Last chapter

This last chapter had many ups and downs. Right when there was going to be a happy ending, another twist was thrown in to bring it back down again. Overall, the story ends on a happy note, even though the journey was a tough one up until this point. When Tom is first brought back after a day or two of being with the doctor, I had a feeling things were going to turn for the worst. Jim was taken prisoner again,and this time with even stricter rules and had more people watching him. I started to feel really badly for Jim because of the fact that he was just made a playing piece for this game of Huck and Tom's, and when he was finally out, something happened that caused him to be brought back again. Luckily, the doctor made a comment about how good Jim was and how he helped save Tom's life, because if that didn't happen, Jim would have had much harsher punishment. The doctors comments made me feel even worse for Jim though, because even at this moment when he was free and could have gone off on his own, he stayed and helped Tom, which caused him to go back into bondage. When Tom was finally able to talk again and he spilled exactly what happened, I was absolutely modified. I thought not only were Huck and Tom going to be in a ton of trouble, but now the word is out on Jim, so he will be punished also. I couldn't believe Tom was telling all of their secrets so willingly, and not be upset about it. Of course, Tom had a reason for being so willing to talk. When I found out Jim was free, it made the story alot better for me. In the end, I think this last chapter, even though it was a battle, ended positively for Huck. One of his good friends, Jim, finally succeded in freeing himself, which was the main reason for Jim's voyage, and Huck had been trying to help him the whole time. It also shows how Huck won the battle of doing what was right vs. doing what was easiest.

The Letter

Huck decides to write a letter to Mrs. Watson, because he is feeling guilty to taking her slave, and protecting the run away. Mrs. Watson was always nice to Huck, and for him to do something this low and steal from her is not right. While he feels guilty for helping Jim, Mrs. Watson's slave, run away, other emotions and thoughts over power his guilt. During Jim and Huck's journey, Huck began to have a special bond towards Jim, and vise versa. He has gone through so much with Jim, he feels really attached to him. In the early instance in the book when Huck was about to snitch on Jim, Jim said that Huck was the nicest white person he has ever met, and how much of a friend Huck was to Jim. He soon feels guilty for wanting to tell on someone who stayed up extra late, and took more than one shift just so Huck could sleep, and someone he considers a friend. This is the main reason he rips up the letter, but there is another reason also. If Mrs. Watson finds out he has committed the crime of helping a slave run away, and essentially stealing her property, she will not be happy with him. He is afraid he might get in trouble if she finds out the truth and doesn't want that to happen. Not only will he get in trouble, but Huck is also afraid that Mrs. Watson will sell Jim down river, which is exactly why Jim ran away. This just shows Huck using his morals again. Huck is starting to grow up in the book, and is begining to act more mature. He is starting to tink of the big picture of different problems, instead of the small picture, and just choosing the easy road out.

Huck ruins the plan

During these chapters, the Duke and King come up with a plan to steal a great amount of money from the Wilk's family, during Peter Wilk's funeral. Huck doesn't really like this plan so, he comes up with his own plan to stop it. The first thing Huck decides to do to ruin the King and Duke's plan is to steal their money. After watching them for a little bit, he sees they put the money under the bed. Huck needed to hide the money somewhere else, but when he is about to hide it outside of the house, people start coming so he hides it in the next best thing, Peter Wilk's coffin. This part of Huck's plan does not turn out how he expects it to. Before he has time to take the money out of the coffiin, and return it to Mary Jane and the other sisters, the coffin is buried, with the money in it. Huck thought he had a real problem now, but he decided to just tell Mary Jane what happened, hoping that she would be ok with it. Telling Mary Jane is exactly what he did, he went straight to her and told her the stroy from begining to end, from the point when he first met Duke and King till why he was sitting next to her right then. Huck told her all about how they were just con-artist trying to steal money from people. When he tells Mary Jane the truth about the men, they both come up with their own plan to get the men caught and exposed.
I think Huck decides to ruin their plan because he really does care about doing the right thing. He felt bad for all of the people the Duke and King were hurting, and wanted to make it up to them. Huck has always felt sort of bad for following their plan, and this is the first time he goes against them.

