Close Reading - The Great Gatsby

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." (180) After Gatsby's death, Nick starts to evaluate his neighbors life. This is the narrators final quote, and through the use of words and context, he tries to imply one final message. What I could infer from this quote, is that Nick feels that life is like a boat flowing against the hefty currents of the sea. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to reach your dreams there will be a "current" pushing you the opposite way, in a way displacing you towards your past. In this case, Gatsby is struggling against the current to reach the other side and refrain himself from his scarring past.

Close Reading: Coming Through Slaughter

"It looked as if Bolden had no notion he was not coming back when he left for Shell Beach. Webb took much more seriously than others of his profession sudden actions and off hand gestures. Always found them more dangerous, more determined. Also he had discovered that Bolden had never spoken of his past. To the people here he was a musician who arrived in the city at the age of twenty-two. Webb had known him since fifteen. He could easily be wiping out his past again in a casual gesture, contemptuous. Landscape suicide. So perhaps the only clue to Bolden's body was in Webb's brain. Sleeping in childhood stories and now thrown into the future like an arrow. To be finished when they grew up. What was Bolden's favorite story? Whose moment of terror did he want to witness, Webb thought as he began the third banana." Pg. 14 (in my edition).

In this text from the novel, the author gives the reader some clues about Bolden. When Webb is thinking to himself, the narrator says "He could easily be wiping out his past again in a casual gesture, contemptuous." as if suggesting Buddy is hiding something from his past. We also see the strong relationship that Webb and Buddy have, and how the close detective unrestfully searches for his friend. The reader now knows that they knew each other since their younger years, and we can infer that Webb is using his past knowledge of Bolden, such as his favorite childhood story, to find his missing friend.

Close Reading: Coming Through Slaughter

In page 6 of my copy of the novel, the author writes: "What he did too little of was sleep and what he did too much of was drink and many interpreted his later crack-up as a morality tale of a talent the debauched itself. But his life at this time had a fine and precise balance to it, with a careful allotment of hours. A barber, publisher of The Cricket, a cornet player, good husband and father, and an infamous man about town...Then he cut hair until 4, then walked home and slept with Nora till 8, the two of them loving each other when they woke. And after dinner leaving for the Masonic Hall or the Globe or wherever he was playing. Onto the stage."

I think its important to analyze characters from the beginning, just as we are getting to know them. So I decided to close read this paragraph, that so completely describes Buddy Bolden. The narrator tells us exactly what kind of a person Bolden is, a hard working, alcoholic, loving and devoted family member, and a great musician. This is what we can read from the text, but I think that if we analyze Buddy, we can see some trouble in his life. All the drinks, all the women, and so little sleep could deduce the reader into thinking Bolden has another side to him.