Come on... how do you know he meant that?

It is the inevitable question in any literature class that goes deeper than the surface: "Are you sure that the author intentionally put those symbols into the novel?  How do you know you are not just making this stuff up?"

The answer?  Sometimes I am, and sometimes I am not.  The key is, though, that if I am looking deeper, speculating about meanings, analyzing contexts, then I am interacting with the book, not just reading it.  When people tell me that The Great Gatsby is boring, I feel both a sense of understanding and a little pity (and not condescending pity).

I understand, because I have had bad relationships with some "great" novels.  I struggle reading Faulkner because I do not enjoy his writing style.  Does that mean Faulkner is not valuable?  No, just that I do not see what others see in him.  Herman Melville's Moby Dick is a tremendous allegory, but reading his prose is difficult for me.  So, I understand.  I do not yet see what they are saying or appreciate how they are saying it, but that does not mean it is not there.

Why pity?  Because I have a great relationship with The Great Gatsby.  Most of it speaks loudly to me: the plot, the characters, the metaphorical language, and yes, the symbolism.  I have read and reread it and it seems that every time I reread it - especially since the context of my life is always different when I do - I find something new in it.

One of the most interesting little tidbits I have picked up in life is the notion that the human mind is a Meaning Maker.  When people talk about life having no meaning, they seem to be talking about "meaning" as a thing that lives out there, separate, isolated, waiting to be found by humans.  I have found that two people can be in the same place, have virtually the same experiences, and yet only one of them will find meaning in her situation.  What variable determines who will and who will not find meaning?  The mind.

There are many purposes, meanings in life.  The sun's energy powers the entire life cycle on our planet.  Its energy emanates throughout the solar system in every direction, but the part of this energy that strikes and flows through our planet has, through the natural magic of photosynthesis, raised life on Earth, life that has now evolved into countless different species.  The sun has purpose, intentional or not.  Another example is insects - they too have purposes.  Consider that insects pollinate our wildlife, break down dead animals into soil, and feed numerous other creatures.  Throughout nature, insects have many different meanings or purposes, most of which are unconscious and instinctive.

Humans are different.  As animals, we have many instincts that impact us unconsciously as well - we have fear without knowing why, cravings from out of nowhere, and anxiousness for unknown reasons.  These emotions are driving us to act in some way, but the emotions do not always know what needs to be done for satisfaction.  They just sense that something is out of balance, and they tell us through feelings.  What separates us, though, is consciousness.  We have the ability to figure out what emotions are "telling" us and what behaviors or activities might satisfy us.

In short, our human minds are designed to help us find meaning that transcends our simpler animal nature.  What has this unique ability given us?  Architecture, art, history, law, mathematics, novels, philosophy, physics, poetry, science ... an almost interminable list of meaning and purposes.  Where would humanity be without these disciplines?  What if earlier humans had not searched for meanings with their minds?

Okay, this brings us back to the literature.  When I read The Great Gatsby, I notice motifs like the colors, whites, greens, golds, etc. and then I think about why Fitzgerald might have wanted to keep coming back to them throughout his novel.  After four or five mentions of the qualities of Daisy's voice, I start wondering why F. Scott Fitzgerald wanted us to pay particular attention to this part of her character.  Then, I begin to speculate, to wonder, to hypothesize, "Where are you going with this, Fitz?"  I think to myself, "There's something about the voice.  What does that remind me of...?  Famous voices... hmmmm.  The Sirens?  Odysseus?  Could it be?"  Then I might hypothesize: "Let's see... the Sirens' voices were beautiful, but they were destructive creatures.  Could Fitzgerald be saying that Daisy is beautiful but dangerous?" and then I keep reading to test my hypothesis.

I do this with films as well.  When I watched Inception for the first time, I was ready with my meaning-making machine because some of my students had asked me what I thought about the meanings in the film. One idea that struck me instantly was the mention of the character played by Ellen Page, Ariadne.  I brought to the theater knowledge that Ariadne is a character from Greek mythology.  She fell in love with Theseus, and her love for him enticed her to help him figure out the Labyrinth (an intense and deadly maze built by Daedalus) so Theseus could kill her half brother, the monstrous Minotaur.  In the film, Ariadne was brought on to be a dream architect, someone who knew how to build mazes of dreams that resembled mental mazes.  It is not much of a stretch to assume that the filmmakers and playwrights wanted some of us to see this meaning, and while I might be wrong about this, a Google search for "ariadne," "mythology" and inception" will bring up results showing that I was not alone in noticing this somewhat obvious meaning.