Daughter

Jim tells a story about his ornery daughter, who had a really hard time for a few years because of her scarlet fever, and she never did what she was told or responded to people talking to her because she became deaf. Huck wakes up and find Jim thinking about this, and he is almost in tears. He was thinking of the horrible day he found out his daughter being deaf. He tried to get her attention, and she stood their ignoring him. This day was so sad for him, and meant bad news for his daughter. Now if the little girl was told to do something, she wouldn't be able to because she wouldn't hear the request, and she would be punished for it. This showed a really soft side of Jim. He was sitting there worrying about his family he left behind. We had never seen Jim cry before in the book over a topic like this. It just shows the thought process Jim has on a day to day bases. When ever he heard a pow or a noise, its thoughts would be directed to his days as a slave, and even though he was on his road to freedom now, his children and wife are still living their lives as slaves.

Duke and King

From the very first second I met Duke and King, when they were running down the creek, being chased, I had a bad feeling about them. Once they started talking, this feeling grew even stronger. Obviously, these men are liars. What are the chances, that two men, running away from the same thing, even though they have never met, are both royalty of some sort. These chances are very slim. The fact that they would lie about something like this is puzzling to me. Did they really think that Huck and Jim would not think this coincidence was strange? With everything they do, I think there is something more than what they say involved. I was worried when they were talking about the flier for the run away slave Jim, because at first, I thought he was going to turn Jim in. This had me very worried. I think that Jim and Huck should not be traveling with them. First off, the more people they have on their raft, the harder everything becomes for them. They are trying to be inconspicuous, but with 4 people on the raft, instead of two that is much harder. Secondly, both of these men are liars, and Huck and Jim do not know if they would help them if they needed to be helped. If put in a difficult situation, Huck has no idea whether they would help them or go against them because it is helpful for the Royalty. Lastly, these men have bad habits, that could get them in trouble. Once the King found the Whiskey, he continued to get drunk, which could be very dangerous to them in the future.

Huck and Buck

Huck and Buck are similar in many ways. First there are the very superficial and surface level ways. Their names are very similar, with just a letter differentiating them. Also, they are boys that are around the same age, and they both live in a slave owning environment. Past the superficial levels of similarity, they have many things in common too. Both of them are raised in very nice house holds, yet they would rather be out in the wild. When Buck firsts meets Huck, he takes him into the clothing and starts talking to him a mile a minute. He starts asking him if he likes to get dressed up on Sundays for church, because he didn't like to, and this is the exact same for Huck. They are forced to live in the "civilized" societies, with all of the fancy things, and the proper surroundings, yet they both do not like doing the "proper" things they are told to do. Also, both of them are always up for an adventure. Obviously, Huck is always a child who loves going out and exploring, and is always looking for an adventure, which is part of the reason he is at Buck's home in the first place. Buck is also this child. When Huck and Buck were walking through the forest, and they found one of the rivals, Buck told Huck to hide in the forest, while Buck shot at him, and then they ran for their life. This isn't something a person not looking for adventure would do, rival or no rival.

Raftsmen

In this chapter, there are many events that give us an idea about raftsmen in general. First off, these men are looked down upon by the bigger steamboats, which shows that, normally, the upper class do not use the rafts as much as the lower to middle class do. When the steamboat ran into Huck's raft, and afterwords did not even stop to see if everyone was alright, it shows that they are on the bottom of the boat food chain. The steamboats can plow their way through the rafts andnot be fazed at all. Second, they, likemost southerns, did not like black people. A raftsmen we met in this chapter was asking every boat/raft he saw, if they had or hade seen any black people, because there were some slaves that had run away and he was trying to find them and get them back to their owners. Also, while the Steamboats might not like them, in general they are very helpful people. When Huck told them his pap was sick, they were going to help them get to shore, without even thinking about it. Even when they found out he had "small pox", while they didnt help them get to shore, they gave them lots of money to help them with their journy, which was extremly generous, considering they didn't know Huck from the next person they met. To steamboats, raftsmen were beneath them. To slaves, they were men to look out for. But to the average joe, raftsmen were people that would help you when you needed it.

