What’s So Great About The Great Gatsby?
– With Professor Bernstein
Hi there.
It’s Professor Bernstein, and in this episode of Get Into Lit, I’m helping you get into
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic American novel The Great Gatsby, and I’m going to do this
by addressing some questions students often ask when they have to read The Great Gatsby.
Students often ask What’s so great about the Great Gatsby?
And Why are you making us read this book?
Now professors hear this question quite frequently, and honestly we often get kind of irritated
about students complaining about having to read this great work of 20th-century American
literature.
And so we complain to each other.
I want to act out a classic example of this complaining, but I’ve got to quickly set
it up for you.
Mark Bauerlein, a professor at Emory University, wrote an article about how young people aren’t
reading as much as they used to and how, even though they’ve “passed through several
years of social studies and history classes,” don’t “remember the significant events,
figures, and texts.”
Okay, so in the article, he describes a conversation that took place when a kid called in during
his interview with National Public Radio.
Student: "I'm a
high-school student, and I don't read and my friends don't read because of all the boring
stuff the teachers assign."
Host: "Such as?"
Student: "Uh ... that book about the guy.
You know, that guy who was great."
Host: "Huh?"
Student: "The great guy."
Host: "The Great Gatsby?"
Student: "Yeah.
Who wants to read about him?"
So Bauerlein uses this exchange to illustrate how kids aren’t remembering even the most
basic things about what they’re reading—like the title of The Great Gatsby.
However, the student is on to some thing.
. .not in terms of the book is boring. . .but in terms of why we want to read about him.
Why do we want to read about Gatsby?
Who is this guy?
What makes him great?
What I’m going to help you do to get into The Great Gatsby
is give you 4 main sets of questions to use as you’re
getting into reading this novel.
I encourage you to take the time to write them down right now, so you don’t forget
them.
1.
How do we learn about Gatsby?
Do we learn about him directly or indirectly?
That is, are we learning about Gatsby from his own descriptions or through others?
What is the best way to learn about someone?
These questions help you understand how our knowledge about Gatsby is being shaped and
developed in the novel.
The last question, helps you get to a higher level of analysis.
What is the best way to learn about someone?
2.
What do the other characters know or not know about Gatsby?
Sometimes we only think about what we’re seeing or reading.
Sometimes it helps to think about what’s not there.
What people don’t know.
What people aren’t saying.
Can we trust their perceptions?
Why?
Why not?
3.
What, if anything, makes Gatsby great?
Is the adjective “great” ever used to describe him?
What makes him great?
Is the adjective great ever used in relation to him.
Here we’re entering the realm of interpretation.
You have to think about whether or not he’s great.
What makes someone great?
Why might he be great in comparison to other characters?
4.
Why do you think Fitzgerald named the novel The Great Gatsby?
Does he symbolize something great—something that’s great in America?
So these are just a few questions to get your mind turning as you start to read this novel.
Do yourself a favor.
. .Don’t consult sources that will summarize the novel for you.
Try to puzzle it out for yourself using these questions.
Trust me, once you get the hang of analyzing literature, you’ll never have to depend
on those mediocre, generic summaries again!
And make sure you check out the next episode where I help you get into the first few pages
of The Great Gatsby.
If you like this video, I’d love it if you liked it and shared it with your friends.
Don’t forget to subscribe to my channel so you don’t miss any episodes.
I love a good conversation, so leave a comment with your perspective on what makes Gatsby
great or why you think Fitzgerald created this title for his novel.
That’s it for now.
Bye.