BEST WORKS
English 3/4 Essay: The Great Gatsby
This is an essay that I wrote for my English class about the book The Great Gatsby. I chose it as one of my best works because I felt that I had worked really hard on it. Something I was struggling with when I wrote this essay (and something I’m still working on today) was how to connect the concepts I was writing about into one coherent argument. When working on the final draft of this essay, loose connections between ideas were the main issue I had to solve.
I was very focused on the specific changes that I wanted and spent a long time making them reality. Even more than the end product (the essay), this assignment represents a method of working on my writing that I want to use more often, and that I am proud of having used in this essay.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald tells the story of Jay Gatsby, a self made man, and his quixotic quest to regain the attentions of Daisy Buchanan, the woman he loves. Daisy is unhappily married to Tom, who is also extremely wealthy. Tom is having an affair with a married woman, Myrtle Wilson, and does not even bother to fully hide it from his wife. A dramatic confrontation ensues, with Gatsby pressuring Daisy to leave Tom, and Tom pressuring Daisy to stay with him. Daisy is distraught, and before anything can be resolved, she and Gatsby leave. The story ends tragically, with Daisy running Myrtle over in Gatsby’s car. Under the impression that Gatsby was Myrtle’s killer, Mr. Wilson, her husband, shoots Gatsby before killing himself. Throughout it all, Gatsby maintains the belief that it is possible to relive the past, and that if he can just see Daisy again, things will be the same as they were before he and Daisy were separated. This is one of Gatsby’s biggest mistakes. He fails to realize the near impossibility, and even the danger of his decision to try to relive the past. Gatsby does not take into account the fact that circumstances change over time, which leads to his being unable to appreciate the present, and being unable to move on with his life.
As time passes, circumstances will inevitably change. One of the biggest mistakes that Gatsby makes is his assumption that things will have stayed exactly the same as they were when he first met Daisy. He wants “nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say ‘I never loved you’”(109). He does not take into account the possibility that Daisy might have actually loved Tom at one point. When Daisy first met Gatsby, she hadn’t had any serious relationships (like marriage). The fact that she has been married to someone else, and has built a whole life with that person (Tom) completely alters the dynamic of her relationship with Gatsby. He is no longer her sweetheart, he is the man she is preparing to leave her husband for. Gatsby totally disregards the fact that the past does in fact leave marks on the present. For example, Gatsby is surprised when he meets Daisy’s daughter, looking as though “he had [never] really believed in [her] existence before”(117). Gatsby is stuck in his own world, a world where he does not have to deal with the changes in his life, and in the lives of everyone else around him. He ignores the fact that Daisy has a child, because it would mean that the perfect relationship he has dreamt of for himself and Daisy would have to change. Gatsby wants Daisy to “[obliterate] four years” (109) of her life, just so that he and Daisy can have the fairytale romance that he has imagined for them. Gatsby might be able to pick up just where he and Daisy left off, but Daisy is not able to. Her life underwent huge changes in the four years after her relationship with Gatsby. In order for Gatsby and Daisy to have any sort of functional relationship, they would both need to acknowledge this fact, and be willing to move on from a different place than they left off. Gatsby’s inability to accept new circumstances contributes to his ultimate downfall. He does not find solutions for the problems facing him because he refuses to acknowledge that they exist.
