crows-secret-school-blog

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I wrote this poem with the power of spite and neurodivergency. this is an anti-love letter to a poet I'm forced to read about, so what is a bigger middle finger than using an artist's medium for hate mail. I am Arachne, strike me down Athena.

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who are you carl sandburg?

another "genius" of the pen?

the words I see in my english class put your name in my eyes and apathy in my mind

even now I write this

agressive but compliant

as the powers above force my brain in offending dirctions

so who are you carl sandburg?

and why should we care?

I see no reason to know your name,

and your picture is of an old man, hair as white as his skin

your poetry is silly and no point is seen.

intention, sure, commentary, yes, but the point is conspicuously absent.

maybe that's where the pretention goes instead

when I write this, you can't see my world

but this format is a middle finger to you specifically.

and my english teachers, but mostly you.

so who are you Carl Sandburg?

is your perspective worth the read?

when will your words reach my heart, and your stories peirce my soul?

or do my teachers not even know why they teach you?

that's who you are carl Sandburg, a name on a textbook page.

an influence of his time, who's bright mind dims with each person who forgets him.

soon you will be no more than a whisper of a time long past, one we can learn from but refuse to.

That's who you are Carl Sandburg.

a detail to be forgotten.

the world not looking back, and forgetting the things that were taught

but maybe you would be forgotten either way.

a name is unimportant to the scale of a lesson learned.

[crows-secret-school-blog]

Hello! I just finished an essay on the Great Gatsby, and I'm here to give it to you! Feel free to use it, I don't care all that much. You don't have to Credit me or anything either. The topic is on whether Nick Carraway is a reliable narrator or not, arguing that he isn't. Keep in mind that I wrote this in 3 days, and I used specifically "The Great Gatsby, The Authorized Text". Also, I turned it in on turnitin.com, so be wary.

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The book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is narrated in the 1st person by the main Character; Nick Carraway. However, there is some debate on whether or not what he is telling us is fact. One might say that he would be careful not to be biased, but this essay is going to convince you that Nick Carraway is, in fact, not a reliable narrator, whether he knows it or not. One way of knowing, is that he only knows what he lived and was told which makes the story incomplete, he was singularly relying on his own memory and perspective, and he’s clearly letting the lens of his grief blur his image of Gatsby.

The first point I am going to make has little to do with the story at all; Nick Carraway was part of the story. Everything we see or hear about in the story either happened to Nick, or was told to Nick. We know nothing about what happened while Nick wasn’t there unless it was told to him. On page 151, paragraph 4 (chapter 7), we see that Nick had ‘suddenly’ guessed that Daisy was the one driving the car, implying that he hadn’t known before that moment. “He broke off, and suddenly I guessed at the truth.” (151). If Nick hadn’t seen Gatsby in that moment and held a conversation, he might’ve thought that Gatsby killed Myrtle for his whole life. One other point where we would’ve missed big parts of the story is Page 152, paragraphs 2 & 3 (chapter 7). “ I came to a small rectangle of light which I guessed was the pantry window. The blind was drawn but I found a rift at the sill. […] He was talking intently across the table at her and in his earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her own.” (152). I am going to take this moment to bring up the fact that Nick is literally spying on his cousin in this quote. We would have no clue about what happened the rest of that night if Gatsby hadn’t interrupted Nick and asked him to peek into the Buchanan household. For example, If Nick had assumed that Daisy had gotten beat, without looking to see if it was true, we would be presented as fact that Daisy was beat.

The second point to be made, is that he is singularly relying on his own perspective in the story. Neither in the beginning nor the end do we hear that Nick ever asked Daisy, Jordan, or even Tom about what happened that summer. It seems the last conversation he had with Daisy was driving away from Myrtle's crime scene, and only before he met Gatsby, did he ever ask Jordan about him. He did have a brief conversation with Tom from page 186 paragraph 6 through page 188 paragraph 2, but he only asked him one thing: “what did you say to Wilson that afternoon?” (187), He didn’t ask his perspective, he asked for missing information that he already had a guess for. If he hadn’t met Tom, we would either not have that information and would have to guess, or we would hear Nick’s guess, regardless of if it was right or not.

The third point made is that he is letting his grief sway his opinion on the characters. He states he withholds judgement, but you can clearly see he still has opinions on the people he meets. When in grief, someone might look back in hindsight and see them differently. This story is told 100% after Nick goes back to the Midwest. “When I came back from the East last Autumn” (6) which means every time we hear about Gatsby, Nick could be seeing him different than as he was. “Gatsby turned out all right in the end” (6) is almost completely false. He died soon after his fight with Tom and Daisy, which was about him leading a woman into Adultery, he was still dealing with Wolfsheim, and who knows how many other “scandalous affairs”, but if someone in grief was looking back, they might see them through rose tinted glasses and say they turned out all right in the end, when they arguably ended up worse. Nick even brings this up on Page 6, paragraph 2 “Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction- Gatsby who represented everything for which I have unaffected scorn.” (6) why would Gatsby be exempt from his scorn, and only Gatsby when he states in the same sentence that he represented everything he hates? Because he’s in grief.

Now with these points stated, some might say that Nick is a reliable narrator because there were other people who died that could arguably be just as bad as Gatsby. Why would Nick feel sorrow enough to shift his view of Gatsby and not Myrtle or Wilson? Well, the answer to that is simple. He didn’t know them like he knew Gatsby. He only met Myrtle a few times at most, and Wilson even less. He also only saw the worst aspects of Myrtle, and Wilson’s reactions to them. He saw a woman, actively cheating on her husband with another womans, her greed and want for the things Tom could get her and being unashamed to be seen out in public with him. Adding that to the fact that Wilson was the one who killed Gatsby and you get a sad, disgusting image of the Wilsons. Not to mention that Nick was clearly the closest person Gatsby had, because Nick was, “the only one interested” (172). He was the one who planned the funeral and called people to tell them. He was much closer to Gatsby than to the Wilsons.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is narrated by the main character, Nick Carraway, who has now proven himself to be an unreliable narrator. He, as a part of the story, very clearly has a bias towards and against certain people based on his perspective, has an incomplete story due to only knowing his side, and in his grief and hindsight, he could be seeing Gatsby through rose-tinted glasses, all of which clearly indicate he is unreliable.

Fitzgerald, F. S., & Bruccoli, M. J. (1995). The Great Gatsby: The authorized text. Simon & Schuster Publishers.

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