Self-edit tonight...improve your paper;

1st peer review is moved to tomorrow

It will involve reading your paper aloud to a couple of other people, so at least have a complete and strong effort.

Today's agenda

I realized where people are getting what I have been disparaging as a rather "generic" theme list - from the assignment! My bad!

This assignment was created by a team of teachers, and I forgot we kept that list of broad topics. Instead of giving students a starting point, I'm afraid it has given people tunnel vision.  In other words, rather than making natural and individual connections with the text, they picked one of these "broad topics" examples and started writing what essentially sounds like a literary analysis paper on a theme and then later they plan to look for some connections in their own life, which they can work into the paper.  

The potential problem with that approach is a somewhat voiceless paper. Given the complexity of this book, everyone who did more than a half-hearted reading should have felt moments where it raised questions about their own life, their own values, their own relationships, their own politics. Like Meghan O'Rourke manages to do with Hamlet, I am asking you to use The Great Gatsby to help you explore something that truly matters to you.

Good readers empathize. They see connections between their life and people and societies that on the surface are nothing like them. Even if you hate a book, get in touch with why you hate it, or why you hate a character in a book, and go from there. You can write in opposition to a book, an author, or a character, as long as you do it intelligently, not just as the result of superficial or lazy reading.

So my advice now, is don't get stuck on the "broad topics" list.  They are just suggestions for getting your mind started, not end-points.  In fact, if you look at the paragraph that follows those broad topics, it suggests how you should then break those open to find more specific connections with your life.  Again, they were only meant to serve as suggestions to perhaps get you started on a line of questioning, but people are treating them as prescriptive, and are not drilling down to more specific personal questions and connections raised by the novel.

Look at the example. How does Meghan O'Rourke get real about grieving in Hamlet and in their life.  How does she actually use her own experience to get past the cliche'd interpretations of Hamlet's personality.

If your paper doesn't convey the sense of investment - either emotionally or intellectually - that O'Rourke's paper has, than ask, what can I do to connect in more powerful way?  Where is my opening in this book? Where does it cross into my intellectual or emotional life?

Work on rubric

Breakdown O'Rourke's example

Read one or two student examples

If time permits, Fitzgerald Essay

Peer feedback in groups of three

Gatsby Personal Insight Paper: Creating a holistic rubric

What do you feel would be the characteristics of a good personal insight paper? From ideas to style and everything in between, write in the characteristics that you would expect to see in a good personal insight paper.  Then write in the characteristics of a paper that is exceptional. How will you know the difference? How will you articulate that difference? Finally, what are the characteristics of a proficient paper? What makes it proficient, but not good?

Begin with one partner, then I will match you with another group, for thee purpose of discussion

Ideas/insights; meaningful connections; style; voice; organization; conventions/mechanics

Exceptional

Good

Proficient

Developing

Student Example

Wesley

22 February 2015

Evaporating

One of my most distinct childhood memories is the scent of arugula. My backyard in

Denver was this vast expanse of territory, full of different terrains and trenches and rock

formations. There was the pine forest to the right of the house, the desert behind it with a birch

oasis in the center, and the rugged gravel pits just beyond. No matter where I stood in this small

world, I could always smell the arugula from our garden. I undoubtedly had some of the best

and most carefree days of my life in that backyard. Simply being a kid is the most envious state,

and a setting such as this only furthered my delight. But why are these memories so fleeting and

distant? Why does my backyard seem so much smaller in pictures than it ever did in person, and

why do I feel overwhelmingly sad whenever I smell arugula?

Time, I have concluded, tends to distort perception. I found this thought to be true while

reading The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald as well. While the aroma of a common garden

vegetable does not come close to his trials, I’d like to think Fitzgerald experienced similar

feelings of nostalgia during his life—from his failed marriage to the one that got away—that

prompted a novel deeply rooted and intent on recreating the past, in attempts to vocalize his own

shortcomings and his inherent want to somehow fix them.

Jay Gatsby mirrors this want as the poster­child for nostalgia. He attempts continuously

throughout his last five years to “recover something, some idea of himself perhaps… if he could

once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing

was” (110). Gatsby’s feelings toward his time with Daisy drive him to “recover” this former

version of himself. He has the pleasant memories but the emotions associated with them are the

exact opposite. He feels taunted by the past rather than content with what has happened, just as I

get a hollow ache when thinking about my time in Colorado. And I loved it, just as Gatsby loved

Daisy. But time warps these feelings into regret and wistfulness, challenging former emotions

and entangling them beyond recognition.

Similarly, I often find myself thinking about former friendships. I’ve definitely had my

fair share of these relationships end. Sometimes there’s a specific reason, but more often, and in

turn more painfully, they just fade without reason. I’ll pass someone in the hall and suddenly

find myself pouring over details from years ago and wondering why it’s impossible to even make

eye contact.

