Journal #21

Some Like it Hot and The Great Gatsby both focus on society in the 1920s. The theme of both is money and greed. The characters all drink and smoke and it includes flappers, partying, and divorce. Characters are indulging in affairs (Great Gatsby) and men and women are getting divorced multiple different times (Some Like It Hot). In both works it also seems that prohibition comes into discussion. In Some Like It Hot Joe and Jerry are playing at clubs where partying and illegal alcohol is sold and in the Great Gatsby, Gatsby became wealthy through bootlegging. The works also focus on women who fall in love with men because of their wealth. Sugar falls in with Joe because she thought he was a wealthy oil tycoon and Daisy fell for Tom because of his obvious wealth. The biggest different between the two works is that the end of Great Gatsby ends in tragedy and Some Like It Hot is a happy comical ending where the characters do find love.

Journal #20

In the end of the book, Nick uses imagery of Gatsby's parties. He says that the parties have now ended and they will never fill his mansion again. He uses the parties as an example for Gatsby's life. The parties have ended along with his life and everyone has left. The green light is a visual symbol of the hope that Gatsby had. He always thought that the green light stood for his life long dream of being with Daisy but in the end the reality of his dream caught up to him. The green light was an example of Gatsby's hope along with the Dutch sailors. The green light was bright and beautiful just as Long Island was when the Dutch found it. The island excited the Dutch sailors and gave the hope for their aspiring dreams. But like Gatsby, the reality of it all got in the way and their dreams became untouchable. People spend their whole lives trying to accomplish their dreams and ambitions but are only pushed back down by their past.

Journal #19

Journal 19 - Characterization in Chapter 1 of The Great Gatsby Write a description for each of the following characters based on his/her first appearance in Chapter 1. Your description should include: -the character’s physical appearance; -the character’s actions/words; -an adjective that best describes the character based on his/her initial appearance Nick Carraway Adjective ________Understanding__________ Throughout the book it seems as if Nick is always very understands of people’s problems. He is always faced with them and always keeps an open mind about them. He is a young man from the mid-west who came to west egg to work in the bond business. His physical appearance is not discussed in the book but Nick can characterized as being polite, quite, and reserved. Tom Buchanan Adjective _______Arrogant_________ Tom is a very well built muscular, athletic man who is obviously very into himself in the book. He is seen as racist and judgmental of those who are not as successful as him. He is arrogant in that he has a side lover other than his wife and even leaves dinner to speak with her. Nick makes it very clear throughout the book that Tom is overly into himself and stuck up. Daisy Buchanan Adjective ______Charming_________ Daisy is the kind of woman who has the whole room hanging onto to her every word. She is charming in every way possible. She is described as, “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.” She is blonde and fair-skinned. She talks loud and seems to be in love with wealth. Jordan Baker Adjective _______Independent________ Jordan Baker seems to me as someone who is easily on her own. She doesn’t need someone else to depend and has enough confidence in herself not to need another figure in her life. She is described as being slender, small chested, and the opposite of Daisy. She comes off as polite but distant never truly giving anything away about herself. Jay Gatsby Adjective ____Determined/Mysterious_____________ Gatsby is a very mysterious character in the first chapter who is very misunderstood. He is seen in the first chapter on the dock looking at the green light across the river. He is determined to be exactly what Daisy wants and that was the result of him having a large amount of money. It seems that he is determined to win Daisy.

Journal #18

Journal 18 -“In Another Country”

1. What is the significance of the story’s title?

The significance in the story’s title “In Another Country” was that the characters were separated from the rest. The characters were officers and the people would yell at them that they weren’t wanted. The bond that they all had was that they all had injuries and these injuring separated them from the others. The characters were their own group of people because they were so different from everyone else, it was as if they were from another country.


2. Which character do you think best represents the “Hemingway hero”? Why?

The Hemmingway hero always suffers with grace and dignity. He is brave and always deals with situations by shrugging them off. At some point everyone is going to be faced with defeat. Hemingway has a code of how to attempt to establish values and meaning in an increasingly meaningless world. You accept loss with dignity and acceptance. The character that best represents this code is the major because he is suffering loss on more than one level. His wife has died (personal loss) and his hand injury is a physical loss. His injury is more significant than the narrators because he was a fencer and will never be able to fence again. This character suffers the most out of everyone and he deals with them the best way. These injuries have become his life. The major tells the narrator to never get married because the pain of the loss isn’t worth it in the end. He understands that defeat in inevitable and says to hold on to the things that are permanent and can’t be lost.

