Transcendentalism

 

Transcendentalism

This blog is a task given by Megha ma'am. Visiting faculty of department of English M.K.B.U. in this blog I am going to discuss what is Transcendentalism ?, and apply my thoughts on any movie or song which is relatable to Transcendentalism.

What is Transcendentalism

Basically Transcendentalism is a philosophy that began in the mid 19th century and whose founding members are Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. This philosophy  centered around the belief that spirituality cannot be achieved through reason and rationalism, but instead through self-reflection and intuition. In other words, we could say that transcendentalists believe spirituality is not something you can explain but it’s something you feel. A transcendentalist would argue that going for a walk in a beautiful place would be a much more spiritual experience than reading a religious text. 

This movement arose as a result of a reaction to Unitarianism as well as the Age of Reason. Both centered on reason as the main source of knowledge, but transcendentalists rejected that notion. 

Transcendentalist have many views and these all fit into three main values- 

1. Individualism

2. Idealism 

3. The divinity of nature

     Eat,pray, and Love

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia is a 2006 memoir by American author Elizabeth Gilbert. The film version, in which star cast Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem, was released in theaters on August 13, 2010.

The movie "Eat, Pray, Love" is a perfect example of how Transcendentalism is portrayed in popular culture. The main character of the movie is  Liz Gilbert, she is embarking on a journey of self-discovery and spiritual growth, seeking to find meaning and happiness in her life. Through her travels to Italy, India, and Bali, she learns to appreciate the simple pleasures of life and the beauty of nature, and comes to a greater understanding of herself and the world around her.

The major themes of this movie are self-discovery, individualism, and the search for spiritual truth are also central to Transcendentalism. Liz's journey reflects the Transcendentalist idea that true happiness and understanding can only be found through individual exploration and introspection, rather than through external sources such as religion or material wealth.

The main character of the movie or we can say the protagonist of the movie Liz Gilbert is a successful journalist. She had an eight-year marriage  life which is sweet and nicely going on but vocationally wayward Stephen  has broken up but he doesn't want to get a divorce. Then Liz begins an affair with David who is  a handsome actor and he  is a devotee of a woman guru in India. Liz feels a mixture of regret and guilt when she examines the unsatisfying dimensions of both relationships. She senses that part of the problem with both men is her controlling nature. Or is it that she too easily lets herself be consumed by a relationship? Liz is like many of us who feel inadequate to the high standards set for a meaningful love relationship. Liz will come across as a whiny and self-absorbed woman.

In conclusion, "Eat, Pray, Love" is a powerful example of the influence of Transcendentalism in popular culture, and the continued relevance of its central ideas in modern society.

Robert Frost and Bob Dylan

Robert Frost and Bob Dylan

Thinking Activity

This blog is a thinking activity assigned by Megha Ma'an visitor faculty of Department of English M.K.B.U. In this blog I am going to write about Robert Frost's one of the most famous poem 'Birches'.

About Robert Frost

Robert Frost was considered as one of the   most   popular poets of the twentieth   century. He was born in San Francisco, California on Mar 26, 1874. He is a well known modern poet. He is generally regarded as a poet, teacher, and a man of wisdom. Many Americans recognize his name, the titles of and lines from his best-known poems and even his face and the sound of his voice. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize four times. 

He had much knowledge of literature, history, science and philosophy. Hence he can  be   termed   as   classicist  of   very   high   order.  Frost  never   describes  the   situations   and conditions of life of modern society, and never he writes about political and economic problems of his age. Most of works were highly influenced or inspired by Rural life in New England. He does not aloof himself from contemporary society. He knows most things about his society but he never wrote about that particular political and social things in his writing. He has penetrated from social actions to intellectual problems of his age.

He was a poet who spoke with rhyme and meter of all things natural, and in so doing plumbed   the   depths  of   emotions   of  people   in   all   walks   of   life.  

