Creative writing exercise on F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby"
Twenty years after Gatsby's death, Franklin D. Hearst, the
co-editor of the famous RANDOM HOUSE publishing house, embarks
on the project of publishing a collection of essays under the
title:
The Gatsby
myth:
a personal tragedy
or an epitome of the darker side of
the American Dream?
Thus, he starts searching for people who might contribute their
- as a matter of course very subjective - views of Gatsby, his
life and his violent death. Unfortunately Nick Carraway, the closest
witness to the Gatsby legend, is no longer available, since he
died as a result of a serious heart attack a couple of years ago.
So Mr Hearst tries hard to find contemporaries, and after a lot
of troublesome research, he is able to contact five survivors
of the Jazz Age who are all asked - and prove to be more of less
willing - to write a one - or two page account of their experiences
with and around Gatsby and give their personal evaluation of the
virtues and vices of the Roaring Twenties and its most outstanding
representative, i.e. Mr Jay Gatsby.
Here they are in alphabetical order:
click the name of a person to hear the story told by this character!
MISS JORDAN BAKER, still an attractive woman in her early fifties, working as a freelance journalist for Cosmopolitan and Harper's Bazaar,
MRS DAISY BUCHANAN, the ex- wife of
TOM BUCHANAN, who has recently been elected a Republican U.S. senator for the state of New York,
MR MICHAELIS, the late George Wilson's only "friend", now the owner of a chain of fast-food restaurants in New Jersey,
MR MEYER WOLFSHIEM, now an old man, who has only been released from prison recently after serving 15 years for tax evasion and organised crime.
A list of useful links to the novel "The Great Gatsby"
LK 12 Englisch,
Bartikowski
