The Great Gatsby

1. John Green's Crash Course

1.1. Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw9Au9OoN88

1.2. Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn0WZ8-0Z1Y

2. Who was Gatsby?

2.1. High Priority

2.2. Medium Priority

2.3. Low Priority

3. Symbols and themes

3.1. The Green Light

3.1.1. Goal 1

3.1.2. Goal 2

3.2. The Valley of Ashes

3.2.1. Session Rule 1

3.2.2. Session Rule 2

3.3. The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg

3.4. http://videos.huffingtonpost.com/leonardo-dicaprio-says-the-great-gatsby-is-always-wanting-something-more-517764042

4. Daisy

4.1. Daisy Buchanan is Nick’s cousin(the narrator), and the woman Gatsby loves. As a young woman in Louisville before the war, Daisy was courted by a number of officers, including Gatsby. She fell in love with Gatsby and promised to wait for him. However, Daisy harbors a deep need to be loved, and when a wealthy, powerful young man named Tom Buchanan asked her to marry him, Daisy decided not to wait for Gatsby after all. Now a beautiful socialite, Daisy lives with Tom across from Gatsby in the fashionable East Egg district of Long Island. She is sardonic and somewhat cynical, and behaves superficially to mask her pain at her husband’s constant infidelity.

4.2. The Problem: Daisy is in love with money, ease, and material luxury. She is capable of affection (she seems genuinely fond of Nick and occasionally seems to love Gatsby sincerely), but not of sustained loyalty or care. She is indifferent even to her own infant daughter, never discussing her and treating her as an afterthought when she is introduced in Chapter 7. In Fitzgerald’s conception of America in the 1920s, Daisy represents the amoral values of the aristocratic East Egg set.

5. Jay Gatsby: The man, the myth, the legend

5.1. The Truth

5.1.1. The title character of The Great Gatsby is a young man, named James Gatz around thirty years old, who rose from an impoverished childhood in rural North Dakota to become fabulously wealthy. However, he achieved this lofty goal by participating in organized crime, including distributing illegal alcohol and trading in stolen securities. From his early youth, Gatsby despised poverty and longed for wealth and sophistication—he dropped out of St. Olaf’s College after only two weeks because he could not bear the janitorial job with which he was paying his tuition.

5.2. The Motivation: Though Gatz has always wanted to be rich, his main motivation in acquiring his fortune was his love for Daisy Buchanan, whom he met as a young military officer in Louisville before leaving to fight in World War I in 1917. At this point in the book he has already changed his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby. Gatsby immediately fell in love with Daisy’s aura of luxury, grace, and charm, and lied to her about his own background in order to convince her that he was good enough for her. Daisy promised to wait for him when he left for the war, but married Tom Buchanan in 1919, while Gatsby was studying at Oxford after the war in an attempt to gain an education. From that moment on, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back, and his acquisition of millions of dollars, his purchase of a gaudy mansion on West Egg, and his lavish weekly parties are all merely means to that end.

5.3. The Myth: Gatsby is a fabulously wealthy young man living in a Gothic mansion in West Egg. He is famous for the lavish parties he throws every Saturday night, but no one knows where he comes from, what he does, or how he made his fortune. Many rumors circulate about him. Some believe he is the son of the devil, a German Spy, or even a murderer.

5.4. Idea 4