Lesson 1

Lesson Goals

Texts

Core

• • The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Scribner, 1925

• • “Counterpoint as Technique in The Great Gatsby,” James M. Mellard, National Council of Teachers of English, 1966
  • Excerpt from “Unreliable Narration in The Great Gatsby,” Thomas E. Boyle, Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, 1969
  • “Jay Gatsby: A Dreamer Doomed to Be Excluded. The Novelist Jesmyn Ward Explains.,” Jesmyn Ward, The New York Times Company, 2018
  • “The Trouble with Nick: Reading Gatsby Closely,” excerpt from Fitzgerald and Hemingway: Works and Days, Scott Donaldson, Columbia University Press, 2009

Materials

Tools

• The Great Gatsby: Culminating Task Checklist

• Culminating Task Progress Tracker

Reference Guides

• Argument Reference Guide
• Claims Reference Guide

Question Sets

• The Great Gatsby: Question Set 5.1

Editable Google Docs

• The Great Gatsby: Culminating Task Checklist

• Culminating Task Progress Tracker

• The Great Gatsby: Question Set 5.1

Activity 1: Read – Write – Discuss

We will read and discuss the Culminating Task questions and consider which of the questions we will respond to. we will think about what we need to understand and do for the task we choose.

Step 1

Reread, annotate, and discuss the Central Question, thinking about how you understand The Great Gatsby and its thematic commentary on this question.

Central Question: How do perceptions, illusions, and dreams influence our lives?

In your Learning Log, write a quick summary of your thinking in response to this question.

Read and annotate the Culminating Task Checklist to better understand what you will be expected to do as you write a literary analysis about The Great Gatsby.

Discuss with other students and your teacher what you understand the task to be. Ask questions about expectations that are not clear to you.

Step 2

In light of your response to the Central Question, read, annotate, and discuss the two prompts on your Culminating Task Checklist, one of which you will use to organize your literary analysis.

After reading, annotating, and unpacking the two tasks, consider what responding to each of them will involve and for which question you feel better prepared. Decide which option you want to pursue. In your Learning Log or on the Culminating Task Progress Tracker, list what you think you will need to do to be successful on the question and task you have chosen.

Activity 2: Read – Write

We will think about what is involved in taking a position that expresses an interpretation of the novel by reviewing models from the four literary analysis essays we have read.

Step 1

Briefly review your notes for the four literary analysis essays we read in Section 4. For each, identify a sentence in the text or write your own sentence that you think sums up the essay’s central position and critical interpretation of the novel, its characters, and themes.

Consider these excerpts from the four essays, which could be seen as position statements that sum up the authors’ interpretations of the novel and its characters and themes:

The very social class that embodied the dream Gatsby wanted for himself was predicated on exclusion . . . . Gatsby was doomed from the start . . . . The seasoned heart aches for James Gatz, the perpetual child, the arrested romantic, bound by one perfect moment to failure.

[Nick] has learned a good deal during the summer of 1922 about the power of the unrealizable dream and about the recklessness and selfishness of the very rich. Yet aside from a diminished curiosity that desires ‘no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart,’ Nick’s basic way of life seems unlikely to change.

If, on the other hand, we recognize the narrator's unreliability, we see that Nick's knowledge of Gatsby's corruption and his belief that the dream which he embodies is "incorruptible," is a paradox resolved only in our awareness of Nick's last and most serious compromise with truth.

The Great Gatsby is an initiation story and its most important character is actually its narrator, for the novel's meaning is finally indistinguishable from Nick's change in awareness . . . . Finally, it is through Nick's enlightenment that Fitzgerald makes an ambiguous, though by no means confusing or inadequate, comment upon the pursuit of the ‘American Dream.’

For the four excerpts, use the following questions to review the essays from which they are drawn:

1. From which of the essays does this excerpt come?

2. Where in the essay is the excerpt found?

3. What can you generalize about expressing a critical interpretation and position from these four examples?

Step 2

Identify one of the four excerpts that you see as related to your own position about the novel and its thematic commentary on perceptions, illusions, and dreams. (Note: the excerpt might be similar to your own interpretation, or it might be opposed.)

Paraphrase or summarize what you see the excerpt as saying. Note how it makes references to specific characters and aspects of the novel.

In your Learning Log, write a summary of your own position, thinking about what the four authors have modeled for you.

Activity 3: Read – Write

We will review the notes, tools, claims, and written work we have developed during the unit, looking for ideas and evidence that are relevant to the literary analysis that each of us will write.

For homework, continue the process of collecting relevant evidence from the novel and at least one critical essay.

In light of the position you have taken and begun to express, review the notes, tools, claims, and written work you have developed during the unit, looking for ideas and evidence that are relevant to your literary analysis, your Culminating Task question, and your position. Highlight ideas, evidence, and text references that you might want to use, then make a list of what you have found.