Literary Focus: The Great Gatsby

This four-week intensive study of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel will focus on the fundamentals of literary analysis to provide students with the skills and knowledge to become better readers, writers, and thinkers.  Students will learn how to properly analyze a text through the "four pillars" of style analysis: diction, imagery, language, and syntax.  Students will also learn how the writer uses various literary techniques — such as point of view, characterization, and setting — to establish tone and convey theme.  

In addition to analyzing and discussing literature in class, students will also have the option of writing supplemental essays that reflect the three essays found on the AP Literature Exam: a poetry analysis, a passage analysis, and a literary argument.  To receive guidance during the writing process, students are encouraged to schedule 15-minute individual writing conferences each week to organize their thoughts, structure their arguments, and receive feedback on their drafts.


Sample Daily Agenda:


Week #1:

Tuesday:  

After introductions, we will provide a thematic focus for the unit by introducing a past AP Literary Argument prompt that includes the novel or play we are studying as one of its suggested titles.  Students will read and annotate their texts with this thematic focus in mind.  We will then introduce the Authentic Assessment, an optional final project that students will work on over the next four weeks that asks them to apply the lessons learned from the book to a relevant, real-world situation.  We will then discuss the unit's Essential Questions and introduce a thought-provoking quotation that addresses one of those questions.  For homework, students will post their journal entries on the class discussion board.  We will then introduce an AP Poetry Analysis prompt for a poem that is related in theme to the novel or play we will read.  Students will then examine how poets use different literary techniques and poetic devices to establish tone and reveal theme.  For homework, students will answer study guide questions on the AP Poetry Analysis prompt and read a short biography of the author of the novel or play.

Thursday:  

We will continue our preparations for the AP Poetry Analysis essay by introducing Hegel's Dialectic, the rhetorical framework we encourage students to use when writing their AP argumentative essays.  We will then review the author's biography and discuss the historical context in which the work was written.  We will also introduce a twenty-word vocabulary list for the book and the format for the optional vocabulary quiz.   Finally, we will discuss how to annotate a text while reading the opening of the novel or play to examine the narrative point of view and identify thematic seeds that are embedded in the opening pages.  For homework, students will read the first third of the novel or play and take a five-question AP-style reading quiz on their own.  Students will also finish their AP Poetry Analysis essay and schedule an individual writing conference by the end of the following week.


Week #2:

Tuesday:  

At the beginning of class, we will review the reading quiz and answer any questions from the first section of the novel or play.  We will then review the narrative point of view and introduce the principles of characterization.  Afterwards, students will work in small groups to analyze how the author uses action, description, and dialogue to reveal character.   We will also discuss the difference between "flat" and "round" characters, and how authors use each type to advance plot and convey theme.  We will also begin identifying how the author uses elements of figurative language — such as metaphors, symbols, or allusions — to establish tone and convey theme.  For homework, students will respond to two of their classmates’ journal entries on the class discussion board and schedule a writing conference to receive individual feedback on the AP Poetry Analysis by the end of the week.

Thursday:  

We will review the "four pillars" of style analysis — diction, imagery, language, and syntax — as we examine excerpts from the first section of the novel or play to show how the writer uses those literary techniques to establish tone and convey theme.  Students will then work in small groups to analyze a specific excerpt and present their findings to the rest of the class in preparation for the AP Passage Analysis, which we will introduce at the end of class.  The passage will be from the second section of the novel, which students will read for the following week.  We will read the prompt in class, however, to identify the central tension that is implied in the prompt so students can anticipate how to organize their thoughts and structure their arguments before reading the actual passage.  For homework, students will take the AP-style reading quiz and optional vocabulary quiz on their own after reading the second section of the novel or play.


Week #3:

Tuesday:  

After answering questions from the second section of the novel or play and reviewing the reading and vocabulary quizzes, we will revisit the AP Passage Analysis prompt and discuss how the passage serves, in the words of writer Edith Wharton, as an "illuminating incident" or "magic casement" that potentially reveals the meaning of the work as a whole.  Students will work in small groups to review the study guide questions from the AP prompt before we answer questions as a whole class.  We will then introduce the purpose of literary criticism to prepare students to read for homework an excerpt from a critic’s essay that provides a possible interpretation of the text.  In addition to reading the literary criticism, students should finish writing their AP Passage Analysis and schedule a writing conference to receive individual feedback on their essay by the end of the week.

Thursday:  

We will begin class by reviewing the literary critic’s central argument before students work in small groups to identify elements of the essay that they agree with, elements that they find interesting (but don't necessarily agree with), and elements that they disagree with.  Students should be prepared to defend their positions with evidence from the text.  Students will then share their findings with the whole class as we discuss the critic’s claims.  We will then continue our study of various literary techniques — such as point of view, characterization, or setting — and how the writer uses those techniques in the second section of the novel or play to establish tone and convey theme.  At the end of class we will revisit the AP Literary Argument prompt and discuss how students can use Hegel’s dialectic to structure their arguments in preparation for reading the final section of the novel or play.  For homework, students should take the final exam on their own after finishing the novel or play and begin working on their AP Literary Argument essay.


Week #4:

Tuesday:  

After discussing the end of the novel and answering any questions from the final exam, we will revisit the AP Literary Argument prompt and how the ending of the novel impacts their understanding of the work as a whole.  Students will then work in small groups to create potential outlines using Hegel's Dialectic to identify the central tension of the work and how that tension is potentially resolved at the end.  Students will then present their findings to the whole class as we discuss possible interpretations of the text.  We will also review any significant passages from the final section that might help clarify the writer’s intent and support students’ interpretive claims.  For homework, students should finish their AP Literary Argument essays and schedule an individual writing conference before the end of the week.  Students should also prepare their Authentic Assessment presentation if they would like to present on Thursday.

Thursday:  

We will begin our final class by having students present their Authentic Assessments, either in small groups or to the whole class, depending on the number of students who want to present.  We will then review the unit's Essential Questions, the journal discussion quotation, and the AP Poetry Analysis before conducting our final discussion, a Socratic Seminar in which students address the Essential Questions and what we should learn from the different writers and thinkers that we have studied over the past four weeks.  We will emphasize at the end of our discussion how literature should be a transformative experience for readers, where we no longer can see ourselves or the world around us in quite the same way because of the writer’s impact on us.  We will encourage students to share what they have learned from the work and how it has influenced or changed their thinking before we depart.