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The Great GatsbyText Overview

We will read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby and a series of related critical essays. The titles, authors, and locations of these texts are indicated in the Unit Text List. Unit Readers are available through Open Up Resources.

Core

  • Tradebook
    • The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Scribner, 1925
  • Digital Access
    • “American Dream Faces Harsh New Reality,” Ari Shapiro, National Public Radio, May 29, 2012
    • “F. Scott Fitzgerald — The Great American Writer — Biography,” Biography.com, YouTube, April 10, 2019
    • “The Roaring 20’s: Crash Course US History #32,” John Green, Crash Course, YouTube, October 4, 2013
  • Unit Reader
    • Central Claims and Conclusions, excerpt from “Counterpoint as Technique in The Great Gatsby,” James M. Mellard, National Council of Teachers of English, 1966
    • “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
    • “I, Too,” excerpt from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Langston Hughes, Estate of Langston Hughes. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC., 1994
    • “Interpretive Claims,” excerpt from Fitzgerald and Hemingway: Works and Days, Scott Donaldson, Columbia University Press, 2009
    • “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
    • “Why the Americans Are so Restless in the Midst of Their Prosperity,” excerpt from Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville, Public Domain, 1835

Optional

  • Unit Reader
    • “Celestial Eyes: From Metamorphosis to Masterpiece,” Charles Scribner III, Princeton University Library, 1992
    • “F. Scott Fitzgerald to His 11-Year-Old Daughter in Camp,” excerpt from A Life in Letters, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1994
    • “Faults,” Sara Teasdale, Public Domain, 1907
  • Digital Access
    • “The Man Who Rigged The World Series: The Making of the Mob: New York,” AMC+, YouTube, 2015

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To find digital access texts on the Internet, complete the following steps:

  1. Locate the reference information for the text (text title, author, date of publication, and publisher) found on the Text page for a unit, section, or lesson.

  2. Highlight and copy the reference information.

  3. Paste the information into a search engine.

  4. The text will appear as one of the first search results.

  5. Verify the result by comparing the reference information on the website to the information on the Text page.