12/05/15

The Great Gatsby

From chapter 4, which is the meeting of the two lovers: “What part of the Middle West?” I
inquired casually… casual conversation between Nick and Baker discussing where Gatsby
comes from. This is an interesting moment because this is where not only Nick but also us
realize that there is something artificial on this history about who is Gatsby. What Gatsby said
about himself sounds unnatural, false. San Francisco is California, not the mid-West, this is the
first contradiction. Lying about himself (Gatsby) is the reason why Daisy refuses Gatsby at the
end of the book. The lies begin from now on. The mistake is delivery evident, Gatsby doesn’t
have idea where San Francisco or where the mid-West is. Even when Gatsby talks about
himself he’s lying. Nick Caraway realizes obviously that he’s lying.

After inheriting the money Gatsby spent money in Europe collecting jewels, another possible
lie. Nick is about to lie in Gatsby’s face because of the unreality of his confessions. The persona
that Gatsby is creating attracts the attention of Nick, who is fascinated; this is like reading a
magazine for Nick. However, he is also sorry for him many times. This fascination will be
transformed into a short of friendship and collaboration between the two, until in the end Nick
will appear as the only real friend to Gatsby.

“Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy’s…” Tom starts to suspect of Gatsby. Tom is a man
who feels his power threatened by Gatsby. This is the voice of Nick judging these people. This
party has something awkward; there is a bad feeling for Nick. He doesn’t know if this is
something weird now or maybe this world is always like that. This is a world that he mostly
despises, but he is getting used to it. Sexist element of the novel: two men fighting for a
woman, but nobody asked her for her opinion. They quarrel between the two and ignore Daisy
herself, as if she were a possession.

“Oh, you want too much!”… Tom and Daisy have a story, a past, and this is something that
Gatsby cannot offer her. Daisy confesses she loves her husband, Tom thinks he’s winning the
battle, “I am going to take better care of you”  this is cynical, this is a way of acknowledging
that he has been bad with her. This is the moment Gatsby realizes that his dream will never
come true. This should be the moment when in a romantic story the two young lovers end up
together, but in this non-romantic story, Daisy remains with Tom. Tom knows how to “play” in
this battle.

Now, there is a car accident in which Myrtle is killed by a car driven by Daisy. Paradoxical
moment: Gatsby still believes that there is still hope for him and he offers to take the blame of
the accident. Later on, Gatsby confesses to Nick that it was Daisy the driver and that he will
sacrifice himself. Gatsby is at his most romantic, unrealistic, naïve. The tragedy is completed by
the death of Gatsby. Tom, who has been cheating at his wife, has his wife back, he has his
lover and his enemy died. He’s the character that takes more advantage of the situation. All
the lack that Gatsby doesn’t have apparently Tom has it.

Only two people attended Gatsby’s funeral: Nick Caraway and Gatsby’s father. Chapter 9 is
similar to the first one. Nick talks about him, his education, how uncomfortable was his life in
NY. The final chapter is also a reflection in many ways. After the story of Gatsby has been told,
Nick recalls the story and what his lesson was when he left NY and those people. The final
chapter is a reflection but also a value judgment over the story and its people, the sorrow, the
sympathy for Gatsby and the repulsion for Tom. Tom not only reflects upon his experience but
also the kind of world he lives in. Gatsby was the only person Nick knew as a person and not
only as a rich man. It’s not the same to be rich because you belong to a rich family and to be a
new rich, which was what Gatsby was. He let Daisy to believe that he belonged to a rich family.
Daisy is compared to the Saint Grail, a treasure that Gatsby cannot achieve. “How
extraordinary a nice girl could be” this is an irony of Nick. Even though Gatsby is abandoned
he still believes in Daisy.

“That’s my Middle West…” without Gatsby there is no purpose for Nick to stay in NY. He
decides to go back to the place he feels he belongs to. What it means to be a man from the
mid-West (real Americans) and what to be from NY. He’s someone who is used to live in a
determined way of life. There is no possible connection between East and West.

“Even when the East excited me most, even...” Nick links his decision to live NY with
Gatsby’s death. It was his story that was fascinating. After his death the place is empty and
again distorted.

Three last paragraphs of the novel: they symbolize between two different forms of life that the
novel has dramatize. The class between two different ways of living, ideologies, mingled with
his memories of Gatsby. This is also a fragment that uses this figure of the American dream. To
what extent is there an American dream? Nick appears seeing the land beyond, and he
wonders how the first colonizer would have felt in the view of such as big land. Comparison
between the story he has lived with Gatsby and the first impression of the first man who was
in America. Gatsby’s meaning of life was simple, recovering Daisy. There is a sense of fatality in
the final Nick’s reflection. Gatsby was blinded by his dream which he didn’t realize that was
impossible. Gatsby was a victim of his dream. The final lines are pessimistic and speak of an
impression of defeat. The only virtuous character in this story is the one who loses his life. Life
is a tragedy, a constant fight.

