Tuesday, February 7, 2017

is gatsby a mystery? is gatsby a mystery?

The first question: Is Jay Gatsby a mystery?  On one hand, he's out in the open-- everyone goes to his house, everyone recognizes his car.  On the other, what does anyone really know about him?

The second question: Is The Great Gatsby a mystery?  On one hand, it's not a police procedural or the story of solving a crime.  One the other, aren't we following Nick as he's handed clues about why people are doing what they're doing?  Does that make this a "whydoneit" instead of a "whodunit"?  [Hey. Not so fast. Click that link.]

Please comment to this post with your thoughts on both questions.

33 comments:

  1. well in my opinion Gatspy is mysterious because people do recognize him but they know nothing about him. Like us with some teachers we see them for a long time and we are able to recognize them if we see them but yet we know almost nothing about their personal lives.

    The Great Gatspy is a mysterious book for the fact that it doesn't just tell us things right away its written in a way so that we have to think about whats going on and gives us clues to connect in order to figure something out.

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    1. Cesar, you're awesome. You posted this hours before your class meets, your ideas are great, and whether you did it on purpose or not, making Gatsby into Gatspy made me think of "spy" :)

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  2. I saw it while I was reading over it but I decided to leave it since we are talking about being "mysterious"

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  3. Jay Gatsby is indeed mysterious, hence the rumors floating around about "He's second cousin to the Devil" or "He's the Nephew of Kaiser Wilhelm" and "He was a German Spy during the War" etc. Not much is known about him, and even Nick didn't realize he served with Gatsby during the Great War.

    The Book itself is a mystery, as it doesn't seem to be following any specific Genre of Story, it's just a narrative of some guy in New York who all of the Sudden ends up in my Least favorite County Supervisor. Perhaps we'll learn more about these two things as our adventure progresses.

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  4. For my opinion i think gatsby it's a mystery because he invites many people to his partys but when everybody leaves he stays by him self and don't even know why, is it that he doesnt have any family or people just don't know him but his there , what is it?

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  6. Jay Gatsby is really mysterious, people see him as a wealthy person because of his house and car etc. but what makes him mysterious is that he's not so opened with anyone. In reality he's lonely.
    The Great Gatsby is a mysterious book itself because it gives you clues about everyone and everything. It doesn't explain to you who everyone is right away, the further you get into the book the more you find out of the person, why they are how they are, and why they did what they did.

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  7. Gatsby is mysterious and yet everybody knows him and his crazy parties. Nicks the only one who knows about him.

    I wouldn't call the great gatsby a mystery. I wouldn't categorize it into 1 genre. I feel like a great novel like this just falls into the classic genre without really having one.






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  8. Gatsby's known by everyone, he's always throwing huge parties but people don't know he personally. Nick may be the only person that really knows Gatsby. I believe the novel itself is a mystery since we don't know much about it.

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  9. Instead of looking who the character is like Nick in the Great Gatsby it instead tells us why he's living like he is in the book and why he is hanging out with Jordan. Does he love her or not or as a friend, even Nick doesn't know if he should love her.

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  10. I think that Jay Gatsby is mystery because he invites people to his so they can party, but the people don't even know him very much. For Nick, he knows who is Jay Gatsby.

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  11. Gasby is really mysterious we here people saying rummor about him but he doesnt say much and when he does say something it very little

    The book it self is mysterious because it only say little things at a time to make us want to read on and you never really know what might be said or done

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  12. Gasby is really mysterious we here people saying rummor about him but he doesnt say much and when he does say something it very little

    The book it self is mysterious because it only say little things at a time to make us want to read on and you never really know what might be said or done

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  13. Gatsby is a mysterious man as we know through the story. There's rumors of him said by people. Gatsby doesn't really talk to a lot of people , he's hardly in his parties. Even though people go to his house and see everything he owns, Gatsby remains a mystery and even Nick can't figure him out.
    The book is also a mystery because it doesn't give us specific information about the characters. It's giving us clues to keep us digging through the story.

