Harkness Day

Today, 12/18, our class divided into our Harkness groups to discuss chapter 7 of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. For anyone who hasn't read chapter 7, Tom suspects that something is going on between Gatsby and Daisy. Tom makes a scene at a get together with Nick, Jordan, and Gatsby. He tells everyone, especially Daisy, that he has had someone investigate Gatsby. We find out that Gatsby and his partner, Wolfsheime, had owned multiple drug-stores in which they sold alcohol illegally since this was during the prohibition. Daisy then declared her love for Gatsby and they ran off and sped away in Gatsby's car. Tom, Nick, and Jordan then followed them but get stopped by an accident on the road that had just occurred. It turned out that Daisy was driving Gatsby's car and had accidentally hit and killed Myrtle, who was running away from her husband since he was forcing her to move out west because he suspected Myrtle was seeing someone. The chapter question for chapter 7 is; Lots of characters suffer in this chapter; how does that suffering vary by social class? My group discussed how Mr. Wilson is suffering because he needs to move out west to try and get away from whoever is trying to steal her wife, but he doesn't have any money to do that. His life later, was killed. Tom is suffering because his two love interests are leaving him and he doesn't like feeling weak.

Discussing in groups about a book that we are all reading together helps get out any confusion that anyone has. It is also interesting to combine different ideas that each of us have when we read and we get a chance to discuss it. Putting out and considering everyone's ideas can broaden how we read books because we can the look for certain details that we could have missed in the past.