Living in the past often leads to unrealistic expectations of the way things stand in reality. Gatsby loses himself in his recollections of the past, staring out at the green light on Daisy’s porch (21) and imagining their reunion. He expects everything to be the same as when he and Daisy were first together, so when reality hits him, it is very disappointing. Upon Daisy and Gatsby’s reunion, Nick observes that “there must have been moments…when Daisy tumbled short of [Gatsby’s] dreams - not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion”(95). Gatsby cannot quite appreciate the present because he has focused for so long on the events of his past. He sees his past relationship with Daisy as the ideal, and the relationship that they have later in the book does not seem as real or as good, because it is not the same as what they once had together. Gatsby “[wants] to recover something, some idea of himself, perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy”(110). He feels as though he can only return to his own ideal state if he goes back in time to when he loved Daisy, and she loved him, and nothing else mattered. In a sense, Gatsby cannot appreciate himself as he is, because he is constantly comparing himself with the Jay Gatsby of four years before. Gatsby wants to be with Daisy, but he also wants to be the man that Daisy fell in love with. He does not recognize the fact that Daisy might need something different from her partner than she did when they first met. As a result, he is constantly striving to be someone else, and he cannot be himself. Gatsby believes that “if he could once return to a certain starting place” (110) then everything would come back together. Gatsby focuses too much on trying to recreate something that existed in the past, instead of trying to appreciate what he has in the present. Gatsby is actually a pretty lucky person. He is extremely wealthy, and the woman that he loves still loves him, and is willing to leave her husband for him. If he truly appreciated all that he had, Gatsby would be able to create something new and better from it.
Gatsby is so wrapped up in the memory of his brief love with Daisy that he can’t move on with his life. Long before he ever met Daisy, Gatsby met Dan Cody, a wealthy industrialist whom he saved from a storm. When Gatsby looked up at Dan Cody’s yacht, he saw “all the beauty and glamour in the world” (100). He talked to Dan Cody and managed to get a job, the job that helped him attain his later success and great wealth. Gatsby reached this goal by focusing on the future. He might not have entirely appreciated his present circumstances, but he focused on how he could use what he had at the time to make a better life for himself. He saw what he wanted to become in Cody’s yacht, but he didn’t only fantasize about it. Later in his life, when he is again trying to move forward, this time with Daisy, he seems to have lost this ability. He can see what he wants, to be with Daisy, but he is so preoccupied with the idea that he has of Daisy, and of their relationship, that the drive he once possessed, the drive to forge a better future for himself is eclipsed by his illusions. Daisy says to him, “‘Oh, you want too much! … I love you now - isn’t that enough?’”(132) Gatsby cannot see that the possibility of a life with Daisy is dependant upon his focus on the future. Instead of focusing on how he and Daisy are going to make their relationship work in the face of so many obstacles, Gatsby concentrates only upon what he seems to perceive as Daisy’s infidelity to him. When Gatsby demands that Daisy tell Tom that she never loved him, he is, in a way, demanding that she give those years to him. He wants her to say that she loved him all of those years, and no one else. Gatsby’s demand is asking way too much of Daisy, and she is overwrought. All of the events that follow, Myrtle’s death, Tom’s deception of Wilson, Wilson’s murder of Gatsby and his own suicide, stem from Gatsby’s relentless obsession with a romanticized memory of a brief and shallow relationship. Gatsby is “borne back ceaselessly into the past” (180) by his own misconceptions of the situation. If he had just managed to reclaim the forward thinking mentality that made him so rich in the first place, he might have been able to save his own life, and the lives of others.
Gatsby’s ambitions to be reunited with Daisy are thwarted by his unrealistic expectations that their relationship can be exactly the same as it was four years before, when they first met and fell in love. He does not take into account the changes that have occurred in everyone’s lives over the years. Daisy is a very different person than she was when she fell for Gatsby and she has a husband and daughter. She needs something different from Gatsby, and he is not able to give it to her. Gatsby is unable to appreciate Daisy as she is, and even himself as he is, because he is always comparing to how things were before. Gatsby’s romanticization of his relationship with Daisy holds him back from any forward progress. In contrast to his earlier self, Gatsby does not see what he can do to achieve his goals. Gatsby’s insistence upon a life set firmly in the past inevitably leads to his downfall
Works Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Scribner, 1925
Science Fair Project - Secret Superpowers: Garlic Reveals Another Hidden Talent
This is the abstract for my 11th grade science fair project. In this project, I came up with my own original idea (using garlic to curb fungus growth in gray water) that was actually applicable to my real life. I was particularly proud of this project because I won 2nd place in the Plant Sciences category at the Alameda County Science and Engineering Fair.
I have not ever really viewed science as my strong suit, so this project was incredibly empowering for me, and helped me to stop underestimating myself.