When each of you takes the Advanced Placement exams for Composition or for Literature, you will be given written passages or entire works like novels or plays, and you will be asked to consider them while reading the prompts (questions).  Then, you will be given a period of time to write extemporaneously (off the top of your head) about the meanings you can find and then support with examples.  How do you get these answers "right"?  Is there more than one"right" answer?  In this case, being right is about supporting your argument (thesis and claims) with examples (data) and then reaffirming them with clarifying statements (warrants).  The same skills will be measured on the ACT with the writing prompts and reading passages.

What we hope to do in this class and Advanced Placement classes (actually, I hope to teach this in all of my classes) is to sharpen your meaning-making machine and polish your writing skills so that (1) you can find your own meanings, and (2) you can communicate them clearly to the world.

Daisy's siren song...the sound of money.

Good reading involves paying attention to small details.  When an author repeatedly mentions such a detail, he or she is often trying to make use of what is called a motif.  A motif is a recurring symbol, image or idea in a work of literature.  When a close reader sees a motif, she should begin to ask herself what purpose the author might have had for repeating the idea.

One major motif in the novel, The Great Gatsby, is Daisy Buchanan's voice.  One early mention of the voice is found in this quote:

I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice.  It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.  Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered "Listen," a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour. (Chapter 1)

The voice excited everyone, especially men, and most especially Gatsby.  It even enchanted her cousin, the narrator, Nick Carraway:

For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened .... (Chapter 1)

Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing. (Chapter 1)

Perhaps Daisy never went in for amour at all - yet there's something in that voice of hers....  (Chapter 4)

The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain.  I had to follow the sound of it for a moment, up and down, with my ear alone, before any words came through. (Chapter 5)

And Nick became aware how much Daisy's voice had seized control of Gatsby:

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. (Chapter 5)

Given how Gatsby ended up in the end, the final clause in the previous quote is a verbal irony.  Later still we find that Daisy's voice is not only beautiful and mesmerizing, it is even controlling:

 ...Daisy's voice was playing murmurous tricks in her throat. (Chapter 6)

Daisy began to sing with the music in a husky, rhythmic whisper, bringing out a meaning in each word that it had never had before and would never have again.  When the melody rose, her voice broke up sweetly, following it, in a way contralto voices have and each change tipped out a little of her warm human magic upon the air. (Chapter 6)

Daisy's voice got us to our feet and out on to the blazing gravel drive. (Chapter 7)

In the end, Nick finally put it all together when he and Gatsby had the following discussion:

"She's got an indiscreet voice," I remarked.  "It's full of -" I hesitated.

"Her voice is full of money," he said suddenly. 

That was it.  I'd never understood it before.  It was full of money - that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbal's song of it....  High in the white palace the king's daughter, the golden girls.... (Chapter 7)

This is where Fitzgerald was able to tie Daisy's enchanting voice in with the pull that material wealth has on many Americans.  In the same way that her voice led Gatsby to his demise, pulling him forward into a life of criminal activity, money can draw people into questionable choices in the real world.  Granted, this puts blame on Daisy for Gatsby's bad choices, but this seems to be what Fitzgerald wanted us to see.  Just as Dan Cody lost his life to Ella Kaye, Gatsby lost his life to Daisy.

In Greek mythology, there were sea nymphs called Sirens, whose beautiful voices would draw sailors towards them.  Some sailors would dive into the water and drown trying to get to their island.  Others got there and died anyway.  Odysseus was aware of the danger that the Sirens posed for him, for his sailors and their ship, so he ordered his crew to strap him to the mast.  Odysseus covered his ears with wax, and that was how he was able to sail past the Sirens without being destroyed.

Unfortunately, no one tied Gatsby to his mast, so he was able to follow his personal siren song until it destroyed him.  Who will tie you to the mast while money sings its potentially deadly song.  Or will you be drawn into the rough seas of commerce where you could lose your life... or maybe just your house, or your family....  Money may be the root of evil, but only if you blindly follow the dreams that it claims it can help you buy.

In my earlier blog about the green light, I discussed how Fitzgerald implied that we have lost our way, that the settlers would be disappointed with what we have done with the American Dream.  Perhaps we have been following the siren song of material gain?  Financial security is a necessity, but opulence is a luxury that, perhaps, neither we nor our planet can afford.  According to Creditcards.com, the average credit card debt per household was $15,799.  Even at a modest 15% rate, that means that families are paying $2370 just in interest on these debts per year, which does not include mortgages, car payments, insurance, etc.  Additionally, a report sponsored by the United Nations Environment Program states that "Global demand exceeds the regenerative capacity of the planet by about 20 per cent."  Worse, if every human on Earth consumed like the average American, we would need nearly five planets to sustain this usage.  Americans currently represent 5% of the world's population but we consume 24% of its resources.  The question I have to ask is, how does the rest of the world get by without all of our stuff?