Louis  Untermeyer   best describes Frost's work as - 

"poetry that sings and poetry that talks ... his  poems are  people talking"  

Robert Frost is one of few poets in English Literature that shall never become outdated because poetry is an echo of every sensitive man's experiences and his limitations. 

At last we said that Frost does not deal with the  type of themes which we  come across in T.S.Eliot, but that does not mean that he is any the less modern. He has his unique style of writing.

Frost’s attachment with New England and rural life generally cause  a  misinterpretation   of   his  themes.  That's why a number   of   critics  think   that   Frost   never wanted to be characterized by topical labels. He ignores many of the overwhelming subjects of the twentieth century, to be specific the two world wars and the problems of urbanization and   mechanization.   

The poem 'Birches'

"Birches" is a poem by American poet Robert Frost. This poem first published in the August, 1915 issue of The Atlantic Monthly together with "The Road Not Taken" and "The Sound of Trees" as "A Group of Poems". It was included in Frost's third collection of poetry Mountain Interval, which was published in 1916. Consisting of 59 lines, it is one of Robert Frost's most anthologized poems. He wrote this poem in blank verse. Along with other poems that deal with rural landscape and wildlife, it shows Frost as a nature poet.

As a boy, the poet was much interested in climbing birch trees, swinging from the tops, till the supple branches bent down to the ground. In this poem he expresses his desire to be swinger of birches at least once  in his present time, but he didn't mean that he wanted to escape from his life. The swinging of birches is used as a distraction, a passtime to busy oneself in order to escape the realities and hardships of the adult world.

“Birches” Summary

This  poem opens with the sight of curiously bent birches trees. When the poet sees birches bending to left and right in the backdrop of “straighter and darker ” trees, he thought that  it is the work of some country boy who must’ve indulged in swinging them. However, he is fully aware that it cannot be the case as the birches have been permanently bent. He knows it  isn’t the work of a harmless boy. It’s the ice storms. Harsh, cold and ruthless. The boy and the ice storm both are explanations for the truth behind the state of the bent birches. One is the objective, fact based explanation which states that which is. The other is a subjective explanation based on fantasy which creates a possibility of that which can be.

The poem now switches to the second person as the speaker addresses the reader “you”. While referring to the birches to delve into the human condition, we are told that some circumstances merely swing them and  others  them down forever.

Sometimes, when the poet’s adult life is ravaged by some harsh truths about the real world the ice-storms, he prefers the truths to be like a birch tree that  might be bent by some boy – a boy who was too far from the town to learn baseball and whose only play was what he found. This was how the poet persona supposedly spent his childhood – subduing his father’s trees, climbing them and swinging from them to reach the ground.

The nostalgia of childhood provides a brief escape to the speaker from the rigors of adult life. The manner in which he used to climb the tree is vividly captured in these lines.  After learning to climb carefully with the same pains as one uses “to fill the cup up to the brim, and even above the brim”, he’d fling himself “kicking his way down through the air to the ground”  a lot like building one’s life carefully around a certain truth only to fling oneself clear off it. There’s a limit to what a cup can hold and there’s a limit to which the boy can climb the tree. He must come down someday.

Sometimes the speaker can’t help but yearn to escape from adult life. He wishes to be the boy again who used to spend his leisure time with the birches.

The poet makes it clear that neither is he an escapist nor is he espousing escapism to get away from the rigors of life which demands duty, entrusts responsibility and exploits vulnerability. Rather, what he thirsts for is a brief respite from the harsh realities of existence. As he explicitly states :

“Earth’s the right place for love 

I don’t know where it’s likely to get better."

Theme

The central theme of Birches is that the poet dreams of becoming a swinger of birches once again in his life as he was during his boyhood. As the poet is weary of considerations that his life involves, he expresses his desire to be a swinger of birches at least for the present time, but it does not mean that he wishes to escape from his life on earth. It is not the desire of escape that forms the central theme of the poem, but the love of the earth.