The purpose of the experiment was to find out if garlic would be an effective method of combating the growth of fungus in grey water, as opposed to chemical antifungal agents. It was hypothesized that the garlic would be effective because of the organosulfur compound Ajoene in the garlic. Grey water was set aside in cups. It was split into a control group, a group with 1 clove of garlic, a group with two cloves of garlic, and a group with three cloves of garlic. The grey water was examined after one week for growth. The number of clumps of growth in each cup was counted. All cups containing garlic, no matter how many cloves, had no growth present whatsoever. The control group had an average of 5.11 clumps of growth in each cup. This showed that garlic did indeed have some effect on growth in grey water. However, this method is not necessarily practical, as it requires the use of many garlic cloves over time, and is gives off a pungent odor. A possible future solution could be making a titration of garlic juice. This could neutralize the odor problem, but future testing would be required to determine its effectiveness.
Modern World History Essay - The Undereducation of Women in Developing Countries and Its Impact on Lives and Futures
This is the end of year essay I wrote for my 11th grade Modern World History class. Our facilitator brought up the essay long before he assigned it, and mentioned that it was going to be a very long essay. I was dreading having to write the essay, expecting that it would be an incredibly boring and arduous assignment. When the time came to write the essay, however, I chose a topic that I was passionate about and dove into my research. I learned a great deal about my topic, and actually enjoyed thinking and writing about my issue.
I am most proud of my research for this essay. I had to search through many sources to find the ones that I needed, and I think that my research skills and my critical thinking skills grew a great deal in this assignment.
One of the major problems currently occurring in the world is the undereducation of women and girls. In many societies, women are undervalued, and poverty, violence, and early marriage force them to be kept out of school. This lack of education for women in developing countries is harmful both to the women themselves, and to the people around them, causing higher death rates of both mothers and children, and fewer ways out of poverty for many families.
Cause
According to a study by Melchiorre and Atkins, of the Right to Education Project (2011), gender norms and expectations are major factors in limiting women’s education. Women are solely expected to become wives and mothers, so many families do not see the point in educating their daughters. Academic Exchange (2014) states that this unwillingness is worsened by the fact that families often have to pay for books, uniforms, and teachers’ salaries. Franck Kuwonu, of Africa Exchange (2015) says that in many families, it is believed that chores are sufficient enough for girls to go on and take care of a family. Instead of receiving an education, girls are often married off at an early age (Melchiorre & Atkins, 2011). According to Quentin Wodon, of the World Bank (2014), about one third of girls in developing countries are married before age 18. Melchiorre and Atkins (2011) assert that in countries where the minimum age for marriage is lower than the end age for compulsory education, families who are unable to continue to pay for their daughters’ education may turn to early marriage to solve economic difficulties. These marriages result in the denial and abandonment of education, as girls are taken out of school to cater to their new families. 74 countries have no minimum age set for marriage, and 44 countries set a lower minimum age for girls than they do for boys. In countries where the minimum marriage age for girls is lower, they are at a greater risk of having their intellectual development impeded at an earlier age (Melchiorre & Atkins, 2011).
According to the Online Schools Center (2017), early marriage leads to early motherhood, another factor causing girls to be left out of school. A report by Girls Not Brides (2015) states that girls who are married young become pregnant and have children soon after being married. Girls in many countries are having children at 18 or 19 years of age (Online Schools Center, 2017). Every year in developing countries 1 in 5 girls under the age of 18 has a child (Wodon, 2014). According to an article by Lakshmi Sundaram of Girls Not Brides (2013), once girls have had children, it is almost impossible for those girls to go back to school. Their domestic responsibilities and their children simply leave them no time for studying.