The next time you are watching the Super Bowl and you see one of those great commercials for which advertisers pay 3 million dollars per 30 second spot, understand that you may be seeing products you would love to purchase, but also consider that they may be modern sirens drawing you and us to our own destruction.

Gatsby's green light explained

Why is The Great Gatsby great?  You don't want to get me started, but here I go anyways:

First, it was remarkable for someone to step up and question the validity of the American Dream.  It just was not usually done.  Fitzgerald was not against the Dream in general; rather, he was of the opinion that people had lost sight of what had once made the Dream so great.

Evidence Gatsby and his green light.  Jay looked across the bay at a light that seared his brain.  His dream seemed so close and infinitely far away at the same time, that feeling any of us gets when we have striven for a goal so long that when we reach the precipice, when it seems just off of our fingertips, the anticipatory angst devours us.  Then, he reached his dream and Daisy seemed to be, at last, forever his.  As it turned out, though, the reality did not approach the grandeur of the fantasy.  Daisy and her beautiful voice had very little to say because her own dreams had withered and died, revealing her to be only a shell of humanity.  She was bored with her aristocratic life and disenchanted about her future.  While Gatsby sparked a temporary flicker of spirit in Daisy, that fizzled out when she found out he was a criminal.  Though she was not much better than he was, all she had was her reputation - notoriety based only on the images she projected to the world and not on reality.

As the book ended, Fitzgerald had Nick sum it up when he wrote:

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound.  And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until I gradually became aware of the old island here that flowered once for the Dutch sailors' eyes - a fresh green breast of the new world.  Its vanished trees, the trees that once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

Fitzgerald here compares Gatsby's green light to the greenery that lay before the Dutch sailors as they approached the shoreline.  They began to dream of the tremendous new world they could create on this continent.  It was a great dream, but Fitzgerald seemed to believe that the emptiness of many American citizens - like Gatsby, who had turned bootlegger for wealth; Tom and Daisy Buchanan, who had unspeakably immense wealth but struggled with nihilism (feelings of nothingness, emptiness) every day; George Wilson, whose listless existence represented all of the impoverished of America, and his wife, Myrtle who represented those of the impoverished who would do almost anything to escape that world - showed how much we had ruined the settlers' dreams for this land.  Nick realized it too.  He went on:

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock.  He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.  He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Like many who believe the dream is now about being wealthy, powerful and happy, Gatsby found out that integrity matters, that it is important in the end to stand for something besides the accumulation of property.  Daisy and Tom had achieved the dream that many seek, but they still had to live between their ears, knowing day in day out that others wanted to be like them and not knowing why, because they had lost interest in their own existence.  That is why, once people attain their dream mansions and trophy spouses, they are often disappointed by the fact that they cannot stop striving, first because they become addicted to the thrill of acquiring, and secondly because, when they wake up in the morning, their human spirit will gnaw at them to keep striving and achieving.  If one's only goal is the accumulation of wealth, after a while the material world just seems redundant.

Fitzgerald recognized that for many of us, this information will not be helpful because the siren song of material prosperity is as beautiful and mesmerizing as it is dangerous.  Though many of us will feel this to be true at some point in our lives, most will continue to sail towards those voices.  As Fitzgerald put it:

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....  And one fine morning -

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Like Gatsby - and some would say, like Fitzgerald himself - we recognize that our lives have to be about more than consumption, but when we are "living in the moment," basking in luxury, this is hard to see.

Introductory blog - Prezays and Gatsby

Thus begins my blog for American Literature A.  In this blog, I want to share what we are doing in class, why we are doing it, and what I hope the students will be able to do as a result of our efforts.

Currently, we are using Prezi (Prezi.com) to create graphic essays about the main theme for American Literature A, the American Dream.  In class, we have been going through the 6 + 1 rubric that is used to evaluate essays.  The categories are Ideas, sentence fluency, organization, diction, conventions, voice, PLUS presentation.  Click here to see the link to my partially completed Prezi example.  Once you access the site, press the play button and use the arrow keys to navigate forwards or backwards through my Prezi.

I believe the students are enjoying putting together their "Prezays," as I call them.  The program is visually compelling, and for the more visual learners, this is a new way to see the uses for essays.  I hope to show the class that any television production is likely written down, either on paper or digitally, before it is produced and broadcast.  A least a few of my former students are currently writers, whether it be as book authors, playwrights, or editors.  Writing and editing writing are definitely a marketable skills.

The student Prezis are due Thursday, September 29.  We are going to present them in class, and concurrently, we are going to discuss what makes a quality essay, not to mention what goes into creating a compelling visual presentation.

At the same time, I hope to convince the students to at least understand why The Great Gatsby has been a game-changer for America, a book whose messages still resound today.  That should keep us busy!