'The Great Gatsby' 12: Tom and Daisy and Myrtle's death

No 12 in a series of close analyses of key moments in The Great Gatsby. Here, Nick Carraway sneaks up to the Buchanans' house and observes Tom and Daisy, immediately after Myrtle Wilson's death.

Junior Cert essay: John Boyne and Eva Ibbotson

In her Junior Certificate book report, Eliza Hancock compared John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and Eva Ibbotson's Journey to the River Sea.

She writes:-

"They are two powerfully told books, that are similar in that they are both told through the eyes of an innocent child pointing out the flaws in the adult world, and highlighting the simplicity of childhood. A similar theme throughout each book is the sense of friendship and loyalty shown by both Bruno and Maia to their friends - Shmuel in Bruno’s case and Finn and Clovis in Maia’s. I found both these books incredibly gripping, especially The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, and in both cases I found the books nearly impossible to put down."

Read Eliza's full essay here.

'The Great Gatsby' 11: Myrtle Wilson's death

No 11 in a series of close analyses of key moments in The Great Gatsby. This looks at Myrtle Wilson's tragic and gruesome death.

'Open City' by Teju Cole

W.G. Sebald's death in a car crash in 2001 was a great loss to literature; he was in rich form, and we could have expected several really fine books in the years to come. We could hardly, however, expected that a literary descendant would have appeared in 2011 in the form of a part-Nigerian 'professional historian of Netherlandish art' writing about the perambulations of a part-Nigerian psychiatric doctor as he is wandering around the island of Manhattan.

But Sebald is the influence that Teju Cole's first novel Open City inevitably evokes. It's not that Cole doesn't have his own voice (through his narrator Julius) or that his book isn't an achieved work of art in its own right. It's just that some elements are inescapably 'Sebaldian': the melchancholy shimmer of its beautiful prose, the apparently freewheeling associations in the mind of the narrator, the fascination with loss and the layerings of personal, cultural and architectural history. 'Novel' also seems a crude label, as it does for The Rings of Saturn and Austerlitz. And the narrator himself is a tricky figure - in Sebald, often slipping behind veils of irony, in Open City an altogether more ambiguous character than his highly-educated surface at first suggests.

Open City has a broad canvas, despite its relatively modest length: ranging across New York, it also extends to Brussels and Nigeria, and - especially - it reaches down into histories of many kinds. Those histories may be cultural (the suppression of 9/11, the African Burial Ground near Wall Street, Ellis Island) or personal (Julius's forgotten childhood German, boarding school in Nigeria, the after-effects of a recently failed relationship). It is also terrific on the great city itself, evoking its neighbourhoods and changing atmospheres memorably.

As with Sebald, there is little overt plot here, but there is a story all right, and its climax is close to the end of the book when Julius has a shocking conversation with a childhood friend, not long after he is beaten up by teenage muggers. 

Darker realities are never far from the urbane surface of the narrative. In the final chapter, Julius attends a performance of Mahler's Das Leid von der Erde at the Carnegie Hall given by the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle. At this, the zenith of Western culture, Julius is hyperconscious of his colour in the 'all-white space'. His awareness of and knowledge about the piece is far beyond 95% of such an audience. When the concert is over, he leaves the Hall via an emergency exit. The door slams shut and he is marooned on a flimsy fire escape in 'a situation of unimprovable comedy' - except that suddenly, and only just in time, he realises he is in mortal danger, and might have plunged into nothingness.  This is just one in a series of brilliant scenes, some of them mere flashes, or 'small fates' as he calls his Lagos tweets.

Julius is both superbly observant and disastrously blind, capable of great tenderness (such as in his concern for an elderly gay Japanese professor near the end of his life) but also of moral and emotional cowardice.  He is a compelling narrator and this is a really fine book.

'The Great Gatsby' 10: Tom's triumph over Gatsby

No 10 in a series of close analyses of key moments in The Great Gatsby. This is the moment when it becomes clear that Daisy has chosen Tom over Gatsby.

'The Great Gatsby' 9: Gatsby's despair about Daisy

No 9 in a series of close analyses of key moments in The Great Gatsby. Here, Gatsby despairs of getting back the Daisy he knew in the past...

ShowMe for CESI

A quick demonstration for the CESI teachmeet in Portlaoise tonight of the ShowMe app for the iPad, which we're currently using for a series of close analyses of key moments in The Great Gatsby.  It can be used for all subjects and at all levels, but we can particularly recommend it as an annotating tool for text in English teaching.

'The Great Gatsby' 8: Tom and Daisy at Gatsby's party

No 8 in a series of close analyses of key moments in The Great Gatsby. Here, Tom and Daisy turn up at Gatsby's house for one of his parties.