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  14. Gatsby is a mysterious man well because people go over his house for parties. But no one actually know him just nick. He does tells him everything about him. In parties, people just talk rumors about him and not know who Gatsby is.
    The Great Gatsby is mysterious because it doesn't give you information right away, you have to keep looking for clues to get more about the book

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  15. I believe that Gatsby is mysterious to the people around him on his personal business because they don't know how he acts with people so people become curious about him.

    For this story, I would say that this book is a mystery book because we get details on things that people might not see first glance when they read a part of the passage.

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  16. Yes gatsby is a mysterious man he's always showing everyone what he has like his house and car, but he never really shows who he really is or what happened in his past.

    The great gatsby is mysterious because it never tells us what's really going on it only gives us clues and with that we have to think about it and figure it out what the book is really trying to tell us.

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  17. Gatsby is mysterious, it was pretty self explained when no one recognized or truly knew who he was even in his own party. The people in NY may recognize him, but they do know him as a person so, I'm pretty curious on a lot of things the novel is mysterious as well.

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  18. Gatsby is a mysterious person , it's crazy how he is out there but no one truly knows him or what he has been through or look like too from all the parties he has had.

    The Great Gatsby novel is mysterious as well because it's very about the 1920's and my point is none of us were born so we don't know as much that is like a mysterious time if you know what I mean here haha and it gives us pecies of the information about the characters and it's like a puzzle.

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  19. I think that Jay Gatsby is a mystery because no one knows about him except Nick (as far as we know of).

    No one in the story really knows anything about him except that he throws parties and the random rumors that people make up about him.
    I think that we are following Nick as he finds the clues of why people are doing what they're doing.

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  20. I feel like Gatsby is a mystery because he tells a different story from his past compared to Jordan's. "The Great Gatsby" is also a mystery because each character doesn't know why the other characters do what they do except for us.

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  21. Yes Gatsby is a mysterious man because no one knows about his past except Nick. This book is a mysterious because we don't know much about it, I think it's just giving us clues.

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  22. I believe that Gatsby is mysterious because he doesn't really tell anyone what kind of person he is. He doesn't seem to open up very much he didn't even ask Nick if he could invite Daisy to his house or even tell Nick about his love for Daisy. Also he doesn't pour out everything about himself to Nick like if he gives pieces of information. He knew that people had assumptions and rumors about him it doesn't seem to bother him.

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  23. I think that Gatsby is a mystery because everyone just goes to his parties and have fun but no one knows who is gatsby actually or what he does with his life or anything else. Nick is the only one who knows a little about Gatsby's past when Gatsby told Nick when they were heading to lunch in New York. Also we can say that The Great Gatsby is a mystery because we still don't know about the story is about but it can be about Gatsby since his name is in the title.

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  24. I think Jay Gatsby is mysterious because a lot of people go to to his house but dont really know Jay other than the rumors.
    I think The Great Gatsby is a mystery because it gives us hints. The author doesnt tell us straight up about what he is trying to write so we got to figure it out sometimes.

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  25. I think Jay Gatsby is a mysterious person, he throws these lavish parties and just watched everyone. There are lots of rumors about him because no one knows anything about him.

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  26. Jay Gatsby is mysterious since he has a huge party and people hear a bunch of different stories about him but none of them even know how he likes like. The great gatsby is a msystery since the story has a lot of foreshadowing.

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  27. Jay Gatsby is a mysterious man because not a lot of people know him very well. He is just a watcher among people. People give stories about him about what he did in his early life. (rumors) He is a mysterious person who is a bystander that wants to be recognized.

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  28. Jay Gatsby is a mysterious man because he is talked about by everyone but yet no one knows who he is. And they are putting out all these rumors about him like they know who he is.
    This whole story is also a mystery to me because it all started about beliefs.

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  29. Jay gatsby is a mysterious man, he leaves people with the doubts, since everyone knows of who he is by his extravagant parties or the rumors that go around of where he comes from, but no one really knows him or sees him well except the main characters

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  30. Of course Gatsby is a mysterious guy just because people show up to his house doesn't mean they know who he is, even Nick doesn't even know when he was talking to him. And the rumors are basically all they really know about Gatsby.

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