journey through junior year

During this week, one of the most interesting things we did (in my opinion) was reading the different lenses of The Great Gatsby . All the different perspectives just blew my mind because I had never thought of the novel in that way before. However, once I read the perspectives, they all somehow seemed to make sense to some extent. The writer of the lenses had picked apart each sentence of the book to make it match the topic they were focusing on. This reminded me of something I had previously learned in my AP psychology class: confirmation bias. This is defined as the tendency to see, only what you are looking for. For instance, for the psychoanalytic lens- there might've been parts of the book that contradicted the idea of all the relationships being fear of intimacy based. However, because the writer was only looking for evidence that proved her point, she didn't include any of that. Personally, I thought some of the ideas were a bit of a stretch and the writer was just tr...

The novel The Great Gatsby is told by Nick Carraway as a first-person narrative. Although this type of narration allows the reader to gain a lot of insight into Nick's mind, for all the other characters, it's very restricted. Personally, I would be really interested in reading this story from a different character's point of view, specifically, Daisy's. Throughout the novel,  Daisy was caught up in a dilemma, forcing her to choose between Gatsby, who she is, and has been in love with but was never allowed to pursue a life with, and Tom, who she has been married to for a couple of years and knew she would have a safe, predictable life with. Especially during the big argument between Tom and Gatsby about who Daisy really loved, I often found myself wondering: what is Daisy thinking right now? Furthermore, in the second sentence of the entire book, Nick is thinking about a quote his father told him: "Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all t...

When we were assigned to research facts about modernism this week, it was very apparent that once I started looking online, there were a few specific things modernism was known for. For instance, every website I looked at included that modernism was characterized by industrialization, rapid social change, as well as advances in science and art. Thinking back to my past history classes, it seemed like every time period I had ever learned about could be simplified and summarized with just a few keywords- so in that case, what would be used to describe the time period we are living in at the moment? Up until this point in my life, the biggest events I can think of are presidential elections, school shootings, and natural disasters. In terms of technological advancements, what comes to mind for me are Tesla cars, virtual reality devices, and the development of robots. In another couple thousands of years, are these the things the beginning of the 2000's will be known for? Or will ...