What is Gatsby even about?

 The past week while we’ve been reading Gatsby, everything always felt so deep and complicated. While I was reading at home, I’d often have to reread some parts and check over things on the internet just to make sure I interpreted a detail the right way. After all that, I’d still get a 2 out of 4 on the Gatsby quiz because I forgot something.

In class, we brought up the idea of how Fitzgerald’s purpose for writing The Great Gatsby was to critique the “American Dream” and bring up how people behaved back then, but once we put this into a skit form, it felt so surreal. By converting everything into modern-day slang, adding our own slight personal touches, and acting it out, The Great Gatsby went from being the most sophisticated thing to comedic and almost a little dumb. For example, no way some guy worked insanely hard to get super rich, buy a house across the river from her to stalk her, and throw lavish parties that cost loads of money, just for a girl he met five years ago to notice him again. Also, after the fact that she’s married now and has a kid.

Acting out the specific scenes made it even funnier but honestly brought out Fitzgerald’s ideas of critiquing that era and the “American Dream.” Like the scene where Gatsby and Tom fight over Daisy sounded like something that would come out of a 2015 Disney Channel show. I think the funniest scene to act out was Daisy just running over Myrtle. No hesitation, she just kept going without even a look back at her. But it was the perfect example to show how the rich of that time kept moving forward toward the American Dream without ever looking back at the negative things they were doing.

However, not only was our group able to understand the ideas of Fitzgerald better through the skit, old ideas we learned in class were brought back. After our group spent a long, hard day on FaceTime for 3 hours the night before, we crafted the most immaculate and perfect representation of Gatsby known to mankind. Due to this stellar performance, we almost unanimously won the vote for the best skit. After all that, you’d think we would deserve a prize, right? Mrs. Valentino thought so too and promised us extra credit just to take it away from us moments after. Which is why, as a group, we will be CIVILY DISOBEYING for our extra credit.