Today in Rivers' World 1/12/2017

Nadir Hassan

Today in Rivers’ World

We started today off by Mr. Rivers reminding us of the summative assignment that will take place on Tuesday and Wednesday. The prompt is whether The Great Gatsby is a romantic text or modernist text. It should be a fully developed essay. Class notes and the book itself may be used. It is encouraged that students find evidence to support their argument beforehand to make your life easier on Tuesday and Wednesday.  We then went on to discover more scenes in the novel that enhanced the tragedy in chapters 8 and 9. A scene that we delved deeper in was the conversation between Wolfshiem and Carraway. This scene adds tragedy to the novel because Wolfsheim is nostalgic about Gatsby but when the funeral appears in conversation, Wolfsheim decides not to arrive because he “‘I can’t do it—I can’t get mixed up in it,’ he said” (Gatsby 183).  Although he cares about Gatsby, he ultimately wants to distance himself from Gatsby and keep his identity intact. Also, it is important to note that this conversation took place in a building that serves as a fake front, one possibly of many that Wolfshiem has since he is a criminal. In the immediate future, a conversation between Nick and Gatsby’s Dad (Mr. Gatz) ensues. Mr. Gatz shares his nostalgia with Nick and shows him a picture of a house Mr. Gatz holds very dear to his heart. Pictures were hard to come by back in the past (Its the 1920s!) and Mr. Gatz admires the picture so much. From the actions that we see as the reader, Mr. Gatz 100% absolutely loves his son and can be considered to be a romantic quality. In addition to the picture, the reader also sees  “Hopalong Cassidy”, a book detailed Gatsby’s entire schedule when he was little. From this, it shows that Gatsby is super innocent and adds much more to his character because it shows how well and praise worthy Gatsby was. It shows how controlling Gatsby was even when he was little (a little hint that points toward his flaw). It could also point to how passionate Gatsby truly was. Overall, today’s day in english class was diving into these two scenes and taking it apart, to truly see the tragedy towards the end of this book.