Blog #10 - Extra Credit

This one may be the easiest yet. :) I'd like to hear about the text you have chosen for your project. I'm actually asking you for summary here -- imagine that! What drew you initially? Did anything we read this semester spark an interest or lead you to your choice? Do you think you would have chosen this text at the beginning of the class rather than the beginning?

The text I chose is The Great Gatsby. There were some texts that we read during this class that caught my interest especially since I had read some in my literature class last Spring semester. I thought that if I had to write an actual research paper that has to be six to seven pages, I wanted to use either a short story or novel to work with. I was first introduced to this book in my junior year of high school. We had to write an essay on it from only reading one chapter assigned to us. I took the initiative to actually read the entire book since that one chapter intrigued me, and my teacher told me it was one of my best essays.

The Great Gatsby is centered on the narration of Nick Carraway on his move to New York and the people he comes to meet. He moves to West Egg where he meets Jay Gatsby. While Nick's cousin Daisy Buchanan lives in East Egg with her husband Tom. Through the story, it becomes known that Gatsby and Daisy were in love once before, and Gatsby wants her back. Tom has affairs that Daisy is aware of, and one of his mistresses we meet in the story is Myrtle Wilson. The book ends with Daisy accidentally hitting and killing Myrtle with the car she is driving. Myrtle's husbands places the blame on Gatsby and eventually shoots him.

Everyone in the story is corrupt in some way. Most of them only care about their wealth, or are thinking back into the past. I think whether at the beginning or near the end of the semester, The Great Gatsby would have been one of my top choices to write about for the research paper. It is full of scandals and people wanting to live wealthy lives. They are all mixed in relationships that are crumbling around them. My only hope is to find more sources to use for the paper itself.