, Paine believes that if a society and people change, show should the style of government to match the people of that time period. The same concept should go with the education style. No one can help that teenagers and kids are growing up and maturing faster than in the past, so instead of trying to change what American’s cannot control, why not change what we can to match the people of our society today? Botstein says that “Elementary school should begin at age four or five and end in the sixth grade. We should entirely abandon the concept of the middle school and junior high school.” High school should begin with the seventh grade, and then be four years of secondary education that we may call high school and end at the age of 16 instead of 18. This tradition should be put in place to match how much the teenagers could contribute to the community and meet the level of the high schooler’s maturity in modern times.