Blog 1/2/18

The focus for today's class was to be able top interpret symbols in a text and then be able to develop specific real world themes from those symbols. We started our class by going over a few general thematic myths that people typically think are true and why those certain beliefs were wrong/myths. There were three that we went over, they were: 1. There is only one singular theme for a text (wrong: there can be many); 2. A theme must be a lesson (wrong: it doesn't have to be a lesson); 3. A theme can be one word long  (wrong: A theme cannot be one word long because it would be a topic). The last myth that we went over set the tone for the rest of the lesson, which would be a discussion about the differences between themes and topics. We first analyzed a excerpt from the end of the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald when Nick Carraway, "So we beat on, boats against the current back ceaselessly into the past.", and the class came up with four main topics out of this quote. Our topics were; the past, determination, perseverance, and time. Mr. Rivers then said that in order to get a theme, think about how two topics overlap/relate and that will be a theme. Then, every group came up with a general theme for this one excerpt. My groups theme was, "Mans eternal struggle to not fall back into the mistakes of them past". Today's lesson relates to the real world through the evident appearance of themes and topics in book, TV shows, movies, etc. In almost every single medium of daily life in the 21st century, there are underlying concepts, lessons, and themes that readers and/or viewers have to find out by diving deeper into the novel, show, or movie. This is especially evident in the Great Gatsby throughout the book with the appearance of symbols relating to different topics such as in Chapter 6 when the rain starts, stops, then starts again during Daisy's first visit to Gatsby's house, showing the rapid and drastic changes in emotion while Daisy is at Gatsby's.