Figures of speech

• The poem is very stylistically rich. The use of figurative language allows the poem to be more enjoyable, as well as it acts as an aid to support the theme of reminiscing adolescence and the importance of balance

• Frost uses simile, contrast, repetition, personification, onomatopoeia, symbolism, imagery, and metaphors.

• Onomatopoeia: "...They click upon themselves" - The sharp sound of the click of the branches contrasts the soft delicate images that he remembers of his childhood

• Simile: "....trailing their leaves on the ground/Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair/Before them over their heads to dry in the sun" 

• Contrast: "And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk" . There is also a general contrast of reality vs imagination which is an active theme in "Birches"

• Repetition: Frost repeats "birches bend,," boy's swinging "bends them" "swinger of birches" - represents the significance of the man imagining his childhood instead of believing reality

• Personification: "trailing their leaves on the ground" (imagery to describe tree)

• The poem is a blank verse that consists of 10 syllables per line, no rhyme, five iambs (metrical feet that have two syllables; one unstressed followed by stressed)

• It's a lyric poem because the Frost shares his emotions about his childhood

• Frost has a descriptive style using vivid imagery and figurative language to appeal to the readers' senses.

Bridge Course : Written Assignment

 

Bridge Course : Written

Assignment

This blog is a task given by Dr. Dilip Barad sir. In this blog I am going to attend some questions of the essay 'Tradition and Individual Talent' which is written by T.S. Eliot.

"Tradition and the Individual Talent" is an essay written by poet and literary critic T. S. Eliot. This essay was first published in The Egoist in 1919 and later in Eliot's first book of criticism, "The Sacred Wood'' in 1920. This essay was published in two parts, in the September and December issues. It is also available in Eliot's "Selected Prose" and "Selected Essays".

This essay is described by David Lodge as the most celebrated critical essay in the English of the 20th century. 

The essay is divided into three main sections:

1.  The first gives us Eliot’s concept of tradition; 

2. The second exemplifies his theory of depersonalization and poetry. 

3. The third part he concludes the debate by saying that the poet's sense of tradition and the impersonality of poetry are complementary things.

While Eliot is getting  known for his poetry, he also contributed to the field of literary criticism. In this dual role, he acted as a cultural critic, comparable to Sir Philip Sidney and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. "Tradition and the Individual Talent" is one of the better known works of Eliot. He wrote and produced that in his critical capacity. 

Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent” made a huge impact towards establishing the New Criticism by proposing that poetry should be an impersonal and objective practice. 

In Eliot’s words, “art may be said to approach the condition of science”.

Here are some questions and their answers mentioned in the task.

1) How would you like to explain Eliot's concept of Tradition ?  Do you agree with it? What do you understand by Historical sense ?

In Eliot's essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent," Eliot argues that tradition is not simply a collection of past works, but it is rather an ongoing process of artistic creation and critical evaluation. He defended the role of tradition in helping new poets to be modern. This is one of the paradoxes of his writing. He points out that a true artist must have a historical sense, which involves understanding and engaging with the literary tradition that precedes them, in order to create new, original work. Eliot also asserts that the individual talent of the artist should be subsumed by the tradition, and that true greatness in art comes from the ability to transform and renew the tradition.

He believes that tradition is not just about preserving the past, but about constantly building upon it and creating new, original works. Eliot argues that tradition is not static, but dynamic and constantly evolving. This allows the artist to create new works that are both original and connected to the past. 

Eliot’s concept of tradition foregrounds how important older writers are to contemporary writers: Homer and Dante are Eliot’s contemporaries because they inform his work as much as those alive in the twentieth century do.

For Eliot, Tradition has a three-fold significance.

• Firstly, tradition cannot be inherited and involves a great deal of labor and erudition. 

• Secondly, it involves the historical sense which involves apperception not only of the pastness of the past, but also of its presence. 

