Great Gatsby REsearch paper notecards

direct quote. explain relevance to essay topic.

Fitzgerald pins the story of Jay Gatsby and Daisy in the summer season, and parallels their love story along with the climax of the summer heat.

The novel also ends with Gatsby´s death right as the impending presence of autumn approaches.

The summer seems to represent the rebirth of ¨life¨ for characters in the novel.

¨The summer is a period of movement where the period of time outside the summer becomes stagnant. As the summer ends, as the seasons transition into fall, it is then that Gatsby´s story falls apart.¨

¨The two seasonal variants make their suffers feel similarly low, but they're otherwise very different. Those who get depressed in wintertime tend to get sluggish and put on weight, but summertime SAD sufferers lose their appetites and grow agitated, as the psychologist Jason Goldman.¨ Fights break out because characters are agitated. The appetite lost is the appetite for affection.

¨And then there's the simplest explanation: People just can't stand the heat. Thomas Wehr, a scientist emeritus at the National Institute of Mental Health who first documented SAD, says that when people with warm-weather depression were "wrapped in cooling blankets at night, their temperatures dropped and their symptoms disappeared. As soon as they went outside into the summer heat, their depression returned."

"In the winter I feel like the whole world is alive and wonderful," wrote one Reddit user recently. "As soon as spring starts and the days get longer, my mood sinks and I feel horrible again until fall." There is heavy tension in the story until the truth comes out and the main characters die somewhat unexpectedly.

¨During the summer, Hancock says, her memory falters and her productivity declines.¨ Season affect peoples emotions and peoples emotions affect the way that a memory is recalled and/or retold. The majority of the story is told from Nick´s perspective.

"What I really notice is that spring and fall are wonderful," Hancock says. "I have like six weeks of things being easy. Whatever I want to do, I seem to be able to do it. I don't need to batter myself into doing things like the dishes — I just do them." SAD(seasonal affective disorder) reflects the characters´ decision making from beginning to end. The late spring is when the story picks up, the summer is stagnant and the autumn brings death. Not the usual slow death that nature intended, but an early death by choice.

Most of these guests are simply there to enjoy the glamour which they believe to be the American Dream. Though when examined closely, corruption is easy to spot. During Nick's first attendance at Gatsby's party, he makes this observation. "I looked around. Most of the remaining women were now having fights with men said to be their husbands. ... One of the men was talking with curious intensity to a young actress, and his wife, after attempting to laugh at the situation in a dignified and indifferent way, broke down entirely and resorted to flank attacks - at intervals she appeared suddenly at his side like and angry diamond, and hissed: 'You promised!' into his ear." Heated weather and heated tempers coincide.

¨The people and also the environmental are suffering. Tom, Daisy, and Jordan, with their empty, void lives, are the characters represented as the formless bodies of ashes in the valley of ashes. The ashes are symbols of dead, with more self-centered and arrogant people arising from them. Every generation, the ashes pile distorting the American Dream further.¨ The valley of ashes foreshadows death. The coming of autumn signifies a sudden death. Like the ashes pile, leaves pile in the autumn. (ask the name of the poem we read about autumn and death) Nothing can be learned from lives that were never fulfilled. Dying young is not only a tragedy to the deceased, but to the living. The same mistakes will be made again but by different people.

¨Describes the time period 1920; people had a lot of leisure time. The rich who have already achieved the American Dream play a variety of sports to satisfy their boredom.¨ The first thing that comes to mind when I think of summer is plentiful leisure time. With all this time people are bound to get bored and when they can´t think of anything better to do, they do things they know they shouldn't.

"This is a valley of ashes - a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.¨ The author uses imagery that makes the reader think of growth and gardens to tie in the seasons to the plot.

¨Nature itself can also be seen as purely a reflection of a person's beliefs and desires (Cronon 1995). Thus, if an individual desires a sense of connectedness with nature, he or she may have a more connected view of nature with humans than would an individual desiring isolation. Likewise, if an individual believes that being a steward of the land requires a separation between nature and self, he or she is likely to view themselves as separate from nature.¨As we become disconnected with nature and more concerned with material and profitability, we lose sight of the American dream.

