Prompt Revision #4

2009. A symbol is an object, action, or event that represents something or that creates a range of associations beyond itself. In literary works a symbol can express an idea, clarify meaning, or enlarge literal meaning. Select a novel or play and, focusing on one symbol, write an essay analyzing how that symbol functions in the work and what it reveals about the characters or themes of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

    

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, there are symbols that can easily be seen everywhere. However, the most dominant symbol in this novel is the green light. By using the green light as such a significant symbol, Fitzgerald channels Gatsby through it. When Gatsby goes to reach for the light, he can never make it there, it always goes out. To help enhance the story as a whole, the green light creates the initial setting, shows Gatsby’s loss of hope, and represents how the American Dream is unattainable to Gatsby.

     In The Great Gatsby, the symbolism behind the green light represents hopes and dreams. Gatsby wants more than anything to get back with Daisy, but this cannot happen for him. He doesn't realize how everything is always moving forward, and what they used to have before is no longer there. We see their relationship goes nowhere, because she has moved on to Tom and she loves him now. In the very beginning of the novel, Gatsby is looking out across the water and notices a green light. He reaches out towards it, and that conveys an entire different literary meaning intended for the readers to pick up on. If it weren’t for his initial drive for the green light, it wouldn’t be the symbol that is held up to be.

     Green is the color of hope. While Gatsby is reaching towards the green light, he is really reaching for his hopes and dreams to come true with Daisy. Little does Gatsby know that the green light is actually coming from Daisy's house, which resembles how he desperately wants to get her back. Reaching out to this light will lead him to his end goal: getting Daisy. As hard as he tries, the light doesn't getting any more attainable. It's so far across the waters, and all he can do is see it. This goes to show how he can't attain Daisy and all he can do is dream of someday getting her and hope that it comes true, which we see that it never will. 

     Gatsby is representing how America is running down into nothing. He is unable to reach his goals, and he can’t get what he wants to be happy. He is trying too hard to fit in with society, and that’s why he isn’t reaching his goals. Currently, this is how everyone is turning out to be. Everyone is meshing into the same person, and that is not the right way to live to reach individual goals. The green light greatly resembles this idea.

     If the green light had never been mentioned in the novel, there wouldn't be a connecting image. Through the light, we can see at the very beginning of the novel that there is something that Gatsby wants, but we aren't exactly sure of what that is. As time goes on, we are told that this light stands at the end of Daisy's dock. Once we know that, as readers, we put the pieces together. There used to be a “light” between Daisy and Gatsby, but as time went by it slowly diminished. What he thought was so close and easy to recapture, ended up fading away right in front of his eyes. Gatsby no longer had anything left to live for. 

Summary and Analysis: Ceremony

Author: Leslie Silko—part Laguna Pueblo and White.

Setting: In the Laguna Pueblo reservation mostly.

Main Characters:

Tayo: He is the main character in the novel. He was left to live with Auntie and Robert at the age of 4. Throughout his life he struggles with finding that he truly is. He is half white, and have Pueblo. He goes off to war and comes home with some major PTSD (vomit everywhere). He can’t be cured with the medicine found in the Pueblo Laguna tribe, so he ventures to find medicine from the white culture, thus pulling the two sides together.

Auntie: She is very “white”. She doesn’t treat Tayo very well, and she kind of just cares about appearances and superficial things.

Josiah: Tayo’s father figure, Tayo is very upset about his death. Josiah raises the cattle. He also is all for the Pueblo culture.

Rocky: Has been assimilated into the white culture. He is very well liked by all of them, and kind of turns his back on Pueblo culture.

Grandma: Kind of just goes with the flow doesn’t really care.

Harley: Tayo’s friend who went to war with him. He came back with a drinking problem, not PTSD.

Emo: Tayo’s childhood acquaintance. Him and Tayo don’t like each other much, and he attacks him at a bar for saying white people are better than Pueblos.

Plot:

            The book opens with Tayo and his grief for his newly lost “bros” Rocky and Josiah. There is also a drought in the Pueblo reservation and now Tayo believes that this is his fault. He is struggling with that assumption for some time. He throws up all the time, and this is because of his PTSD problem that needs to be fixed. He stays at home with Auntie, Robert, and Grandma since his mother abandoned him at the age of 4. His father is white, but he doesn’t have any idea who exactly his father is.

            When Tayo does return from the war, he realizes that his other friends are also going through the same sickness problems as he is, yet they handle it a different way: through alcohol. They don’t realize that this is a temporary solution though, and it really does a lot more harm than they think. Because of this, Grandma calls in the Pueblo medicine man, Ku’oosh, and he performs a ceremony that does very little help to Tayo. Auntie really doesn’t like Tayo, and we can see throughout the novel that she wishes he had died instead of Rocky.

            The summer that they got enlisted in the army, Josiah bought some cattle. Night Swan, his companion, encourages this idea. Then, another medicine man is called in on behalf of curing Tayo, Betonie. He is more connected with the white culture. Tayo then leaves to find the cattle and to complete the new ceremony, yet he finds them in the mountain. Then, he runs into T’seh and spends almost the whole summer with her. Then, he is told that Emo and his other friends are causing problems back in the reservation, and they are blaming it on Tayo and telling the police.

            To get away from the police, he follows T’sehs advice. He realizes that to complete the ceremony, he has to hide in a minefield that he has come across to add the element of white culture. Emo and his friends are there and Emo tries to get him to come out of his hiding spot by torturing Harvey. Tayo doesn’t fall for it though, and returns to Ku’oosh to tell him what have happened. Ku’oosh then says he has been cured, and the ceremony ends.

Theme:

A big theme in this book is that you have to balance cultures in your life, but you can’t just pick one. You always need the equal balance. Tayo is the perfect example of this. He clearly can’t just live off of Indian culture, or just white. He needs both of the medicine men in his life.

Narrator: 3^rd person

Symbols/motifs:

Speckles on cattle: represent stars or Tayo’s mixed cultures.

Colors/directions: show how detail is very important in his life

Alcohol: shows how it can’t be the only cure, its only temporary.

Quotes:

1.     “Nothing was all good or all bad either; it all depended.” This quote shows how not one thing is purely all good or all bad. You have to look at everything in multiple ways, that’s just how life works. You can’t completely categorize things as all good and all bad.

2.     “It seems like I already heard these stories before—only thing is, the name sounds different.” Grandma says this and it really reinforces the idea of reciprocity in the Indian culture. Everything is the same story, just repeated differently. She is connecting the past and present all in one. 

Course Materials

We are literally almost done with this class. We are on our last book, which is so unbelievable to me. I feel like we have constantly been annotating/reading this entire year, and now it's almost done! I really enjoyed Ceremony, although the time changes were really annoying and hard to keep up with, I finally think I got the hang of it. Especially the second time around annotating because I left my first copy in Mexico so I had to do it all over again. In the end it really helped me understand it more though.

So far, I think Fifth Business is the best book we have read. At least compared to Ceremony because there aren't as many changes in time to keep up with. I kind of like reading plays more though, because I like being able to read together as a class and then go through a second time with a better idea of what is truly going on. I can't believe it's our last book! At this point, everything is so bitter/sweet. And now, that AP test is right around the corner. I feel like I have made improvements on what to do and what to expect for this test, but it still is just going to be a matter of luck for me. It will be a lot like the ACT I think, which definitely wasn't my strongest scoring section, so that should be fun for me...But I absolutely can not wait until after the test for us to just chill around and watch youtube videos! It's a very exciting time of year!