• Thirdly, the historical sense enables a writer to write not only with his own generation in mind, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature from Homer down to the literature of his own country forms a continuous literary tradition.

According to Eliot tradition and individual talent are not separate entities. They are inseparable and hence go together.

To him knowledge of tradition plays a vital role in the development of personal talent. He writes, 

“Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited and if you want it you must obtain it by great labor. It involves the historical sense.” This means-

"The historical sense involves a perception, not only of pastness of the past, but of it presence" 

" This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional."

In these lines he said that writers should have knowledge of the past, because that knowledge makes contemporary writers  part of that tradition and part of that contemporary sense. Eliot's own poetry was influenced by Homer and Dante's writing, both traditional and modern writers.  For another example Shakespear was considered a 'Timeless poet' "he was not for any particular age but for all time " according to his friend Ben Johnson. whose work is constantly being reinvented, to be understood by Elizabethan and Jacobean social and political attitudes.

[2] What is the relationship between "Tradition and Individual talent", according to the poet T.S.Eliot?

He says that there is a distinction between knowledge and pedantry. 

“Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential histories from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum”.

What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past and that he should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career.

He starts the second part of his essay with:

“Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry”.

By these lines he wanted to say that the artist or the poet adopts the process of depersonalization, which is “a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.”

He says that  right and honest criticism is when we appreciate a poet's  poetry when it is creative and good. Right criticism is when we criticize  poetry, not a poet. 

There still remains to define this process of depersonalization and its relation to sense of tradition.

[3] How would you like to explain Eliot's theory of depersonalization ? You can explain with the help of a chemical reaction in the presence of a catalyst agent, platinum.

"poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion , it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality."

Eliot explains this by comparing it to a chemical process – “The analogy was that of the catalyst. When the two gasses Oxygen and Sulphur dioxide are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum, they form sulphurous acid. This combination takes place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected; has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum. It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man himself; but, the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material.”

The elements of the experience of the poet are of two kinds – emotions and feelings. They are the elements which enter the presence of the poet’s mind and act as a catalyst, go to the making of a work of art. The final effect produced by a work of art may be formed out of several emotions into one, it may be formed out of a single emotion or out of the feelings invoked in the poet by various words and images. Thus the poet’s mind is a container for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles, which can unite to form a new compound, are present together.

Every poet and writer had interesting personalities. Their particular emotions may be flat, simple. It is not compulsory that  a Poet should find new emotion, but he could use his old emotion and work on it and express his feelings upon poetry. Only those who have emotion and personality know what it means to escape from these things.

Finally he ends his essay with this line - “very few know when there is expression of significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet. The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.”

Thank You.

Existentialism : Flipped Learning

Existentialism : Flipped Learning

This blog is written as a part of a flipped learning task. This task is assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad sir H.O.D. of English Department M.K.B.U . In this blog I am going to give my understanding from those 10 videos which sir gave us to understand Existentialism.

My Thought on Video Resources

All video resources are very informative and worth watching. Use of infographics and related pictures, texts  are helpful to understand the main concept of the video. We can easily understand things from such good content videos like those.

Videos i like the most 

I like the very first video about Existentialism. By watching this  video  we get to know that Existentialism is a form of philosophical inquiry that deals with human existence. Existentialism is associated with 19th- and 20th-century European philosophers who shared an emphasis on the human subject.  In the 20th century, prominent existentialist thinkers included Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, and Paul Tillich. Their thoughts are different from each other but they share the same beliefs. This whole movement started with Jean paul Satre, and he believes that  Kierkegaard was the  first Existentialist. Individuality, freedom and passion are three sides of it. Believing in God and preaching several things is an individual thing and Philosopher like Camus believing in God is philosophical  for him, he doesn't consider himself as Existentialist but an absurdist.

In the second video Camus write that 

" there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide". 