'Unhooking the Moon' and 'Journey to the River Sea'

In her (excellent) Junior Certificate book report, Nicola Dalrymple has compared Unhooking the Moon by Gregory Hughes and Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson.

She writes:-

There were many differences in them but there were also many similarities. Doing  this book report really made me think about the books in greater detail then I  had before and recognize some of the effective skills the authors used and hopefully I will be able to take them into account when I’m writing. I would really recommend Unhooking the Moon to all readers especially to teenagers. For Journey to the River Sea I would recommend it to readers of all ages, really, children, adolescents and adults. I have simply enjoyed the entertainment I had out of both books and I will read books by the same authors again. I think Unhooking the Moon was a thriller, a true page turner and Journey to the River was an original fantasy that took me out of the St Columba’s library, out of the school, but somewhere completely unique and magical.  

Read the full essay here.

'The Great Gatsby' 7: Gatsby & Daisy meet again

No 7 in a series of close analyses of key moments in The Great Gatsby. This moment is from Chapter 5, when Nick is present at the scene when Daisy visits Gatsby's house.

'The Great Gatsby' 6: Nick's first meeting with Gatsby

No 6 in a series of close analyses of key moments in The Great Gatsby: this one looks at the moment when Nick Carraway meets Jay Gatsby for the first time (audio and video):-

Location of the 'Valley of Ashes'

Levi Asher has an interesting piece of literary detective work here on Literary Kicks. Using an online historical mashup map which shows New York City in 1924, he tracked down what he believes to be the location of the 'Valley of Ashes' in The Great Gatsby. Click here for our own ShowMe analysis of Nick Carraway's description of this desolate location.

Asher writes:

After spending many hours studying the map and carefully determining the exact coordinates represented in Fitzgerald's novel, I walked by the exact spots described in the passages above. I saw a small auto repair shop. I saw a couple of rundown coffee and fried-egg breakfast/lunch cafes, where the people who work in the nearby factory take their breaks. The main factory makes signs -- large mounted billboards, specialty plastic displays. It looked like this business had been there a long time, and I now believe (though I have not yet verified this, and am not sure exactly how to do so), that if F. Scott Fitzgerald had ever seen an actual sign for an eye doctor at this spot, it might not have been because the eye doctor was located nearby. Rather, the sign-maker might have been constructing the sign, or may have been displaying it to advertise his work.

'The Great Gatsby' 5: Gatsby's parties

No 5 in a series of close analyses of key moments in The Great Gatsby: this one is taken from the start of Chapter 3, and describes the extraordinary extravagance of the parties at Gatsby's mansion:

'The Great Gatsby' 4: Myrtle Wilson's apartment

No 4 in a series of close analyses of key moments in The Great Gatsby: here, Nick Carraway's comments on the drinking session in New York at Myrtle Wilson's apartment (audio and video):

Visual Writing Prompts

For English teachers: here is a list (it will be updated every now and then) of fine photographs and images which could be used fruitfully for writing prompts. Any more ideas? Do put them in the Comments section, or tweet them to @sccenglish.

(Above, 'Entertainers on the Aran Islands' from Imagebank, copyright Maxwell Photograph)

1. The Writing Prompts Tumblr blog by Luke Neff is an excellent source of ideas for writing, with lots of striking visual material, and well-designed text.  
2. Amazing, entertaining and often beautiful black and white photographs, collated by Matt Stopera. 
3. World Press Photo: press photos are often dynamic, interesting, and really good prompts. This is the best site of all (warning: some such photos can also be disturbing - check them out first).
4. Following which: every world press photo of the year from 1955 to 2011 (see 3).
5. Some of history's most famous photographs, in both original black and white, and colour.
6. The Guardian site is particularly strong in terms of photographs. If you have an iPad, download the superb free Eyewitness app, and project the images onto the board.
7. Library of Congress photographs of the Great Depression. Memorable if often depressing images.
8. The National Geographic photo of the day. The standard here is of course very high. Here's the Best of 2011.
9. The Wikimedia list of images of public domain images on the Web.
10. The Photoprompts tumblr.

'The Great Gatsby' 3: The Valley of Ashes

No 3 in a series of close analyses of key moments in The Great Gatsby: this one looks at Nick Carraway's description of the 'Valley of Ashes' at the start of Chapter 2.

Click here for an interesting article on the possible real location of the Valley.

'The Great Gatsby' 2: the Buchanan mansion

No 2 in a series of close analyses of key moments in The Great Gatsby: here, Nick visits for the first time the mansion of his cousin Daisy and her husband Tom Buchanan (audio commentary).

'The Great Gatsby 1': Gatsby's mansion

The first of a series of analyses of key moments in The Great Gatsby, being studied as part of our Leaving Certificate comparative course. This one examines Nick Carraway's first description of Jay Gatsby's mansion (audio commentary).