¨In one study, participants in a wilderness camp defined nature as the opposite of civilization. They also said that nature was something that is "out there" without human involvement. Nature was also said to be relaxing and undisturbed, and nature was said to be not at home (Haluza-Delay 2001).¨In contrast to society as perceived by wealthy individuals, nature is undisturbed.

¨Hartig maintains that dividing the person and environment into discrete elements is not the goal of this perspective. He believes that each entity acts to define the other and is thus interconnected.¨

¨Cronon (1995) argued that people should stop putting up borders between themselves and nature. He stated that in order to successfully protect the whole environment, not just small parts of it, one must eliminate these human-perceived barriers.¨Humans come from nature. Total separation from our provenance was a decision we made for ourselves slowly, but surely. It is unhealthy to create such barriers between ourselves and nature. It will alter our perception of reality.

¨Individuals in developed countries tend to view some natural areas as worth protecting, while ignoring physically similar natural areas.¨Just like the puppy that Tom buys for Myrtle. The first thing she asked the man selling them was; are they purebred? Since pure bread dogs are more rare, they are more expensive and since they are more expensive, they have more societal value. If she really wanted a dog to take care of and love, she wouldn't have cared what kind it was.

¨Most of the chapter takes place indoors, or in cars, but there is a brief glimpse of nature which serves to accentuate the misery of the characters trapped in their unnatural world: Our eyes lifted over the rose-beds and the hot lawn and the weedy refuse of the dog-days along-shore.¨

¨The next chapter is distinctly autumnal with the opening reference to a 'fog-horn', references to decay in Gatsby's house, and the parallel narrative of 'one still October night' and the 'cold fall day' in 1917. Gatsby's conversation with the gardener confirms the onset of autumn, anticipating falling leaves in the pool.¨

¨The last we see of Gatsby alive is under 'yellowing trees' and at his death the leaves have indeed fallen, to simultaneously caress him and create a funeral wreath: The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved [the laden mattress] slowly The leaves may be seen as symbolic of destroyed hopes, or may represent Gatsby himself.¨

¨The decay of Gatsby's house in the final chapter is signaled by the grass having grown long, as if nature is reclaiming the location. Previously, cutting the lawn had served as a sign of wealth, cultivation and dominance over nature.¨

By the end of the novel, it seems that wealth and cultivation are redundant. Nick imagines the land reverting to its pre-civilised state: And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes - a fresh, green breast of the new world.¨

¨Daisy's name is the prime example of Fitzgerald's use of flower imagery. Fresh and delightful, this fragile white flower is associated with childhood innocence. The descriptions of her romance with Gatsby build on this idea: 'At his lips' touch, she blossomed for him like a flower.' However, Daisy ultimately undermines this image by her corruption.¨

¨Roses are often mentioned in the text. Tom's property contains, 'a half-acre of deep, pungent roses', whilst inside, Nick 'walked through a high hallway into a rose-coloured space.' Daisy even describes Nick as 'a rose,an absolute rose' which he flatly denies while still finding her words 'stirring' and 'thrilling'.¨

¨As Nick considers Gatsby's possible thoughts just before he was killed, the image of nature, and especially the rose, is distorted and terrifying: He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass¨

"And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer."

"I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life." Much like the field of roses, Nick was enchanted and yet repelled by the crowd of beautiful people.

"Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."

"So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight." Literally refers to the seasons changing and symbolically represents the parallel between humans and nature. We thrive in warm weather like flowers, but we are also the most intolerable when we are in a thriving environment. The roses were beautiful, but there were so many, and the smell was overwhelming. This brings us back to the adversity argument. The more sheltered you are, the more overwhelmed you will be in less favorable situations. The inappropriate outbursts that occur throughout the book are a result of being born into money.

Hsiang et al. (2013) found a link between human aggression and higher temperatures. As temperatures rose, the researchers noted that inter-group conflicts also tended to jump — by 14 percent (a significant increase). The scientists also found interpersonal violence rose by 4 percent.