Katja Iverson, CEO of Women Deliver (2016) states that violence is another factor that keeps girls out of school. Many girls experience violence on the way to or from school, or at school itself. In Zambia, 19 percent of women reported that they experienced sexual violence for the first time on the way to or from school, before the age of 18. In Tanzania, 23 percent of women between the ages of 13 and 24 reported experiencing at least one incidence of sexual violence on the way to or from school (Iverson, 2016). According to a study by the UNICEF Division of Data, Research, and Policy (2014), experiences of sexual violence are also common at school itself. In Kenya, one in five women and men (who had experienced sexual violence before the age of 18) between the ages of 18 and 24 reported that the first incident occurred at school. Children who experience violence are at a higher risk of dropping out of high school and college. In Ethiopia, exposure to violence at school reduced the school participation of girls and lowered their grades (UNICEF, 2014). Unwanted pregnancies due to rape (sometimes by male teachers) can cause families to pull their daughters out of school (Kuwonu, 2015).
Effect
The problem of undereducation is a pervasive one, and prospects for girls and young women are not good. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s Education For All Global Monitoring Report (2013), of all of the children not completing primary school, young women make up 58%. According to the Girl On Purpose Project (2017), of the 31 million girls out of primary school, 17 million are expected never to enter it.
The problem of undereducation is often more impactful to women than it is to men. According to the World Inequality Database on Education (2011), in 30 out of 120 countries, fewer than 90 women complete lower secondary school for every 100 men. There are approximately 4 million fewer boys than girls out of school (UNESCO, 2013). Poverty plays a big role in undereducation. Most poor girls do not have the opportunity to attend school. In ten countries, 9 out of 10 of the poorest girls have not completed primary school (World Inequality Database on Education, 2011).
Impact
Educating women has great benefits for their own health, and for their children’s health. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report (2013), educated women are less likely to die in childbirth. Educated women also have more power in the home to make sure that their children and themselves get the nutrition and resources that they need.
Education helps to narrow gender pay gaps and increases women’s prospects. For example, in Pakistan, women with a primary education earn 51% of what men earn, while women with a secondary education earn 70% of what men earn (UNESCO, 2013). According to PBS (2013), educated women earn up to 50% more than their uneducated counterparts. Women with an education are also more prepared for work and are more likely to find it (UNESCO, 2013).
Educating women helps to break the cycle of poverty and improves prospects for future generations (PBS, 2013). Educated women are more likely to make sure that their own children have access to proper education, helping to break the cycle of undereducation of women (UNESCO, 2013). According to PBS (2013), educated women reinvest 90% of their increased earnings in their families, thereby helping families to escape poverty and possibly allow future generations of girls to receive the education that they deserve.
Overpopulation is another factor that education can have a big impact on. Erika Gavenus, of the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and Biosphere (2014), overpopulation has many adverse effects, including starvation and environmental contamination. Josh Holder and Carla Kweifio-Okai, of the Guardian (2016) state that high fertility rates are one factor that causes overpopulation, and education can have a big effect on these rates. Educated women tend to have fewer children later on in their lives (UNESCO, 2013). For example, of women in Sub-Saharan Africa, those with no education have an average of 6.7 births, those with primary education have an average of 5.9 births, and those with secondary education have an average of 3.9 births (Holder & Kweifio-Okai, 2016).
Analysis
One of the main obstacles to solving the problem of women’s undereducation is the poverty that many families in developing countries face. They are unable to send their girls to school, because it is cheaper and more economically viable to groom their daughters to become brides. However, once a woman is educated, she can go a long way to lifting herself and her family out of poverty, and ensuring that her own children get the same opportunities. Educating one girl is a way to break the cycle of poverty.
One way to improve the situation for women around the world would be to make it easier for their families to send them to school, so that families do not need to resort to marrying off their daughters to save money. Helping families send their daughters to school, although costly at first, would be a way of keeping many, many people out of poverty.
There is also a shift in perception that needs to occur. Women need to be seen as valuable outside of the context of homemaking, and their potential needs to be recognized.
A lot of research has been done into the benefits of sending girls to school: they will help their children advance, they will be healthier, overpopulation will be curbed. No one seems to be making the point, however, that education should be a right. Giving women the opportunity for an education should not have to be justified, it should just be.
The fact that so many women are uneducated is tragic, not only for these women personally, but for the world. The women who go directly to married life without completing primary and secondary schooling represent a tremendous loss of potential for improvement of the world. They are just as capable of making invaluable contributions to society, but are never given the chance, because they are uneducated. Who knows where the world would be today if all of the women denied an education had gotten one?
