The Great Gatsby

Here is your second writing assignment - this will be two separate paragraphs in response to a single prompt - be prepared to rewrite the idea as an introductory paragraph to a longer response in class early next week!

 

 

Novel Study: The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 

The Thesis Statement: an exploration of theme 

Great stories, like the one you are reading are often great because they convey themes. Theme is defined as a message that the writer wishes you to get from his story. 

The central idea may be expressed as a singular encompassing theme, while at the same time there are often lesser themes within the story. 

A thesis is expressed as a complete thought:  

§  The American Dream is a topic, not a thesis

§  The bonds of blood are often stronger than those forged by friendship. Is a statement that hardly requires expository writing

§  Because Gatsby’s quest for wealth is to gain entry into an elite society into which he was not born, he is destined to fail.

 

Write a thesis statement that you feel best encompasses one of the author’s central ideas in the novel that you are reading. 

Two Paragraphs:

 

1. Write your thesis statement at the beginning of a single paragraph wherein you will explain the thesis

2. Write your thesis as a thesis embedded in the introductory paragraph of an essay  

Example thesis of a paragraph vs. the thesis for an essay:

 

Single Paragraph:

 

            Because Gatsby’s quest for wealth, in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, is to help him gain entry into a society into which he is not born, he is destined to fail. Jay Gatsby’s singular reason to gain entry into this elite society is to win back the love of Daisy, a woman with whom he shared a mutual affection five years before the action of the story begins. What Gatsby begins to understand, though, is that it is not merely money that buys someone’s entry into this elite society, but rather breeding, and education. He attempts to create a false past wherein he is an “Oxford man.” It is, though, a past that he cannot sustain; it is plainly evident to the real members of the elite society, like Tom Buchanan (Daisy’s husband), that Gatsby is phoney and his past is merely another charade to buy his membership into the upper crust of American society. Tom exposes Gatsby’s lack of upbringing with his observation that Gatsby is “Nobody from Nowhere” (p. 106) and that the only way he might have been seeing Daisy is if he’d “brought the grocieries to the back door” (p. 107). Even the way that Gatsby makes his money, through organized crime and bootlegging, indicates his lack of sophistication. Whatever Gatsby does and however much money he makes he will always fail to fit into the elite society into which he seeks admission, because it is a society into which the members are born, not made. 

Introductory Paragraph 

 

The American Dream entails that everyone has the opportunity to share in the wealth of the nation and that one’s advancement is limited only by how much work one is willing to do. Unfortunately, though, there are some strata within the nation to which we may only aspire, but never really gain entry. Jay Gatsby, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, aspires to gain entry into this elite society. What Gatsby does not realize, though, is that people do not work their way into this elite society, but rather, they are bred into it. Gatsby’s quest for wealth to help him gain entry into a society into which he is not born, is destined to fail, because he does not have the pedigree, the culture, nor the education necessary for entry into that society. 

 

After this introduction an essay will follow!