Blogging On My Book #2

Hello everyone! For my AP English blog, we were assigned this week to blog on our book. I have already done this once a few weeks ago and blogged on Their Eyes Were Watching God I had been having a lot of trouble with that book, but in the end liked and understood the book. This week I am going back and re-reading The Great Gatsby. For the AP test I plan on going into it with the two books I just previously mentioned. So that being said, here's my progress and thoughts for my second time on reading Gatsby:

I would like to talk a little bit about the first page of the book (a.k.a. my favorite part of the entire book). The second sentence is seriously on of my favorite parts of the book, “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” You may wonder why I love that quote rather than the other quotes that this book is famous for such as  parties being intimate, not having the same love twice, and many others. If you type into google "Great Gatsby Quotes" the quote bolded above never popped up for me. It's not a quote that is really liked. But I love this quote for two reasons. One being that it is an important lesson for myself and others. We as a society and we as high schoolers judge. We judge people for anything and everything without even putting into account what they go through or have gone through during their lives. But when I see this quote I am reminded that I need to be considerate and on my bad days look at them instead as good days, because people will always have it worse off that I do. Then the second reason I love this quote is because it really characterizes and answers questions about Nick. Nick was the type of character that held everyone's secrets and didn't judge or let new information boggle the feelings he originally had or thought of that person, and that's because he's considerate and was told this quote at such a young age.

One of the language choices in this book just make me laugh. That is when Gatsby says "Old Sport." During my first time reading it I was so confused as to why Gatsby called Nick this? I look at "Old Sport" as something and old man would call his grandson, not two neighbors that have a close age. After doing some research the time period when this was written actually was a factor that effected why Gatsby says that phrase. During the 1920's it was normal for men to say that to each other as a friendly way to interact. Now knowing this I can tell that Gatsby was calling Nick this to show that he's his friend, but before I though he called him this to show that he was more superior. Like old isn't as good as new, so he's an old sport like not as good. But that's not at all what Gatsby was doing, he was trying to express their friendship.

I also want to analyze some of the symbols in this book:

• In Chapter 1 the green light becomes present. When I first read this I didn't understand it, but after our book clubs in the first semester I understood the importance after talking about it. It stood out as an intangible dream, that was so close yet so far. Gatsby was so close to having daisies attention, but yet so far because she didn't even know he was there.
• The Valley of Ashes is made to exaggerate between the rich and poor. The circumstances here were much worse than those in the two eggs, to make the eggs seem of more wealth.
• The Eyes symbolize that God exists and is watching down on them.
• The East Egg symbolizes the older money, more traditional, classical, and of inheritance.
• The West Egg symbolizes the newer money, more modern, youthful, and made self made.

This is all I had to discuss on Great Gatsby. I really love this book! I feel as though there is so much thought put into everything, and you learn more and more and uncover new things after every read.