Helping Hand

At first, he wants to get on the wrecked ship to see if there is any loot from them to "borrow." He thinks that there are probably the captain's things, and if they get them, they will become richer than they have ever been before. Once Huck gets on the ship, he sees that two men are threatening the other man. Now, he has to motives for being on the ship, to help the man that is being threatened, and to get the valuable items on the ship, not to mention, he thinks the only way they can get away from the murderers is to steal their ship. He convinces Jim to help him take the ship, but then later feels bad about this decision, mainly by talking up the idea that there is someone that is going to get killed on the wrecked ship, if they didn't do anything about it. While at first he wanted to take the ship to escape, he then felt bad about it and backtracked to watch out for the people on the ship. This just shows that Huck, even though he never really comes out and says it straight on, likes to fight for the under dog. The example of the genie is another time where this side of him shows through. In that situation, he thinks that people shouldn't just do things for other people, which is helping the slaves, another underdog. In this situation, there is a man that is obviously getting bullied because of what he has, both his possessions and his knowledge, and the men are threatening to kill him. Huck doesn't want to see this happen, so even though he might say they should help to get the loot, he really wants to help to save the man in danger.

Helping Hand

Trick on Jim

When Huck found Jim again, he was extremely happy, because now he didn't have to be lonely anymore. Jim started talking about all the bad luck Huck was getting when he was doing certain things, but Huck thought it was all nonsense, because they just found the great discovery of the house. Jim had been getting on Huck about how him keeping the rattle snake skin was going to give them lots of bad luck, and Huck didn't believe that, so he decided to trick him. He found a rattle snake, killed it, and then took the dead body, rolled it up, and put it at the end of Jim's sleeping bag. Jim went in and stood next to his sleeping bag, and the snakes mate bit him on his heel, because when rattle snakes die, their mates comes and curls around them. This caused Huck to believe that maybe they did have bad luck now, and he decided to not have a rattle snake skin again. Huck decided to play this trick on Jim this time, because he didn't have to worry about the same things as he did last time he had the opportunity to scare Jim. Last time, he was worried about Jim seeing it was him and telling on him, or all of them making to much noise and the widow would find out. In this situation, he didn't have the worry of the widow, so he could do what ever he pleased. He was never worried about actually hurting Jim, or he didn't want to do it because it was mean to do, he just didn't want to get in trouble. Also, he just thought that would be a good trick to play to have Jim not freak out about his superstitions again.

Last American Man

Eustace is both the "last American Man" and just a different sort of modern man. While he lives in the woods and acts like the early American men and settlers, he isn't entirely the last American Man. He uses skills that he might, at first, deny he even has, like accounting and business, in a world where he doesn't think people should really have to deal with that. He had to use all of these skills in order to gain his land for Turtle Island. Also, while he says he is this frontier man, he spends a good portion of his time living in hotels or houses, while he is on his educational tours. Real frontier men practiced what they preached, and didn't make exceptions to their daily lives every once and a while. The idea of an American man generally a good idea, but in the context they want it in it is a bad one. It is a very rare occurrence and an almost impossible feat. Societies change, and the people in the societies change. The old American men didn't have to worry necessarily on who owned land and other items Eustace has to take care of in today society. It would be impossible for him to be this last American man in the original since, because the idea of what an American man has changed so much in history. The men in today's world are not like their forefathers, but even those men were not real "American men." Many of them weren't even from America, let alone live in the wilderness. 

Apprentices

Everyone that comes to work for Eustace has their own personal goals when they go to Turtle Island. Most of them have this love for nature, and really want and believe they can live the way Eustace lives. The apprentices do not like him because he just takes their dream away from them. He doesn't treat them right and ends up working them for 12 to 15 a hour days. These people aren't used to working this hard, and when they ask for breaks or a day off, he doesn't give it to them. Everything the apprentices do he says it isn't good enough, or is ruining the camp. Eustace always wants to be in charge, so even if the apprentices could be very helpful, only 10 percent of them end up staying because he always finds something that is wrong. I would not want to work for Eustace. He is always ruins peoples dreams. Also, he would make me work long hour days with no reward. I would go to Turtle island to learn stuff, but also to have fun, and Eustace isn't a fan of fun. Also, I'm not completely dedicated for nature, and if people went to Turtle island who are completely dedicated do not make it, I would not make it a day working there. Eustace needs to learn how to treat people with more respect.

Horse Ride

To Eustace, this is just one more challenge and adventure he is making for himself. Also, this particular adventure was important to him because he wanted to make the relationship he had with his brother stronger and better than it was. The over all plan for this journey, in Eustace's head, was to make it across the country by Easter, while testing the limits of how long and hard both the horses and the Long Riders could go. To me, while I was reading about their journey, the most important or interesting part of their journey was when Eustace trained this animal that couldn't be tamed, Peter Rabbit. The way Eustace reacted to this mule when he kicked his brother was a surprise, and the actions he took after the incident were even more surprising to me. He started fighting with the mule, both enduring physical pain, whether it be the biting and whipping coming from Eustace or the kicking of Peter Rabbit. For a long period of time their was constant abuse coming from one of them, and Judson and Susan just stared, scared to death. Eustace also talked to the animal also, in hopes of changing its temperament.What was amazing about this whole thing was I didn't expect Peter Rabbit to change. It was amazing to me that a few weeks later they sent a picture to his original owner, and all of his no no spots were being touched, and Peter Rabbit didn't seem phased at all. Out of all of the incidents that occurred on this journey, this was the one that stuck out the most.

