So apparently I'll be teaching The Great Gatsby to some unsuspecting teenagers in a few weeks.
I'll also be teaching an advertising unit in a media course. The challenge in this second assignment will be to keep my mouth shut and let the students talk. We all know how much I love to rant about advertising. The great thing is that I get to show "Killing us Softly." Brilliant.
Anyhow, I would be very accepting of any ideas ya'll might have about how to teach Gatsby without making the whole world (rest of the world, whatever) hate Fitzgerald. I studied it in high school and it was a snore fest. Now that I'm re-reading it and catching up on some criticism, I'm finding that it's actually a pretty interesting text.
So.... rough themes I've been working with so far for the unit are:
-success & how it's defined
-the American Dream (duh)
-symbolism in the novel (green light, etc.)
-the "roaring 20's" (grrrrrrr)
-geography and status
-post-feminist criticism (Daisy - pretty little fool?)
-Nick Carraway the hypocrite
so yeah.... those are the things I'm playing around with right now. If anyone wants to let me know of a fun activity they did in high school or WOULD LIKE TO HAVE DONE, let me know because I have a lot of freedom with this unit. Also, if you have any suggestions for supplementary material like poetry or songs and what-not, lay it on me.
Champage for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends.
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3 comments:
Our Gatsby unit was painful. Like, being hit with The Gift.
What made it bad though, was the utter lack of discussion on the characters. Most people hated at least one of them, but we never got to rant/discuss it. Instead it was all like "here's a quiz about the things daisy admired in gatsby's house. List seventeen!"
I think the last two about feminist criticism and Nick's character would be best-- letting the class let loose on their opinions about the characters. I mean, it would have been good to talk about, for example, daisy and what's-his-face/husband's behaviour at the end, rather than the specific whens and wheres of the book.
also, I haven't seen it-- but maybe those hip youngsters you teach would like it-- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0291928/
I'm tellin ya, dress up, be Daisy, teach 20s-style.
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