13/03/15

THE AWAKENING, KATE CHOPIN

The setting of the novel, the southern, is very important for the novel. The main character is a
victim of the social circumstances that surround her, according to the place where she lives.
The Creole society is the society in which Edna moves. Creole is related to race, Creole
originally means someone born from a hybrid couple. Creole in the States means something
different; it means something related to family inheritance, Creole meant people who are born
from French families. There is a very strong French influence in New Orleans. Edna Pontellier is
from a French family. The Creole people are the ones who have more social prestige.

Edna’s problem is not related to money, it is a matter of a struggle in order to achieve

freedom. The Creoles are representative of the leisure class. In this Creole society, Edna is the
different one. Not because of her family, she is different because of her ideas, which are not
the expected ideas, education from a woman.

Edna starts a process of self-discovering and self-expression. Edna’s thoughts do not fit the
stereotypes of her society. She is not submitted, not quiet. She is not the kind of wife and
mother that society expects from her. She answers back her husband and she herself
recognizes that she’s not comfortable with her children around.

The two birds are two symbols that mark the difference between two types of women. The
mocking bird that seems happy, it is representative of Mademoiselle Reisz, it enjoys music and
arts. The parrot is the symbol of Edna Montpelier; it speaks in a language that nobody
understands. We have a mixture of voices of birds in which one is annoying and the other is
not. The parrot is representative of Edna.

The parrot speaks in a language that nobody understands, it just makes annoying sounds. The
parrot anticipates the character of Edna, beautiful woman, beautiful eyes, but with ideas that
nobody understands. The parrot represents the Contradictory nature. The mocking-bird
represents freedom, Mademoiselle Reisz has not obligations with any husband, plays the
piano, she is not that beautiful. Edna uses art to escape reality, although she is not as skilled as
Mademoiselle Reisz is.

All these aspects of the novel are relevant in connection to the sentimental and sexual
liberation of Edna. Although we are in the 20th century the situation for women are not that
different from that of the 19th century.

Edna’s husband is not worried that Edna is going to liberate herself. He never takes her
seriously, she is a possession. The husband is very confident on his masculine role.

At the beginning of the 20th century the desire of the sexual liberation was considered a
mental illness, only for women. Edna’s husband (Léonce) thinks that his wife is mentally ill. Of
course Edna is not mentally ill, it’s just a sexual desire.

The novel is considered as the first feminist novel because it concentrates on women as a
women character, a novel that tells a story that aims to be universal. It is one of the first novels
which are concentrated in order to represent women as a human character. Edna is a more
realistic character. In the 19th century the sentimental novel represented the ideal women
being happy at home, not realistic women. This is the kind of novel that does not offer
anything positive, disobedience, sexual desire, infidelity, lying.

Paradox: when Edna is lying with other man, it is not implicit in the novel but suggested, that
was too much for the readers of the epoch. The novel is not that subversive. There is more
suggestion than graphic representation. The author does not want the reader to pay attention
to the physical part, so it is like a suggestion. She focuses on the psychological development of
Edna. This is what really interests.

It has been suggested that there is something autobiographic in the novel. This desire, this
aspiration to freedom, but it is not completely truth (especially at the end of the novel). Edna,
although she is constantly looking for a room for herself¿? Freedom, she many times attempts
to demonstrate that she can fail this aim. Edna’s attempts to demonstrate her courage in front
of her friends end up being a failure, for example when she is trying to swim. She is oppressed
because she is dependent on the husband and unable many times to show self-trust and
determination. In the end we will understand the meaning of these attempts. Chopin was a
much more independent woman than Edna Montpelier. Why at that time and why in that
context did the author write the story? The awakening is mostly a didactic novel in a special
way. It provides a potential self and vision of women. This is an anti-romantic novel, Edna is a
kind of hero, there is nothing idealistic in the Awakening. The novel is a much more down to
earth. Edna is a woman who tries and fails.

19/03/2015

The Awakening, Kate Chopin

One of the problematic aspects of the novel is the final, when Edna takes her life. To what
extent does Edna liberate herself?

The atmosphere of the novel is the American south (late 19th century): Grand Isle first and New
Orleans later.

The characters

There is something very innovative in the way the novel is written. The characters around
Edna, her husband, Robert etc. are relevant in the way that they are related to Edna and what
they represent for her. They represent some kind of obstacle in her request for freedom.
Leoncé is the clearest obstacle, he is a patriarchal man, not interested in the feelings and
aspirations of his wife, insensitive to her to the point he actually wants her wife to see a
doctor. Robert is also an obstacle in the sense that he in the end is so conventional and
reluctant to start a relationship with her that he frustrates her. He is the ultimate obstacle that
she cannot overcome. At the end the social appearances are what worry Robert. The woman
in black walking around the beach is a symbol that their love is going to be tragic.