Life at Turtle Island

Life at Turtle Island after the first year continued to stay the same. He was still constantly on the road or building the Island, and he never had time to actually live off of the land. Now, he had to constantly worry if the land surrounding the Island was going to be taken over by roads or Resorts. Also, he had to work deals with his enemies, something he normally wouldn't do unless he was desperate. He is still going to different schools to teach, but lately he was thinking that the children he was teaching were just rude. The things that normally brought him happiness were making him upset. He often wrote in his journal that he was depressed and upset, when he should be feeling relaxed and happy. Also, Turtle Island ruined his love life. Valarie began getting upset that Eustace wasn't spending time with her, and it lead her to cheat on a mutual friend. He breaks up with her because Valarie and Henry continued to lie to him. After Valarie there were many other women that came and went, but none of them stayed because of one reason or another. He was engaged at one point, but she also cheated on him with a banjo player. Eustace didn't understand why people continued to lie to him and cheat. Turtle Island caused more trouble in his life than joy. As for the people around him, at first they loved The Island, but when Eustace began to pay more attention to his land, they would get upset. Their presence began to annoy him also. He would write in his journal that he was annoyed that they were having a staff meeting in his office, and wished they would stay away from his person space. He continued to be depressed during his first few years, and wasn't what he expected.

Turtle Island

Eustace has pressure from all around him to get Turtle Island set up and established. He asked his father, who he hadn't really talked ot in a long time for money, and he was trying as hard as he could to pay him back as quick as possible. This was causing him to work nonstop until the money was paid of, and then he would ask for more money to make his dream grow larger. He was constantly on the road, giving different programs to children of all ages. Once he finished one program he continued right on to the next, having to speed the intire away inorder to get there on time. He wasn't really living what he was preching during this hectic time of his life. He was in square cars preforming for hours on end in square rooms and staying in square hotels and houses, instead of living in his circular world. When he wasn't giving speeches he was constructing his office on only a few hours of sleep a night, working himself to the bone. He wasn't really living the life style he really was hoping for in the very early years,but the outcome affected the people around him greatly. Besides his dad, who was the main financial advisor of the project and the main person he was trying to succeed for, there was also Valarie who was also important in the building of his dream. She was affected because he was always working and didnt really have that much time for her. BUt he affected the children in a good way. Mothers would write him letters commenting on how much more mature Turtle Island had made her son. The campers went to the camp and were forever changed. After months of running around hectically, he finally got the happiness of changing childrens lives out of Turtle Island.

Dress for Success

I picked dress for success because I really liked the idea of setting women up in order to succeed, instead of just giving them food and things of that nature. This organization really makes it possible for these women to get the rest of their lives in order, and raise from nothing to something that is very successful. I first learned of this organization because they came and talked to my church about it. Also, Sarah Rodriquez's mother helped out there from time to time and it just grabbed my attention. The way they set all of these underprivileged women up just amazes me. All of these women come from places that they might not have enough money to buy suits or other dress up cloths, they might not eve have neough money to put food on their table, if they have one, and just need a step in the right direction in order to almost start their life anew. Also, this organization is a great one because they don't just give them one suit and a few tips and then send them on their way. They have specail programs that the women can come back to if they have any questions or guidence in their new work force. That was one thing that really amazed me and grabbed my attention.

People Today

In today's world, there are still many people who are on a quest for some sort of freedom or rights that they have not been given. In America, as well as other places throughout the world, minorities are the people that are chasing after these freedoms. Minorities include the color of skin you have, your religion, your sexual preference, culture background and anything that makes you "different" from other people. These quests for freedom can be on an individual base, or on a whole group of people as a whole. Where ever there are a few number of people that aren't like the majority in the area, the people have to fight for and be on a journey for a freedom of prejudices, judgment, and assumptions, and they have to start fighting for equality and even normality. I saw normalitly because they are just trying to be treated as everyone else is around them and become apart of a "normal state."