My best friend from third to eighth grade, Marie, is the worst instance of this. Gatsby’s

array of newspaper clippings and photographs of Daisy (93) could never compare to the

multitude of pictures of Marie and me. From all the photographic evidence, it would appear that

we were physically attached to one another throughout the course of our friendship. In all my

yearbook photos, she sits in a desk beside me. In all my birthday pictures, she is sitting next to

me as I open presents, identical radiant smiles plastered across our faces.

In moments like these I can understand why Gatsby kept clippings in Daisy’s absence.

Even though it’s arguably more painful to look at them than to forget, there is always an internal

hope that time will correct itself, that it will make up for itself, or reverse completely. Nick

Carraway puts it best after Gatsby’s initial encounter with Daisy: “I think we all believed for a

moment that [the old clock] had smashed in pieces on the floor” (87). Everyone, to some extent,

falls victim to the passage of time. In my case it is Marie who brings this out, causing me to

falter over memories.

However, where I’d like to think I diverge from Gatsby is the way I externally deal with

these lapses in logical judgement. I’m simply content to wallow in regret and self­pity whereas

Gatsby attempts to construct a meticulous empire to recreate his past. When Gatsby started

going off the deep end, no dark humor intended, is when I began to feel a disconnect with his

character. Although this disconnect is frustrating at times, it forces me to objectively consider

Gatsby. It’s one thing to wistfully remember a better time in life but to fully submerge into the

past is another. It’s obsessive, it’s unhealthy, and most of all impossible because time doesn’t

forcefully rewind. It doesn’t simply stop, backtrack and repeat itself. It’s the most final of all

restrictions, greater than anything else explored in Gatsby.

To illustrate this point, even if the extent is limited, people have control over their wealth

and social status. Gatsby proved both of these with his self­built fortune and elaborate lifestyle.

In this, Fitzgerald cleverly portrays that time is the one factor that we have absolutely no control

over. I recognize Fitzgerald’s own pain in this realization.

Of course, this seems like such an obvious statement. Why wouldn’t time be final? How

could it possibly be perceived otherwise? We all have broken­clock moments, unfortunately.

Time has a way of disfiguring things while remaining shockingly consistent with itself. With

repeated recitation I’ve begun to stomach this reality. I’ve considered its profound impact on the

way I perceive my life: as I change, so do my reactions to recollections. And as a logical person

who thrives on reasoning and patterns, the thought of giving up control to some intangible force

scares me more than anything else.

I sense that it is the same innate fear that drives Gatsby to near insanity. It causes him to

perpetually extend himself towards that green light, to act as though “the past [was] lurking here

in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand” (110) as he tries to convince himself of

Daisy’s solidarity. And until the end, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that

year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to­morrow we will run

faster, stretch out our arms farther” (180). Fitzgerald leaves me with this surprisingly personal

and harsh statement regarding time. He tells me that we won’t stop, “boats against the current,”

and will continue to yearn for something, anything, because the present will never suffice.

Nostalgia is ever­present, a constant and singular reminder of the encompassing control of time.

I find this a difficult concept to agree with, though.

So now I turn to music for reassurance and a second opinion, as usual, in these lyrics

(translated from Portuguese) from Evaporar by Little Joy:

We've got as much time as we give it

Whatever happens

Whatever it takes

We give as much time as we have

It takes the things that happen

Whatever the things that happen cost

Only now I realize that what I got from the time I lost

Was learning how to give

And I still chase that time

I was able not to run from it

[I was able to] Find myself

Ah, it didn't move

Hummingbird in the air

The river stays there

The water that ran [into the sea] gets to the tides

[The river] becomes sea

It's as if dying was like debouching

Like spilling over the sky

Like a self­purification

Like leaving behind salts and minerals

Like evaporating.

It is in these broken­clock moments, I have ultimately concluded, that time distorts

perception. It is in these moments when time simply hangs there like a “hummingbird in the

air.” For Gatsby it’s when he thinks about Daisy. For me it’s when my mind races back to

Denver with the tangy aroma of arugula and the pine and birch trees suddenly extend their limbs

towards me. It’s when I can’t quite mimic the smiles on my face in pictures with Marie because

the emotions are forever locked in the frame. Evaporar gives me closure that Gatsby failed to

provide. It reveals that time does indeed control us, but it’s only when we concede to this fact

that memories can fade. This voluntary surrender is what Gatsby failed in and why I felt so

disconnected from him. I now know that eventually, unlike Gatsby, I will allow these memories

to gradually dissipate and be replaced. I’ll leave them behind like salts and minerals;

evaporating.