Ironic moments: there is the man she wants, the man who loves her but cannot be with her
and then there is the man she flirts with, Mr. Alcée. This is the man Edna despises, she is not in
love with him but she has sex with him, thanks to him Edna has a sexual liberation. This is
liberation because she liberates not with the man she really loves, but with Alcée, a kind of
substitute for Robert. This character is important because he is important for Edna, he doesn’t
do anything important apart from it. The very centre of the novel is Edna.

Bildungsroman is a novel that focuses on the evolution of one character, the psychological
changes of a character in a period of time. Edna transforms herself throughout the story.

There is the paradox between Chopin and Edna. There is an autobiographical element in the
novel.

The most problematic feature of the story is the ending. The process that leads Edna to take
her life is interpreted in different and opposite ways. According to the text Edna commits
suicide because everything will be public and her children will be victim of social exclusion. This
is the reason Edna gives to herself. Of course, her frustrated love with Robert also influences.
Edna commits suicide as an act of courage, the only thing she possesses is her life. Suicide is a
final act of bravery. This interpretation emphasizes the courage that Edna has. The other
interpretation is the opposite, the suicide is a final act of cowardice, she cannot overcome the
social obstacles, the frustrated love and she doesn’t want to fight anymore, and desperate, she
commits suicide.

The end of the novel is ambiguous. Kate Chopin wants this ending to be discussed. None of the
interpretations is final. The author does not give us a definitive ending. The end is calculatedly
ambiguous. “A woman needs a room of her own” Virginia Woolf.

The Awakening follows a classical pattern: The pattern of an individual confronting a series of
obstacles that doesn’t allow her to be free. This is very classical tragedy.

This is not a sentimental liberation only; it’s a liberation that must come from her sexual
liberation first. The role of sex is as an instrument for something more important. That sex is a
medium is one of the polemic aspects of this novel at the time it was published. Sex is part of
the identity of women; it doesn’t have to be a repressed part.

26/03/15

We will focus on the fragments that represents the beginning of the psychological
transformation, from a moderate wife to a liberate one.

“Mrs. Pontellier was not a woman given to confidences, a characteristic hitherto contrary to
her nature this is a rather sexist sentence, gossip is in the nature of women, this is one
stereotype that Chopin wants to destroy. Even as a child she had lived her own small life all
within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life-that
outward existence which conforms a life of submission, the inward life which questions”.

It is a fragment about one of the dualities that characterizes Edna at the beginning of the
novel. One of the dualities becomes more important in her liberation as woman. The inner and
the outer lives, the social and the private life is what the paragraph refers to. Against the
public life, the private one questions. This is especially true for women in the 20th century. The
life that questions is not suitable for women, that men don’t expect women to have.

“It sometimes entered Mr. Pontellier’s mind to wonder if his wife were not growing a little
unbalanced mentally. He could see plainly that she was not herself. That is, he could not see
that she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like
a garment with which to appear before the world”

It is not her personality, it cannot be, she was not herself, Edna wants to be herself. The last
sentence means that we have a fictitious self, the one that we use before the world, in public
we are not ourselves, we are actor, we assume a garment. The real us is in the private sphere.
In our public life we use a stereotypical persona of ourselves. And this is the problem with
Edna, she has to behave like a woman, a wife does. She has to behave the way we expect
from. She has to conform. Edna is making his private world more important than the public
one. And Leoncé thinks what any man of the time would think, that she is mentally
unbalanced.

“But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and
exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls
perish in its tumult!

The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the
soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude, to lose itself in mazes of inward
contemplation.

The voice of the sea speaks in the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in
its soft, close embrace.”

This belongs to her inner life, this is an impression of Edna, what is important because of what
it anticipates. The first paragraph is famous. This is a philosophical reflection about the
beginning of new things, which is what she hopes, a new world. The beginning is always
chaotic. How many people perish, Edna at the end perish. This is a mixture of hope and self-
defeat. The sea is an invitation to contemplate ourselves, to reflect. The voice of the see
speaks to the soul. It is Edna’s soul which is hurt. This is one of the contemplative moments in
the story.

“The very first chords which Mademoiselle Reisz struck upon…She trembled, she was choking,
and the tears blinded her”.

Edna thinks that when she listens to the music she would have images in her mind, but she
doesn’t. Instead of provoking images, the music provokes passions and feelings. Sad feelings
are provoked in her. When the reaction is a feeling, it means that the reaction is more direct, it
is even physical. It is much better than seeing images in your mind. This fragment talks about
the much more vivid and straightforward reaction when she listens to the piano. The truth
about Edna’s self is that she is a sensitive woman.

“I would give up the unessential, I would give my money…O, yes you could” laughed Edna.”

