Quarter 2

 

Overview

This quarter went by too quickly! We were able to finish the last section of Things Fall Apart  and then got halfway through the novel The Great Gatsby. Our focus, therefore, has been on three characters: Okonkwo, Nick Carraway, and Jay Gatsby. What do these three men tell us about life?

 

I. Honesty

What does it mean to be honest?

Honesty refers to integrity, truthfulness, and straightforwardness. If you are honest, you are truthful and sincere no matter what. Honesty can also mean to be positive toward people and things. For example, Gatsby is not honest because he lied to people that he has education and finish college at Oxford university but in reality he might not have any education. Also, we seen that Gatsby doesn’t read all the books he has in his library because they were uncut. This shows that he creates an image for himself.

 

At the end of Chapter 3, Nick says: “I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.” When you consider his role as narrator, do you believe that he is honest? Are his depictions of others honest? If he is not honest, why does he believe he is so honest?

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Nick’s honesty relates to his cardinal virtue, which is ironic because breaking up with a girl before going further into a relationship with other girl is a common thing and that’s honest. In the book, he officially break off relations with a girl before he goes any farther in his relations with Jordan. He keeps emphasizing how honest, nonjudgmental, and objective he is. Nick's opinion on his honestly is based on the society. Based on what I’ve known so far, Nick is an honest person because he is a total different character from other people. Other people are mostly dishonest, such as cheating on work or gambling and Nick thinks he isn’t a person like that.

 

Are you honest? You need to support your response with specific examples.

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I am confident enough to say that I’m honest most of the time because I believe that if you want to be successful, then you have to do everything on your own. I don’t see cheating as a way out to be successful. For example, if I want to get good grades on my final, then I have to revise and don’t cheat. If I do cheat, then don’t actually use my knowledge to answer the question and that doesn’t benefit myself. I’ve seen many people cheating, which they got caught and was embarrasing.

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II.     Success
How is success defined?

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Success is an achievement and accomplishment. Success is also a path of journey in my life. Visually, success is the top of the mountain for me because I have to pass all the difficulties in order to be at the top.

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Both Jay Gatsby and Okonkwo strove to be successful. What did success mean to these two men? How does your notion of success differ?

 

For Okonkwo, he is a well known man of great strength among the villagers in Umuofia. He is opposite from Nwoye and Unoka, which they are lazy and not a successful person. However, he has a flaw which is his quick temper and rashness. This is his downfall and Okonkwo hung himself at the end of the story. On the other hand, Gatsby is a successful person because he is a well known wealthy guy. As we’ve seen Gatsby has a really huge mansion where he invited many of his friends to his house for the party. However, his richness is an image because in the story, he pretended that he graduated from Oxford and have many books in his library. My notion of success differs from both of the characters because my only goal is to get good grades and study in a good university.

You can use your tragic hero blog and your Gatsby paragraph to help you answer these questions!
 

III.     On Writing Well
Take a look at your scores on the various writing assignments you have completed this first semester. What are your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to writing? What mistakes do you tend to repeatedly make? Provide specific examples.

My main weaknesses is grammar because I make a lot of mistakes in my writing and that’s what I have to improve on. There is not much on the strengths side but if my grammar improve them my writing will be a lot better. Some of the grammar I can improve on is subject-verb agreement and stay in the right tense.

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