Camus talks about this thing right from the beginning, when someone thinks his life is full of absurdity and couldn't find meaning, he might commit sucide, by thinking that their life is  meaningless and not worth leaving. This video also gave reference to the movie  "Stay". In this movie the protagonist shot himself on the brooklyn Bridge. He said "it was the best artwork of the 19 th century", also  added that-

"an elegant sucide is the ultimate work of art."

Camus said that " in truth, there is no necessary common measure between these two judgements' ' which are sucide and hope. When they raise a question that is there any logic in death ? Camus answered 

" I can not know unless I pursue, without reckless passion, in the sole light of evidence the reasoning of which I am here suggesting the source. This is what i tell an absurd reasoning."

 

In the third video talked about reason, that 'Reason is useless and there is nothing beyond reason' and absurd man knows there is no place for hope. For Kierkegaard 

"Faith is the solution to the absurd. He said faith is the objective uncertainty with the repulsion of the absurd."

And there were also a question that if man had no external consciousness what would life be but despair? and Camus answered - "seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable". Like suicides Gods change with man, there are many ways of leaping, the essential being to leap.

In the forth video talked about Dadaism. Creation is primarily Goal of dadaism. Hungo Ball, Janco, Jean Arp, Tristan Tzara founded this whole movement. Dadaism doesn't have values that other people invented. Tristan Tzara writes that -

" The Absurd Doesn't Frighten me, because from a more elevated point of view, I consider everything in life to be absurd."

Fifth video is about Existentialism as a gloomy philosophy. To understand its gloominess we have to look at its history. In post war movement was popularized as response of war, after world war two peoples life became meaningless and feel with despair, and Wxistensialism came to reascuiv and offer the cure.

Learning outcome

The concept of Existentialism is a little bit hard to understand, but after  watching these videos I clearly understand the concept. By watching these videos we could clearly understand what Existentialism is, this wide philosophy  taught us to live in our own way. 

Questions

1. The group of the Existentialists says that Religion, finding social justice, seeking beauty all of these things gives you life meaning but at the same time say none of them can. Why? And how ? (From the 10th video)

2. Creation is the primary goal of Dadaism, and Dadaism art  doesn't have values that other people invented so can we say that Dadaism is creation which doesn't have values, and if not then why? ( from 4th video)

3. What is concept of "Bad Faith" ? (from 10th video)

4. Camus write that there is one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Could we consider Suicide as biggest philosophical problem ? ( from 1st video)

5. For Kierkegaard, "faith is the solution to the absurd ; he said faith is the objective uncertainty with the repulsion of the absurd". What is the significance of this sentence ?

-Here i embeded those videos of Existentialism, so by watching those videos you can understand this concept.

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

(8)

(9)

(10)

Thank you.✨

The Great Gatsby

 The Great Gatsby

Thinking Activity

This blog is a thinking activity assigned by Dr.Dilip Barad sir. In this blog I am going to answer some questions mentioned in the task which are based on The Great Gatsby movie(2013) movie.

Great Gatsby(2013)

 movie

Baz Luhrmann

The Great Gatsby is a 2013 historical and romantic drama film. This movie is based on F. Scott Fitzgerald' novel of the same name which was published in 1925.

This film was co-written and directed by Baz Luhrmann and stars  cast  of this movie are Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher, Jason Clarke, and Elizabeth Debicki. This film follows the life and times of millionaire Jay Gatsby  and his neighbor Nick Carraway, who recounts his encounter with Gatsby at the height of the Roaring Twenties on Long Island in New York.