Reflection
I chose this topic because I feel that it is an incredibly important one to learn and talk about. Education is something that people in the US and other developed countries completely take for granted, and even complain about at times. It is important to address the power of education, and to think about the people in the world who are not getting what they need in terms of their schooling. The solving of this problem could mean the resolution of many other problems that stem from it.
I also feel a very personal connection to this issue, being a girl who loves to learn. It is startling and dismaying to know that I have recieved an opportunity for an education just by virtue of where I was born. Education is a basic human right, and should be available to everyone, no matter what their gender, race, or economic status is.
I believe that it is the responsibility of everyone on the planet to work together to solve the world’s problems. Different issues require different people to work on solving them, of course, but I don’t think that there is a chance for problems to be solved without the participation of as many people as possible. I think that government has a huge responsibility in trying to make the world a better place, as well as holding people and corporations accountable for their actions. This works in reverse as well; people have a responsibility to be involved and hold their governments accountable. Citizens have to be vocal about important issues and make sure that they are remedied.
References
Academic Exchange. (2014). 15 Facts on Education in Developing Countries. Retrieved from https://academicexchange.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/15
-facts-on-education-in-developing-countries/
Global Education Monitoring Report. (2016). [Map illustration of gender equity in lower secondary completion rate]. World Inequality Database on Education. Retrieved from http://www.education-inequalities.org/
Girls Not Brides Mozambique, UNFPA, & UNICEF. (2015). Child Marriage and Adolescent Pregnancy in Mozambique: Causes and Impact. Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org.mz/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/EN_Statistical_Analysis_
Child_Marrige_Adolescent_Pregnancy_aw-Low-Res.pdf
The Girl on Purpose Project. (2017). Girls’ education: the facts. Retrieved from http://www.thegirlonpurposeproject.org/girls-education/
Holder, J., & Kweifio-Okai, C. (2016). Overpopulated or underdeveloped? The real story of population growth. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/datablog/2016/jun/28/over-
Populated-or-under-developed-real-story-population-growth
Iverson, K. (2016). For girls, success starts with safe schools. Retrieved from http://womendeliver.org/2016/for-girls-success-starts-with-safe-schools
Kuwonu, F. (2015). Millions of girls remain out of school. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/april-2015/millions-girls-remain-out-school
Melchiorre, A., & Atkins, E. (2011). At what age?... are school-children employed,
married, and taken to court? Retrieved from http://www.right-to-education.org/sites/right-to-education.org/files/resource-attachments/RTE_At_What_Age_Report_Annotated_Version_2011.pdf
Millennium Alliance for Humanity and Biosphere. (2014). [Graphic representation of statistics concerning the effect of overpopulation]. The Effect of Overpopulation on Public Health. Retrieved from http://mahb.stanford.edu/library-item/the-effect-of-overpopulation-on-public-health/
Online Schools Center. (2017). [Graphic representation of statistics concerning girls’ education]. Women’s Studies: Why Female Education Matters. Retrieved from http://www.onlineschoolscenter.com/womens-studies/
PBS. (2013). Why is it important to educate girls? Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/lessons_plans/important-educate-girls/
Sundaram, L. (2013). Students, not brides: why ending child marriage and advancing girls’ education must go hand in hand. Retrieved from http://www.girlsnotbrides.org/students-not-brides-why-ending-child-marriage-and-
improving-girls-education-must-go-hand-in-hand/
United Nations Children’s Fund. (2014). Hidden in plain sight. Retrieved from http://files.unicef.org/publications/files/Hidden_in_plain_sight_
statistical_analysis_EN_3_Sept_2014.pdf
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. (2013). [Visual representations of statistics concerning girls’ education]. Education For All Global Monitoring Report. Retrieved from http://en.unesco.org/gem-report/sites/gem-report/files/girls-factsheet-en.pdf
Wodon, Quentin. (2014). Eliminating Child Marriage to Boost Girls’ Education. Retrieved from http://blogs.worldbank.org/education/eliminating-child-marriage-boost-girls-education