:)

So there is no prompt for today, but anyways...
Y'all have a great day and happy birthday Grace!
Y'all are awesome classmates and its an honor to be with you all! :)

Gray, sun-strained eyes

"Her gray, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment, I thought I loved her."

I chose this sentence primarily because of the phrase, "Her gray, sun-strained eyes." In a simple phrase, Fitzgerald captured a world of color. To me, her eyes sound like a dark gray color, flecked with light gray. The phrase, "sun-strained eyes," give them a sense of purpose and hints at light gold flecks.
The phrase, "and for a moment, I thought I loved her," is indicative of the temporal emotions of the world they live in. Nick thought he loved her, but that emotion only stayed with him for a minute. Was it truly love then?

Her blue, stormy eyes looked toward the horizon, yet a door had been closed, and in that second, I knew I had lost her.

A triangle of silver scales

I love the moon and sun. And the beauty Fitzgerald constructed this sentence played to the strings of my heart. The silver scales remind me of stars with music as their voices, and the "stiff, tinny drip" for the sound of banjoes adds a contrast to the serenity of the moon and stars.

"The moon had risen higher, and floating in the Sound was a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drip of the banjoes on the lawn (47)."

Here is my effort at duplicating:

The sun had risen before, suspended in the sky as a ball of golden fire, beaming down upon the quivering, cold drops of the icicles along the roof edge.

Elegance of Being Drunk

"The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher." (40)

I find this sentence amusing because it is elegantly describing what is going on at the party and how drunk everyone is. The lights in the garden get brighter as the sun goes down. This describes how the partygoers are so drunk that they are becoming more sensitive to light, causing the lights to seem brighter. He also describes how "the earth lurches away from the sun." It sounds like a more violent phrase then what was actually going on. It is describing the drunkenness of the partygoers and how the world lurches around them rather than it rotating smoothly.  It also describes the music as the color yellow, which is usually not used to describe music. I think this is another sign of their drunkenness. Basically, the whole sentence elegantly and colorfully describes the drunken partygoers at Gatsby's party and how the world is "spinning around them."

Sad and Lovely

"Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered 'Listen'..."

The way Fitzgerald describes his characters is so much like a painting. It makes the reader not only conjure in their mind the image of this person but also the aura of him or her. In this case, Daisy is described as exciting but the author reveals more about how she makes people feel rather than how she appears.

Its body was firm and wrinkled with leaves climbing from the trunk to the tips of the tallest branches, but there was something about its nature that people who hung around it could not easily ignore: some dependability of this steadfast companion that softly promised 'You are not alone'...

Point of View

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."
Sometimes it's hard not to judge people. I chose this quote because it relates to my personal struggle with being judgmental of others. Always think about what it's like in someone else's shoes before you accuse them.

Fiesta

"The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names."

I chose this line because I believe it really captures the essence of the party. We learn what the atmosphere is like especially with the description of the guests interacting even though they dont care about each other.

"The fiesta is full of life, and capri-suns are passed around the kitchen of the birthday boy's house, as the boys discuss loudly their opinions on this and that, hardly acknowledging each other, much less their opinions, as each though is cast into the conversation and disregarded."

Mr. Mumble and the Mysterious Floating Cocktails

I chose the sentence,"A tray of cocktails floated at us through the twilight, and we sat down at a table with two girls in yellow and three men, each one introduced to us as Mr. Mumble." This sentence includes the strange imagery of the cocktails but also tells us a lot about the characters of the two girls in yellow by simply showing how they introduced the three men. They introduced the men in order to get that portion of the conversation out of the way so that they could start talking about themselves.

The stack of poker chips drifted between those of us sitting around the table, and I finally stood up with empty pockets and multiple messages on my phone, each message telling me to remember my appointment at mumble AM.

Pizzazz and Class

"I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. [...] Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans."

Nick is talking about the two "types" of civilizations... The hard-working West Egg and the ever so glamorous East Egg.

I lived with less pizzazz and class in West Egg, even though this is a snobby way to differentiate them. Across the water, I can see the sparkling buildings of the beautiful East Egg. The city and water dividing us seemed to glow as the sun hit it just right. The rest of the story unwinds as I visit the elegant city for dinner with the Buchanans. 

Ceilings made of Cake?!... Yes please!

"A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea. (8)"

This may in fact be one of the most beautiful sentences I've ever read in my entire life, and here Fitzgerald is describing mere curtains blowing in a breeze. However, upon reading this colorful and poetic sentence, I am immediately intrigued to see what type of majestic creature I am about to be introduced to in the story. Only the most gorgeous and captivating of characters could own curtains that blow in the breeze, that twist up to the "wedding-cake" ceiling and the "wine" rug.