3. What can you infer about the photographs the doctor hangs up? What is the significance of the major’s reaction?

The photographs are fake because they were the first ones to use the machine. The photographs are there just a motivitation for the other soldiers.

Journal #17

What is the significance of the poems epigraph? How does it relate to Prufrock?

The epigraph is from Dante's Inferno. He is saying that he's not afraid of his story because no one has come back from hell. It relates to Prufrock because his story has his private thoughts.

2. Make a list of questions that Prufrock asks. Do you see a pattern/theme to these questions or are they random?

What is it?
Do I dare?
So how should I presume?
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
Shall I part my hair behind?

The pattern and them through out the questions are that Prufrock is very uncertain and self-conscience. He is never sure of anything he does. The repetition of the questions show true anxiety.

3. What do you think is Prufrock’s main flaw/problem?

His main flaw is being self-conscience. He doesn’t want to be judged and can never make a straight decision. Because of this big flaw he can never become a true person with a personality. He'll never experience love or friendship because he's so worried all the time.

4. Why do you think this is called a love song? In what way is it a love song?

It is called a Long Song because its ironic because there isn't any love at all.

Journal #16

Journal 16 – Crane’s “The Blue Hotel” and London’s “To Build A Fire”

Read the following quote and discuss how it applies to the main characters in both stories. In the course of this discussion, address how each of the characters is both similar and different:

“Determinisim governs everything … The writer must study the inherited traits of individual character and the social condition of the time. Together, these elements determine the course of any action, the outcome of any life. Free will or self-determination is mostly an illusion, although chance is granted a role in human affairs. Still, even the effects of chance are obliterated in the inevitable course determined by the interaction of inherited character traits and the social environment.“

In “To Build a Fire”, the main character, the man is faced to deal with the evironement and fate. He was determined to meet up with his friends at the Lodge Cloud but he didn’t listen and pushed away fear that would kept him safe. He was too cocky in his traveling causing him to face his death. The man was warned by the old man not to go traveling alone when its below freezing but he still didn’t listen. He pushed all of these fealings of being afraid and was determined.

In Crane's "The Blue Hotel", the Swede proves that his uncomfortable feelings in a different social environment can lead to a disastrous ending. The Swede is confused with where he really is and actually thinks that he is in the Wild West where people kill each other over a silly card game. The Swede is wrong because no one has ever died in that hotel and those people are nothing like that. He becomes so socially awkward that he gets drunk and becomes a completely different person. The social environment is affected by this different person because the Swede tries to fight Johnny and beats him up. He then begins to torment a visitor who ended up stabbing him. From the beginning he thought he was going to die there and it was fate that he did end up dying.

Journal #15

Journal 15 – William Dean Howell’s “Editha”

1. Write a sentence that summarizes the story’s overall message, and provide three direct quotes from the story that best illustrate this message.

The messae of the passage is that living in the ideal than in reality can be very dangerous to a person in how they live their life.


"I shall always love you, and therefore I shall never
marry any one else. But the man I marry must love
his country first of all”


“You thought it would be all right for my George, your George, to kill the sons of those miserable mothers and husbands of those girls that you would never see that faces of

“He told me he had asked you to come if he got killed. You didn’t expect that, I suppose, when you sent him.”


2. What tactics does Editha use to make George believe as she does about the war?
Editha threatens George that if he doesn’t go to war she won’t be with him. She persuades him in that her opinion on it being a “holy war” is true. She also threatens him by sending him a letter with her engagement ring in it which basically said if he doesn’t go to war, she won’t be with him. This resulted in him going to war even though he didn’t want too and getting killed.

3. Is there ever a time in which Editha truly understands what she has done? Does she ever experience an epiphany?
I think Editha felt a little guilty in the beginning when she was mourning her loss of her fiancé. But she never however expierenced an epiphany because she never understood what she did wrong. Even when she visited his mom like he asked, the mother tried to drill it in her that it was her fault but she wouldn’t have it. She liked her ideal world and therefore she stayed in it.