This is Edna already talking consciously about her desire to be free. Edna is suggesting things
about herself. The best way to see how Edna is transforming herself is by comparison; by
comparison with Adele, her friend, the woman that represents the most conventional
stereotype of a woman mother. “I am beginning to comprehend”, Edna is unable to full
understand her transformation yet. The only thing she is not willing to renounce is herself. For
Adele, to give your life for your children is the higher commitment that a woman can do. This is
Edna not only proving to herself that she is undergoing transformation, she is also emphasizing
that change. What Edna says implicitly is that she doesn’t care what the bible says, for her
there are more important things than her children.

“For the first time she recognized the symptoms of infatuation which she had felt incipiently as
a child, as a girl in her earliest teens, and later as a young woman. The recognition did not
lessen the reality, the poignancy of the revelation by any suggestion or promise of instability.
The past was nothing to her, offered no lesson which she was willing to heed…newly
awakened being demanded”

This is one of the moments that she realize that she is changing quickly but also the effect that
those changes are having in her life. Infatuation means an excitement but childish, it means
that Edna’s change is not only social but also sentimental. For the first time she is excited
because she is in love with Robert. Only the present is relevant for Edna. The past offer no
lesson, she haven’t learnt anything from the past, it was useless. Carpe diem, tomorrow never
comes.

27/03/2015

TEXT COMMENTARY

Three Basic but unavoidable elements:

1. Identification
2. Text commentary
3. Contextualization (optional)

1. Identification
- What literary work does the passage belong to? Positive identification it is an
identification without modal auxiliaries.
- Who is the author?
- BRIEF summary of the passage (2-4 lines).

2. You can divide the commentary in these parts:

- Relevant word and expressions  not say the literal meaning of the word.
- Important ideas in the passage
- Relevance in the context of the work at hand

ALWAYS USE EXAMPLES!!

Either by quoting from the passage between inverted commas or numbering the lines of the
text: in line number 2 it is said that… We can also make reference to any moment in the novel.

3. CONTEXTUALIZATION (optional)
- A brief (5-10) summary of the age when the text was written. This becomes important
when there are historical issues reflected in the passage (not in the overall work). For
example in the end of the exam if he asks about Gatsby, we can say that he represents
the leisure time of the 20’s in America.

EXAMPLE

“How strange and awful it seemed to satnd naked under the sky! How delicious! She felt like
some new born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known.
The foamy wavelets curled up to her white feet, and coiled like serpents about her ankles. She
walked out. The water was chill, but she walked on. The water was deep, but she lifted her
white body and reached out with a long, sweeping stroke. The touch of the sea is sensuous,
enfolding the body in its soft,soft, close embrace.

She went on and on. She remembered the night she swam far out, and recalled the terror that
seized her at the fear of being unable to regain the shore. She did not look back now, but went
on and on, thinking of the blue-grass meadow that she had traversed when a little child,
believing that it had no beginning and no end.

Her arms and legs were growing tired.

She thought of Leonce and the children. They were a part of her life. But they need not have
thought that they could possess her, body and soul. How Mademoiselle Reisz would have
laughed, perhaps sneered, if she knew! “And you call yourself an artist! What pretensions,
Madame!The artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies.”
Exhaustion was pressing upon and overpowering her.
“Good-by—because I love you.” He did not know; he did not understand. He would never
understand. Perhaps Doctor Mandelet would have understood if she had seen him—but it was
too late; the shore was far behind her, and her strength was gone.
She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again. Edna
heard her father’s voice and her sister Margaret’s. She heard the barking of an old dog that
was chained to the sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked across
the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air.”

The text to the Awakening by Chopin.

This fragment tells us the final thoughts of Edna when she is thinking of committing suicide.

Her thoughts mixed with the atmosphere. Notice the strange sensation of walking though the
sea which she finds strange but delicious. The experience of being born again is what catches
the attention in the first paragraph. The first paragraph talks about the physical feelings of
being reborn.

The second one shows the sign of liberation. The final image that the sea is nothing dangerous
as she thought at the beginning, the sea embraces her. The water is cold but she is determined
to enter the sea, she has a determination that she didn’t have before. This is what Edna is
doing, the previous paragraph was about how she felt.

The third paragraph goes back of what she feels, her last memories. There is a comparison
between the former sensation of fear and the current sensation of calmness. (telling the lines
where the lines are).

The fourth: her last thoughts are for her husband and the children. Edna’s lives banishes when
she is unable to swim, she is first tired (tired being synonym of losing her life), then exhausted,
she has lost all the strength.

The last paragraph symbolizes Edna’s death. The terror of an imminent death returns to her.
This last paragraph again is not verbal description of Edna. This is not Edna, this is Edna letting
go. There is the combination between dying and being born.
You can mention something about the situation of women, the novel represents the first
feminist novel. It is not a stereotypical image of women in the case of Edna, it