Rothman Vs. Schulz
After reading the two articles by Schulz and Rothman, I found myself agreeing more with Schulz and her take on Gatsby, and the novel written by Fitzgerald. I don't know if it was the order that I decided to read them in, in which case I read Schulz's article first and could have been easily persuaded by hers more than Rothman's, or if it was just that I really do agree with the points made in her article. Something that really stuck out to me in the reading by Schulz was what she said about each character representing a children's play with them wearing banners about what they represent. To me what I thought this represented was the shallowness of the relationships between the characters. Each character didn't really have a connection between each other besides the fact that they were married or had a history, none of them really had that clique. It in a way is how I saw the characters when I first read this book. I could never really feel myself getting this emotional relationship with any of the characters like I would with other books that I have read in the past. Although I did like the way that Rothman wrote his article, meaning he had good points that I could agree on, and arguably made points that made the reader think, I had to side with Schulz on this one because her points were more relevant to me. I personally did not like the book as much and feel that it was hyped up to more than it should be. Why are we still reading this book? It gives us this lesson on the American dream and the illusion it can be but I don't see much significance to it. Siding with Rothman on the other hand, I want to say he read the book differently than how Schulz read it. My guess is Rothman read the book like our class did, he looked at the symbols and the deeper meaning of it all. He went page by page ad dissected everything till it couldn't be any smaller. Schulz did the opposite and read the surface. Never really stopping to go into depth about certain things which is why her article doesn't go into much depth with evidence etc. For part of the reading I was just reading the book trying to get the reading over with which is why I probably sided more with Schulz but I later was able to see the point of view of Rothman.
Gatsby, Chapter 9, Journal Entry
In this final chapter of the book, we come to a lot of realizations about Nick, and the author. Nick comes to the realization that America, is just a land of geographical importance with each place carrying its own values. For example, the Midwest coincide with failure. The fact that all these westerners can do whatever they want all because they have the money. Nick views the people of the area like this. This chapter starts off with the realization of the ugly side of the American dream. The way I see it was told is that it is all an illusion. This dream forces men to do extraordinary things, unethical things and we won't stop at anything in our way. Like Gatsby's desire for the obsc...