The film is the tragic story of Jay Gatsby. First of all when this movie starts we can see a gray shade which indicates the tonality of the movie and then green light captures our attention which shows a symbol of hope, hope of Jay Gatsby, and also it indicates tears following from the eye. Then narration starts with Nick's voice. Here are some dialogues which are appear with beginning in movie-

"Always try to see the best in people"

"never be judgemental, always be observer"

This movie starts with Nick Carraway's narration, and we noticed that Nick has a disease of morbidly alcoholic, insomniac, fits of anger, and stress. He believes that Gatsby is 'The single most hopeful person I've ever met.' In this movie Gatsby introduced a mystical way, and he was considered a 'mysterious Gatsby'.  His real name was James Getz. He introduced himself at his party, we noticed that he had become rich in a very wrong way, he was living with full fakeness, though he attended many calls in a day that indicate that something is going wrong and at the end it indicates his hope that Daisy will call him but Daisy and Tom have another plan. Gatsby madly loves Daisy and wants to get her, but he knows that she loves his money not him, however he said " she has to go Tom, and told Tom that she never loved him" and when Gatsby died there was no one for his funeral except Nick and his father. Many rich people came when he gave a luxurious party, but when he died with the fake crime of murder a lady everyone wanted to get rid of him. Nick said that Tom and Daisy are so careless people that they continuously smash peoples' lives and behave like nothing happened, and

"Not even a single flower from Daisy".

That's how new money people always suffer because of old money people and also we don't feel much sympathy for Gatsby because he got rich in a very wrong way.

[1] How did the film capture the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties, The Flappers & The Prohibition act of America in the 1920s?

“It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire,” 

Today, the moniker “Jazz Age” has come to signify, as a kind of evocative shorthand, the 1920s in both academic and pop culture.

Fitzgerald famously wrote of the 1920s in a 1931 essay, “Echoes of the Jazz Age.”  In his mind, the decade defied any rigid definition, but what perhaps characterized it best was the jazz music he so frequently alluded to in his own writing. In Fitzgerald’s most popular novel, The Great Gatsby, jazz appears as constant background music. When this movie starts and the scene of the city in the background we can hear music of Jazz and In the contemporary phenomenon of “Gatsby parties” festivities intended to capture the air of the titular Jay Gatsby’s famously lavish, bacchanalian parties. Fitzgerald’s incorporation of jazz both into The Great Gatsby and into his definition of the 1920s was similarly fraught.

Prohibition creates a ‘new money’ class. We know that Jay Gatsby was from the new money class, he got rich in the wrong way. Elite class people and newly rich people were different from their clothes like the example of Gatsby's pink suit, Tom laughed at him “An Oxford man! Like hell he is! He wears a pink suit!"Gatsby borrowed how to speak like an elite class from Den cody.  As their wealth grew, many Americans of the 1920s broke down the traditional barriers of society. This, in turn, provoked anxiety among upper-class plutocrats (represented in the novel by Tom Buchanan). In The Great Gatsby, Prohibition finances Gatsby’s rise to a new social status, where he can court his lost love, Daisy Buchanan, whose voice is “full of money"; she doesn't love Gatsby but loves his money.

By 1925, when Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby, flappers were out in full force, complete with bobbed hair, shorter skirts and cigarettes dangling from their mouths as they danced the Charleston. But while later Hollywood versions of Gatsby channeled flapper style, the novel itself actually captures a comparatively conservative moment, as 1922 could be considered closer to 1918 than to the heyday of the Roaring Twenties later in the decade. We noticed in this movie the character of Daisy she represents as a flapper. 

[2] Watch ppt on the difference between the film and the novel and write briefly about it.

Following are the biggest differences   in The Great Gatsby film. To give a frame to Nick Carraway's narration, Luhrmann introduces us to a broken Nick, who is working with a doctor to recover his health after troubles with alcohol. This seems a little distasteful, since Carraway comes across as a mostly careful and considerate individual. Asking us to see him out of sorts after Gatsby's death is more than a bit of a stretch, especially as Luhrmann also tasks the character with writing The Great Gatsby.

