“They’ve done it before and they did it tonight and they’ll do it again and when they do it, it seems that only children weep.”. The act of aging lies not in the number of years to your name but in the variety of your experience and how your perspective is affected by it. At […]

Miss Stephanie – 60 “What happened?”…”Mr Radley shot a Negro in his collard patch.” “Oh, did he hit him?” “No…Shot in the air. Scared him pale though. Says if anyone see a white nigger around, that’s the one…” Atticus – 84 “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we began is no reason […]

What is it to be white? What does it mean – a question I have rarely asked myself. From the beginning, when you are born and you become the eyes of the world for the very first time, you see colours. You see faces. You see difference. But in that difference, is beauty, it is […]

Hope is a matter of unwavering perseverance. It is the warm glow of optimism that exists still when all other lights have dimmed or simply point in an uncertain direction. The remarkable power of hope is what humans use to escape the idea that their reality is forever. It is a beautiful thing, a pure […]

The nature of time is infinite, it is ever-present and forever moving in its perpetual course. It is not a tangible thing, while we as humans cannot grasp time in our hands, it is something that occurs undoubtably.  A constant flow of measured existence; nothing and no one, despite what we feel or wish can […]

What is time? “The indefinite continued progress of existence and events that occur in apparently irreversible succession.” It’s a perspective, a measurement. It comes and goes, gives and takes, it passes. It is an experience. Sometimes invisible but sometimes, utterly distinct.  May 25th 1968 James Hunter Shotwell was killed in action by enemy fire near […]

Love Interest of the Main Character Judy Jones, in Winter Dreams, has a luminous, desirable presence, her physicality is alluring and “arrestingly beautiful”. Men are drawn to her image and presence, however they are unaware of what she is truly feeling and thinking, it is irrelevant to them because they are enchanted by her appearance […]

“Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within.” Society and humanity have a proclivity to fabricate and present to the world a false version or image of themselves. F. Scott Fitzgerald reveals and critiques society’s inclination to present false images and illusions through his writing. He skillfully manipulates his language to do so, using allusion, […]

An important setting that Fitzgerald uses to illustrate an aspect of the American Dream, is the Valley of Ashes. This “desolate area of land” lies between West Egg and New York City, it’s inhabitants are people who work with a “transcendent effort” but despite this, will never gain the prosperity that reflects the immensity of […]

Fitzgerald has a very poetic way of presenting language. He uses the same devices consistently throughout his writing. Select three passages from the book (about a paragraph or two in length) that we have NOT annotated as a class. Annotate these passages and identify the language features that Fitzgerald uses. Explain the effect of these […]