Freedom

Linda finally gets her freedom because Mrs. Hobbs brother, who promises her that since her grandmother was so kind to him would not tell Dr. Flint where she is, writes to Dr. Flint about her whereabouts. This causes her to confess everything about her life to Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Bruce, like the nice women she was, decides to help her escape from Dr. Flints arrival. She first sends Linda to one of her friends houses, where she was supposed to wait for William to arrive. Because Mrs. Hobbs feels bad for what her brother did, she decides to let Ellen stay with Linda for a few days, so Linda is met by her daughter also. Everyone involved then decide that Linda and her children should go to Boston, because of the small number of southerners in the area, so she gets on a boat and travels to Boston, and later she gets on a train. Once she reaches Boston with her children, she decides that they both get a better education and learn a trade. Mrs. Bruce ended up dieing, and Linda, because she needed work, decided to take Mary to London. She is there long enough for Dr. Flint to go back to the South. She continues to travel from place to place for a while, until she learns that Dr. Flint died. She finally becomes free because the new Mrs. Bruce sends Mrs. Flint a letter asking if she could buy her and her children. She has mixed emotions because even though she is in these free states, since she was an escaped slave from a slave state, there were new laws that make it possible for her to be returned to the master. Also she is faced with unfair treatment. The north isn't as free as she hoped it would be. She also feels mixed emotions because she feels as she was finally sold as property so she wasn't really free.

North

While the north was much better than her situation she was in in the south, it wasn't entirely as she expected it to be. Firstly, she in a way expected that the second she reached the north, that she might have a feeling of freedom within her and this was not the case. Even when she was in this free state, she still worried about her freedoms being taken away from her and still confined to some of the habits she had grown up with as a slave, such as the fire bells. She also always found herself not telling the complete truth or leaving out parts of her story because she didn't want people to figure out that some of the things she had been doing in the past had been lies, like writing to Dr. Flint from the north. The one time she did completely come out and share her story, she was told to be more careful about who she talked to like that,because they might think differently of her. This was scorching her freedom a little.
Another thing that was not what she expected to be like in the north, was her trip on the train. In the south she could ride in the boxcars behind all of the white people for free. When she got to the north, she couldn't buy a good seat, and now had to pay to sit in a car full of smoke and dirtiness, a car a slave could ride in for free. This was not what she was expecting and was very surprising to her.

William

William had a chance to go to the north with Mr. Sands and help him out. This was the perfect time for him to make his way to the freedom Mr. Sands had been promising him for a while now. He knew that, in slavery, things were not always as they had been promised, and the master is the one in control and can change what he decides to do whenever he feels like it. He realized that Mr. sands could decide that he doesn't want to make him free, so why not leave him when he is somewhat willing to let him go.
I think that Williams actions were definitely justified, but the way hew is carrying them out is a little rude. Obviously, any slave should become free whenever they had the chance. This was Williams chance to do just that, and he took it, which is what he should have done. No one wants to be under someones control their whole life, even if the person you are under the control of is extremely nice to you. I think his actions were a little rude because he didn't give his family any warning and didn't even write to them in a few days to tell them he was well. THis is inconsiderate and a tiny bit rude.

Children

After the children where in Jail for many months, and after a few slave traders finally came and went, Dr. Flint finally started thinking about selling them. His original plan was not to , because for the time being, revenge was worth more to him than money, but this soon changed. A slave trader came to him with a very generous offer, and he got to thinking about the chance that the children might die before they get to 15, at which time they could be sold for the most, so he decided after alot of thinking to let them go. What he didn't know was that this slave trader had an agreement with Mr. Sands to sell them to him after he buys them from Dr. Flint. THis is how Mr Sands finally gets ownership of his children.
Linda trusts him becuase hs has no reason not to. Ever since she has had a relatinship with him, he was been kind to her and has promied to help her, he has always said he wanted ot buy the children, but Dr. Flint always prevented it.
I, like Linda, also have no reason to not trust Mr. Sands. He has always tried tohelp his children and in the end he is the person who got them out of jail and helped them when they wer in this time of need. He seems like a very trustable guy.

