For homework, you were to read the next four chapters in the novel and respond here. (Make sure that you give yourself plenty of time for this. I know you have several days between classes, but Chapter 7 is on the longer side.)
Respond to two of the following options, doing so in two separate comments to this post:
Option A: Choose a key passage (half a page to a page and a half in length) from Chapter 4 to discuss as it relates to the American Dream. How is this passage either offering a critique of the American Dream or speaking to the power that it holds over certain characters? What do we know about the character(s) so far that helps you see why this idea would be so powerful?
Option B: Over the course of the last ten pages (roughly 86-96) of Chapter 5, there is a shift in Fitzgerald’s writing. Write about that shift. What happens in the plot? In characterization? In word choice? In theme development?
Option C: Choose a key passage (half a page to a page and a half in length) from Chapter 6 to discuss. Giving the page numbers and quoting a couple of key sentences, phrases, and/or words, analyze the passage for how it furthers the novel. What is it doing stylistically? How does it reveal something about a character? What does it add to the theme? What symbol is introduced or revisited, and what does that contribute to your understanding? If someone else has already posted by the time you get here, try to choose a different passage.
Option D: Specifically with regards to Chapter 7, what's going on here that has to do with the human condition? What themes or ideas are coming up that are as old as the stories you know from the earliest periods of human history? What are these characters struggling with that so many of us do?
Option E: Using a key passage from anywhere in these four chapters, make a connection between texts. What's happening here that seems to be similar (or connected but opposed) to something in another book you've been assigned in high school? How does that book connect with this one thematically? What do you make of these connections?