End Of Gatsby

The following passage was used:

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning ——" (Before last paragraph of The Greats Gatsby)

In this paragraph, the green light could be thought as the light in a stop light. Green means go and then by conecting it with the future, it can be infered that it has to do with going after what you want. By saying that the future eludes us, it means that with every year that passesb by, our future becomes our present. So we never trully catch up to our future but it keeps going further away from us. Gatsby wanted his future to be with Daisy so he created a whole façade to get the green light on that future. What follows talks about always wanting to reach that future and how we strive everyday to be better, that way somehow our future feels closer. The ending line of this paragraph refers to us catching up to our future but when we reach it what we trully reach is death. This is why after the word¨"morning" there is "——", to make a pause, so the author can imply that we dont know what comes next, we just know we reached our future for now.

Deep Thinking While Eating Bananas

Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje
Close Reading page 22

For the following close reading this passage was used:

"It looked as if Bolden had no notion he was not coming back when he left for Shell Beach. Wenn took much more seriously than others in 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 at the city at the age of twenty two. Webb had known him since fifteen. He could just as 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 moments of terror did he want to witness, Webb thought as he began the third banana." (Coming Through Slaughter, pg 22)

“Bolden had no notion he was not coming back”
With the first sentence opening this paragraph, you could infer that Bolden planned things as he went along. He probably left Shell Beach and decided to go with what presented itself in his way and take a day a step at a time.

The narrator then explains that Webb thought of fast decisions like this “more dangerous, more determine”. Bolden probably decided to take these decision to escape something he was determined to avoid. Following this, the next sentence talks about Bolden never speaking of his past so maybe that rash and determined decision he took was taken to escape his past.

The next sentence then shows how others viewed him and then says that Webb had known him since fifteen making it easy to infer that the twenty two year old Bolden was not the same as the fifteen year old Bolden. In this quote you see the superficial idea people had of Bolden: “To the people here he was a musician who arrived at the city at the age of twenty two. Webb had known him since fifteen. He could just as easily be wiping out his past again in a casual gesture, contemptuous.”. Here it mentions his past again making it seem that if you didn’t know Bolden’s past, you didn’t understand him. With the word contemptuous, it just sounds as if Bolden didn’t have any care for his past life.

“Landscape suicide” must be referring to Bolden killing the superficial him that existed before along with all other superficial changes around him. The narrator then says “the only clue to Bolden’s body was in Webb’s brain” from which you could infer that Webb was one of the only people that knew about this change and he remembered the old Bolden.

“Sleeping in childhood stories and now thrown into the future like an arrow” must mean that Bolden had to grow up fast compared to Webb because he was “thrown” quicker into something other than childhood aka being an adult. In the next sentence it says that these childhood stories would be finished when they grew up which you could infer that while growing up, they never saw each other and didn’t finish the “story” they had started as children. It’s a chapter in their lives they weren’t together in.

Ending the paragraph, the quote, “What was Bolden’s favorite story? Who’s moment of terror did he want to witness…” , shows you how even if Webb had been with Bolden in the past, he didn’t really understand Bolden’s mind. He saw the change but didn’t really understand the outcome.

Overthinking

Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje
Close reading page 15

The following passage was used in this close reading:

"But his own mind was helpless against every moment´s headline.He did nothing but leap into the mass of changes and explore them and all the tiny facets so that eventually he was almost completly governed by fears of certainty. He distrusted it in anyone but Bora for there it went to the spine, and yet he attacked it again and again in her, cruelly, hating it, the sure lanes of the probable.Breaking chairs and windows glass doors in fury of her certain answers."(Coming Through Slaughter, pg 15)

In the first sentence you could infer that Bolden over thought everything. Instead of letting his thoughts think of what could happen he let them become absorbed by “the headline“ of ideas he was thinking of. Bolden over thinks everything that crosses his path as shown in this quote, “He did nothing but leap into the mass of changes and explore them and all the tiny facets so that eventually he was almost completely governed by fears of certainty.” From this quote you could infer that Bolden tried to understand everything to the fullest and in the end he was sure of so many things, he knew too much.

Usually when a person knows too much about something they start to not believe in other ideas and become closed off to the world. It can be thought of as paranoia to the unknown. The next sentences talk about how certainty became an enemy and he attacked it. Bolden felt he knew too much and lashed out on the world for the things he understood to be true. He envies Nora for being, in a sense, naive and lashes out in anger because he can’t understand how it is she keeps going on through life so uncertain.