Necklace

Linda compare the gold necklace to the chains that are put on slaves. She says she doesn't want any type of chain put on her children even if these chains are made of gold. She never wanted her children to have to feel the weight of a chain on their skin. Linda compares the act of putting the necklace on her daughter to an owner putting chains on its slave, and she didn't want her children to have to ever be put into the harsh reality of slavery, and have those chains put on them if they ever upset their master. To a certain extent i do agree with her comparison. If i grew up as she had the latter half of her life and seen the things chains had done to those around her, i would not like the sight of them. It was the idea of the links being put fastened together, into something that was impossible to break that frightened her. She had seen what chains had done to the people around her and didn't like the sight of them. While she had a good reason to not like the idea of chains, i dont think she should have been that upset about the idea of this necklace being given to her daughter. The woman who did it was not meaning for the chain to be a symbol for total control, rather a nice gester given because she felt bad for the little girl.

Quote

"All could not be relied on. Mighty power of the torturing lash" (55.)

This passage is a very meaningful one. Even though all of the slaves were all in it together and faced the same horrible future day in and day out, but that didn't matter to some slaves. There were certain slaves that if they had to pick between a fellow slave or even a family member or their master or any other white person for that matter, they would pick the white person without even thinking about it. These slaves are constantly trying to cover themselves, even at the risk of other slaves around them, who are going through the same thing as them. In today's world, we might call these slaves backstabbers or tattle tales, but during their situation, it was more like survival of the fittest, and if you had to tell on another slave, so be it, at least you saved yourself from a week of misery as well as got on your masters better side. There were cases that fathers would even tell on their own daughters or sons if it saved them a trip to the whipping post. It is amazing how the threat of the lash will cause certain slaves to totally obey and cause others pain.
I liked this quote because it just showed how much power the masters really had over the slaves. If they slaves just took one second and all came and worked together, they could have possibly revvolted and became free, but that one whip caused enough control over certain slaves that that could never happen.

Love

Love for a slave, is something that is so close, yet will always be out of reach. They might fall in love, but their master wouldn't think of letting them go and be happily married. Sometimes, love is forced onto a slave by the master. This is a predicament that is almost impossible to get out of, yet your life is dependent on it all of the time. The master never lets down and will always " love" the slave and treat them right, but only behind closed doors. Slaves are almost forbidden to be happy, especially when it comes to love. If the master does let two slaves, or even a slave and a freed black man, get closer together, or they have a secret relationship, the second they settle down with each other, their family gets ripped apart by auctions and severe punishment that leads to death. Wanting to love someone and the side affects that come from it is almost as bad as the masters, chains, and whips for a slave. Even if they found the perfect person, love is so far away because of rules and laws and society. They can never be happy, with a family, and everything that that entails, because when they start getting close, there is always a catastrophic event that takes place and ruins everything for them.

Image of Slavery

In the beginning, Jacobs image of slavery was one that depending on your luck, could go undetected. If your master was a kind person, and you worked hard or someone from your kin worked hard, you could live your life with the label of a slave, but not having to be treated like one. The second you get into the home of an awful master, this image turns to one of a dog, or any other object you have at your house. Its powerful because dogs do not have much freedom. They eat when their owner gives them food, can only go out side or too the bathroom when their own lets them out, and they in general do what their owner says, in fear of how them refusing will affect them later. This image is a muted down version of what a slave really is, but it does show the helpless aspect of a slaves life. In Jacobs story, she does a good job showing both the broad and individual tales of slavery. While so far, this story is only following a single family, from time to time she tells stories from the auction block. For example, she tells stories of a woman who lost all of her children in the auction or specific examples of how certain slaves were punished for small things they did. Stories like these help give the broad view of slavery, even though the main idea of the story of the individual family.

Reflection

What I enjoyed from the class discussion on Tuesday, was when Keaton brought up the idea that everything in the book was all coincidence, and Keaton asked if Fitzgerald just wanted to write a book just to write a book, not to get a point across. At first, if you didn't go into depth about the book, you might not think that he wrote it to make out a specific point, but once you discuss it, you find out it is almost impossible to have the type of connections found throughout the book, and any book for that matter, with out them meaning to be there. The connection with the glasses that is found twice in the book is one example of how the author must have planned it out a little, and it wasn't just luck that two places a God figure was needed, just happened to have glasses.
I enjoyed this conversation because it was a different way of looking at how authors write. Before I had never really thought about how most authors write to get a point across. I always thought that theyh might have a character that they like and want to build a story off of, and the plot just goes from there, but I learned that it is most times the other way around.

