Hayley’s Blog

“She’s not leaving me!” Tom’s words suddenly leaned down over Gatsby. “Certainly not for a common swindler who’d have to steal the ring he put on her finger.”

1. Daisy and Gatsby’s dream has come to a crashing halt. Toms outbreak is example that even when we acheive our dreams we will shortly lose them or there will be dire consequences. No matter how hard people try to make things perfect or right they never will be. Therefore we are always constently chasing our dreams of happiness never able to get there.

“He spoke as if Daisy’s reaction was the only thing that mattered”

1. we are to consumed by lour dreams as Gatsby is to realize that they begin to control our lives and actually keep us from acheieving them.

2. Gatsby seems to have figured out he might be stretching himself a little thin and he’s gone back to hiding himself. Although all his caution is broken by surrounding himself by Daisy. He appears to care deeply and careless about himself all at the same time. it’s obvious that Nick is consumed with pleasing Daisy and that neither of them care about anybody elses feelings that they hurt in the process. Gatsby made everyone pawns to get Daisy and its evident. As soon as he got her he pretty much dropped them all out of his life rendering them unimportant anymore.

“ONE THING’S SURE AND NOTHING’S SURER
THE RICH GET RICHER AND THE POOR GET—CHILDREN.
IN THE MEANTIME,
IN BETWEEN TIME——”

As I went over to say good-by I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years! There must have been moments even that afternoon whe Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.

As I watched him he adjusted himself a little, visibly. His hand took hold of hers, and as she said something low in his ear he turned toward her with a rush of emotion. I think that voice held him most, with its fluctuating, feverish warmth, because it couldn’t be over-dreamed—that voice was a deathless song.

1. Gatsby has acheived his dream of reaching Daisy but can the dream truly continue on through the storm or does the rainy weather repeated several times foreshadowing a sad end. Gatsby has broken down the last barrier of his dream and has suceeded in what few seem posssible.

Charecter development: gatsby has been consummed by trying to catch the attention for Daisy for so long that by the time she is with him he is still lost in his world fantasizing about her. He is a person that wont be content until everything is exactly how he wants it and even then that appears it wont be enough. its hard to decide if Gatsby’s love for Daisy is more romantic or more pathetic. He idolizes her to a degree that makes her seem like god and will pace he before anything and everyone else in his life.

“yellow bug (43), dark gold (44), brass rail (44), yellow cocktail (44), Golden arm (46), yellow dresses (46), in yellow (46,47)”

3. All are used in the description of Gatsby’s party, illuding the great wealth that gatsby has. It resembles the extravagance surrounding his life and washing it off onto others. It shimmers for all to fitness and be encased in its finery as it appears everywhere through out the chapter. 

“I had taken two finger-bowls of champagne”

3. Champange is gold in color and reprents high society and the drink of the wealthy. The decription of finger bowl sized shows the Gatsby’s wealth is over flowing and abundant.

“Absolutely real—have pages and everything. I thought they’d be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they’re absolutely real. Pages and—Here! Lemme show you.”

Taking our scepticism for granted, he rushed to the bookcases and returned with Volume One of the “Stoddard Lectures.”

“See!” he cried triumphantly. “It’s a bona-fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella’s a regular Belasco. It’s a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too—didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?”

1. Gatsby’s uncut pages are are astounding to the man in the library, its proof that Gatsby’s wealth is real. The astonished faces alone show the acomplishment that Gatsby has made. He seems to have insurmountable wealth and have the ability to buy everything, the american dream. People dream to be in his position to be able to hold all the weatlth and power in society. Gatsby made this dream a reality. 

American dream:

Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why—ye—es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.

1. After the great war soliders returned looking for something fufilling and adventourous after the excitement of the war. Not to mention the 20’s were a time of prosperity and bustling, booming city life. Nick dreams of the sucess of the city and all the opportunities it holds. The american dream was to go to the city and find your way. Nick goes to follow the masses, into the bond business, and make something of himself.

I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. my house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. the one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. it was Gatsby’s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.

1. Society factors into the american dream largely and reputation is important for everything. Nick describing his house as an eye sore among the millonaires shows that he’s resentful for not fitting in. Also by mentioning that West egg is the less fashionable part of town which shows that it’s an important attribute to his life. HIs less fortunate upringing immediately establish his social class as low as he is surrounded by millionares but he is not one of them.

Charecter development:

Nick’s father gave him the advice that Nick was a lot more well off then most people. Nick gets the mindset that he should follow the path of those in his social class but on his arival to the east coast he realizes he is not as well off as he could be. Nick almost seems resentful that he is not of higher social class but at the same things seems to aooear that he doesnt wish to be anything like them. he wants what they have not what they are.

Color:

Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans.

1. The gold represents the old wealth that sourounds the purity and sereness of the white palaces. the white could also represnt the new generation living on the old money supplied to them.

And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.

1. All the colors describing the Buchanens house represent richness and growth, his new money into elegance.  

1. Gould points out that there were no flaws in Broca’s procedure but that he based his numbers on supposed data instead of the other way around. Generally speaking Gould is saying that scientists can be biased as well to try to find explanations that fit the opinion of the time period so they themselves will be highly regaurded as one of the best.

3. He mentions faults in the scientific process when he mentions Broca autopsies and inaccurate findings and also in several paragraphs trying to relate cranium size to intelligence. By pointing out both how the research was flawed to match societies opinions, he expresses that people don’t want to upset the the rules established at the time and be ridiculed for there findings. It shows the undying need to fit in even if it takes a little lie here or there to keep in good graces.

7. Gould develops his point on the affect science had on belittling other groups to exemplify no matter the type of person there will always be one that believes they are superior to the rest. The fact that they used science which is supposedly considered a sound and truthful way to prove things was used as way to point out flaws that weren’t even really there. It’s about the “superior” trying to keep their power by beating all opposition and others down.

9. He shows that there thought process was not necessarily wrong, for the time period they were doing what they thought best possible. It does however show that it is a powerful tool in shaping the way society acts and thinks.