We learn Jordan Baker is an athlete and friend of Daisy. Though this in itself doesn't mean much, her entire storyline is sped up and her unlikely romance with Nick is cut out for the sake of time. In the book, the two only ever seem to have a casual affection for each other, especially as Jordan is shown to be dishonest, but in the film, she's a blank canvas we never get to know all that much about. This actually makes her character quite a bit more mysterious and likable, though. In the novel they become a couple and break up near the end of summer.

Tom has a mistress called Myrtel who is the wife of a Queens mechanic. In a Manhattan apartment they make love. In the film he was sitting quietly in the living room. Luhramanns  also shows Myrtle's sister who gave pills to Nick. Luhramanns nick wake up at hope half dressed and didn't know what happened with him. On the other side Fitzgerald's narrator  to the apartment downstairs from Tom and Myrtles place.

When Tom and Gatsby went to meet Wolfsheim at the barber shop, and then they went to a party there were many dancers and in the novel they were not mentioned.

In the end Gatsby was waiting for a phone call from Daisy and he was swimming in his pool and one phone call Gatsby thought that it was from Daizy and he got out of the pool . That time someone  shot him and he died. That call was from Nick.

[3] How did the film help in understanding the symbolic significance of 'The Valley of Ashes', The Eyes of Dr. T.J. Ecokeleberg' and 'The Green Light' ?

In the movie the green light represents Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy, and in the movie he reaches toward it in the darkness as a guiding light to lead him to his goal. Because Gatsby’s quest for Daisy is broadly associated with the American dream, the green light also symbolizes that more generalized ideal.

The valley of ashes between West Egg and New York City consists of a long stretch of desolate land created by the dumping of industrial ashes. It represents the moral and social decay that results from the uninhibited pursuit of wealth, as the rich indulge themselves with regard for nothing but their own pleasure. The valley of ashes also symbolizes the plight of the poor, like George Wilson, who live among the dirty ashes and lose their vitality as a result.

The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are a pair of fading, bespectacled eyes painted on an old advertising billboard over the valley of ashes. They may represent God staring down upon and judging American society as a moral wasteland, though the novel never makes this point explicitly.

[4] How did the film capture the theme of Racism and Sexism ?

The character of Tom Buchanan is especially interesting in the movie. We notice his unconcealed sexism, hypocrisy, selfishness, and racism. It was normal for Tom to possess all these characteristics since he was born with them rather than gained them over the years. Tom was one of those men who reached such acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors anticlimax. His family was enormously wealthy even in college, his freedom with money was a matter for reproach” . The narrator does not hide Tom’s negative features and lets the viewer know that this character deserves their disapproval. “Now he was a sturdy straw haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward”. Tom Buchanan’s racist ideas fully correspond to the situation in the United States in the 1920s which is reflected in his emphasizing the supremacy of white people, standing up against giving black people equal rights with the whites, and expressing his fear of the white population to be submerged by the black community.

Tom believes that white people are not colored but other people are colored people in this his mentality reflects racism.

[5] Watch the video on Nick Carraway and discuss him as a narrator.

One of the interesting twists in this movie, though, is that the narrator, Nick Carroway (Tobey Maguire), Gatsby’s neighbor and a former college classmate of Tom’s, is now institutionalized in the “Perkins Sanatorium.” While getting help for “morbid alcoholism” as well as other issues, Nick is telling his Gatsby-focused story not to us but to his shrink, who’s played by Jack Thompson.

[6] Watch the video on psychoanalytical study of Jay Gatsby and write about his character.

Psychoanalysis of Jay Gatsby In the movie The Great Gatsby, a character named Jay Gatsby, though his real name being James Gatz. He was born into a family of farmers and grew up poor in North Dakota. He saved a man out in the ocean by the name of Dan Cody in which he hired Gatsby to work for him. Gatsby, being very ambitious, changed his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby and learned proper manners and etiquette from Dan Cody. Dan Cody meant to leave his wealth to Gatsby but his wife took all his money, leaving Gatsby poor again. Gatsby, determined to become wealthy again, decided to enlist in the army during World War I.

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