Harkness Day 12-11-17

So today in class we had another harkness day. For people not keeping up with the reading, we are on chapter six and chapter seven harkness is on Friday. So basically, throughout this chapter we learn more and more about Gatsby(or James Gatz I should say). We learn his origins and his rise to what we know him and Nick knows him now. But James Gatz was originally a from a poor farming family. But this all changed when he met a rich man named Dan Cody. And this is where James Gatz becomes Jay Gatsby. So he basically follows him around on his yacht for five years when he meets his demise by a women named Ella Kaye supposedly killed him. I say supposedly because my group discussed the possibility that Jay may have been lying and just blamed it on her because throughout the book we hear rumors that Jay killed a man and it also says Dan Cody is killed a week after Ella Kaye's visit. But beside's the point, you might want to read to get up to date with where the class is. But the main thing that will be discussed in this blog post is the idea of compartmentalizing. This means putting things in an area or a certain order that makes the most sense. And the human mind does this subconsciously or unaware that you are doing it. I want to talk about this because the chapter question asks about why is the stories of Jay Gatsby in the order it is in. And the answer is because of compartmentalizing. We have established already that Fitzgerald wanted to make Nick's story as similar to an actual person writing a story about the past and compartmentalizing is a huge part of that. That's why at certain points certain info gets added. Because in Nicks mind that how he remembers something, by putting it near a similar memory to help keep both clear.

This phenomenon can be found primarily in school work and any memorization skills. Keeping everything in a math part of your memories will help you remember stuff on math. And this has been proving by watching a persons brain light up like a tree while telling a story because so many memories are being drawn from so many areas it causes the brain to work in multiple areas where those specific memories are stored. If there wasn't compartmentalizing in the  brain our memories would be more of a mess than they are. Because a human cannot remember everything but by putting labels on them they can be easier to pull from. Whats even cooler is the brain does this sub-consciously, like a stated before. So Your brain just makes little cubbies to store things. To me, that seems pretty nifty.