Help with "The Great Gatsby" thesis + essay

Quote:

Originally Posted by edensparkles

Unfortunately I left this 1000 page draft for the night before. It's been a busy weekend (dad's birthday) and my knee is fractured and my grades are steadily dropping, though I've been given a bit of a break because of my knee. I need this essay to be great to save my grades in Literature. Help me please! I just need some ideas on what to write about and hopefully a few quotes to back those ideas up. This is just a high school essay, minimum word count will be around 1600 words in the end. For this assignment I'm supposed to pose an open-ended question, then answer it with an evidence based thesis and support that thesis. I'm not asking anyone to write the whole thing for me, just need some help with getting started.

I read this book in high school and studied it in undergrad as well in my 20th Century American Lit class so I know it pretty well. For the most basic and standard thesis; you could argue how Gatsby is a corruption of the American Dream. I wrote a similar essay when I was in Grade 12. I used the example of Andrew Carnegie and his book, the Gospel of Wealth, to illustrate how the American Dream involved moral responsibilities in the 19th Century, but became something perverse and corrupt in Fitzgerald's time with characters like Meyer Wolfshiem.

Alternatively, you can write about how Jay Gatsby embodies American archetypes - the self-made man who recreates himself (symbolized by his name change) and embodies the American value of pragmatism. This pragmatic attitude of Gatsby is seen in his planning sheet for self-improvement (which Nick Carraway discovers after Gatsby's death) which is exactly what is found in Benjamin Franklin's autobiography - the father of American Pragmatism.

Anyway, feel free to PM me if you have other questions.