Funeral

The number of people in attendance to Gatsby's funeral was ridiculous. For a couple years , he had been opening his home every weekend to all of these strangers. They had been mooching off of him, trashing his house, and using his house as a hang out, even though they did not know Gatsby personally. The only people to show up to his funeral were Nick, his father, a few servants, and the Owl-eyed guy from the library. Nick came because he was a very close friend to Gatsby, and he wanted to be there to support his friend. His father came, because it was his son that died, and he was very proud of what his son had done with himself. He always carried around the picture of his house that Mr. Gatsby had sent him, showing it off to anyone he could. The servants went because they spent alot of time with Gatsby, and there was probably a since of having to go not as much wanting to go for them. As for the Owl-eyed guy, he was the only one of the mooches that showed up to the funeral. He didn't have an special bond with Gatsby, and didn't go to that many parties, so the only reason to be said of him coming is he is a genuinely kind guy, who has enough respect for other people to go to the Funeral. This just shows that people didn't care about Gatsby at all, and just used him for what he owned and his materialistic values. This was very disrespectful to Gatsby. As for Daisy, there were probably a number of reason she didnt go to the funeral, and none of them would giver her a good enough excuse. Gatsby ended up taking all of the heat for this girl, and the least she could do was show up at his Funeral to honor and celebrate the life of the guy she loves. Tom, most likely, had some sort of leash on her after the instance in New York, but she could have at least sent a flower or called Nick.

Climax

There are a few things that happened through out the book that might have to us what might be coming next. The glasses that watched over the Wilson's garage and the city of ash is one piece in the book that might have been a good hint to us that something was going to happen. Wilson claimed that these glasses watched over him like God. When Wilson started putting the pieces together about Myrtle and her fooling around with someone, he claimed the glasses, or God, helped him. Him having suspicions about Myrtle is what started their argument for the most part, and if that didn't happen, and God had not been looking out for Wilson, than Myrtle wouldn't have ran out in front of the car. Also, another hint in the book is when Tom goes to the Wilson's garage to get gas before they have their adventure to the city. When they are pulling out of the station, someone makes an observation of the look of multiple emotions on Myrtle's face as she sees Jordan, whom she assumes is Daisy. This is the first time she has seen his "wife," and the look on her face showed she did not take it well. The last main thing that foreshadowed an event like this to happen was when they went into such detail about the yellow car. At some point in the book, you knew something was going to happen relating to Gatsby's yellow car.

Lies

People tell lies for many reasons. Gatsby's reason was he was a nobody that always dreamed of being a somebody. Ever since he was little he was ashamed of his parents and of the life he had, so when he left them, he had to leave the name that tied him to them behind also. he had all of these dreams of these wonderful things that he wanted, and being only the son of a farmer would not help him reach these goals. Now that he achieved these goals, he felt like he had to continue to lie. No one needed to know that he was once a nobody, and isn't actually a part on an influential family. Also, his lies really set him up for a good story, and make his name, Gatsby, sound like he is a somebody. Jay Gatsby would tell people he, as well as most of the people in his family, went to Oxford, which helped give him a sort of status. If he started telling the truth about himself, than his status would be lowered to some of the people that knew him, and in the end maybe if Daisy found out about him through hearsay, her thoughts about him would be lowered also. Nick lied to us because of the same reason. Gatsby has this wonderful feel about him, with all of his money and "things" he owns, and added with the fact that there is something very suspicious about him, it makes you always want to find out what is really behind Gatsby, where did he really come from? He decides to tell us later because we needed to have this understanding of Gatsby and get this idea of him in our head. Also, now that Gatsby found what he was looking for all of these years, he doesn't have all of the same need to put on such a front. Nick realizes this and decides to fill us in on the secret.

Enchanted Objects

For around the past 5 years, Gatsby has been on a search for a way to get back in touch with Daisy. Ever since he found out where she lived and found something to notice her house, the green light, it has been one of his greatest possessions because it was the closest thing he had to his greatly missed Daisy. This flashing light was something he could always look at and picture Daisy and know that on the other side of the water, she was sitting there at her house, closer to him than she has been in a long time. Once Daisy went to Nick's cottage for tea, and the doors opened for the two of them to have a talking relationship again, his need for this flashing light started getting smaller. As the day went on, and he started to realize they might be able to talk once and a while,like old times sake, he didn't need the light. It wasn't an enchanted object to him anymore that linked him to his past and connected him some how to this young lady he so greatly missed.

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