 Another sentence:
His eyes gleamed with the brilliant blue of a spring morning sky, that had finally awoken from the frosted dreams of winter.

Gatsby's smile

"Gatsby's smile had a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life....It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself." (48)

This quote shows how Gatsby had a way with people. He was charming and people were amazed by him. It also gives the reader a little more insight into society in the 20's. It shows that people were more superficial and that even in a time when they were all focused on parties and drinking that they would take time to notice something as simple as Gatsby's smile. Gatsby wasn't like others. He has a real human quality about him that was something to be noticed.

My version:
The view of the beautiful mountains and hills and a peaceful feel to it, it had a way of making you forget all of your problems and see what is really important. It made you see a new side of yourself and it changed you.

Summertime

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer” (4).

Fitzgerald has done a rare thing, to combine beauty of language and depth of thought so skillfully.  It's a magnificent descriptive sentence about how exciting the summer is going to be and it references the variety of life and hope that Nick Carraway is about to experience. He compares sunshine and growth to a new chapter in his life. It is also showing how this book is going to be different and mysterious, which makes the readers want to keep reading. The Great Gatsby is really one of those pieces where every single line is gorgeous.

My version:

And so as the wind grew colder, the nights were longer and the leaves fell down, I figured that life was going to change as the wrath of winter approached.

partyyyyyy

"The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the center of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light."

The sentence is a long one that describes the type of people at Gatsby's party. He talks of the different guests and their different voices and personalities.


Throughout the night, people come and go as nomads; flower petals float all around just as the women dressed to the nines, characters and attitudes change almost as inconsistently as the weather.

He was as sensitive as a... seismograph?

"If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away."

I liked the way the sentence was organized. It combined phrases filled with descriptive words and similes and segmented them so that it could create on great Gatsbian sentence. I especially like how Fitzgerald found a way to compare a person to a seismograph of all things. 

If a crowd is a thriving mass of energies carried by the throng of people, then there is something vivacious about this one in particular, a seemingly infinite amount of life flows through these people, as if they were akin to a dam that had endless amounts of water flowing through it.

This is a Valley of Ashes...

This is a valley of ashes a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. 

I like this sentence because it make something that represents destruction seem like something that represents growth. When I think of the word "ash" I think of fire or a volcano eruption. However, Fitzgerald relates the word "ash" to a farm and crops, and houses' chimneys releasing smoke, but he also relates it to men who are corrupt, damaged and depressed. I think Fitzgerald was trying to show how all the "stuff"of this time was good but the people were not.

My Version:

This is a prosperous time with new technologies and all the industry and development is great, but it is all happening by way of men and women who are depressed and morally decaying and it is causing society to crumble.

Sentence Style

"No- Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men."

I particularly liked this sentence because of it's structure- the first part is short and simplistic and the second part is complex and long. I also like some of the phrases in the sentences such as "wake of his dreams," and "short-winded elations of men."

My sentence:

Yes- we made it out with our lives intact; yet, it was our souls, the conscience that lives beyond the mortal musing of bone and sinew, that would lay forever stretched on that sacred ground that glorious and blood hungry men had died for.

The Pretty Good Gatsby?

F. Scott Fitzgerald was a writer devoted to revision and rewriting. He anguished over the title of The Great Gatsby and was never pleased with it. Fitzgerald considered these alternate titles:

Gold-hatted Gatsby
The High Bouncing Lover
Trimalchio in West Egg
Ash Heaps and Millionaires
Under the Red White and Blue

The first two titles refer to the epigraph at the beginning of the novel, which was written by Fitzgerald but attributed to one of his characters. Trimalchio was a thrower of parties in Ancient Rome.

Fitzgerald was equally famous for his sentence craft. He wrote some of the most beautiful and provocative sentences in the English language. For today's post, pick a sentence from one of the first four chapters of The Great Gatsby. Explain why you chose it and why it spoke to you. Then try to imitate the sentence's structure (and tone, if you like) in a sentence of your own.

Here's one I especially like.

"In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars" (43).

It's a typical Gatsbian sentence with an incongruous reference to color and of course champagne and secrets. The simile of the moths is evocative of the party-goers, who are temporary, insubstantial, and drawn to the literal and figurative light of Gatsby's parties. 

Here's my version:

On their silver Christmas boys and girls rolled and scampered like new puppies among the anticipations and the sugar cookies and the paper ribbons.