ENGL 101 The Great American Dreamsby and Block Quotations Practice Discussion
1. Completely finish Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Great Gatsby (the books, obviously. Don’t you dare just watch the movies).
2. Write two paragraphs in which you analyze the way the American Dream is portrayed in The Great Gatsby.
How does Fitzgerald characterize the American Dream here?
How do the many different kinds of people in this story go about pursuing the Dream?
Is there one character in particular who completely embodies what the American Dream means in this text?
What’s the significance of what happens to each of the people who pursue the Dream?
What’s significant about who wins the Dream and gets to keep it in the end?
And how does the American Dream’s portrayal in Great Gatsby compare with its presence in Fear & Loathing?
2.English 101 Block Quotations Practice
Look, we all love block quotations. They take up so much space on the screen, and they also make it so much easier to fill up a page with somebody else’s writing helping us out that way.
But you all know to be wary of never relying on block quotations too much in your essays, mainly because your instructors can see right through this ruse and will grade you down for it.
You have to always balance your use of quotations: your own words that explain the significance of the quotation should take up AT LEAST the same amount of space that the quotation does.
And if you use too many block quotations, it looks way too suspicious.
So here’s what you need to do: practice breaking down block quotations into smaller pieces that you explain one piece at a time.
DIRECTIONS:
1. Choose any long passage from Fear and Loathing or Great Gatsby that would obviously have to be a block quotation if you used it in your essay.
2. Paste the whole passage of text into your reply here TWICE.
3. Leave the first copy of the passage of text intact. You’ll be editing the second copy below the first.
4. Try to break the long passage of text down into at least four smaller quotations that you can explain the significance of step-by-step. Go for five or six smaller quotations, if you’re up to it.
5. Really go into detail with your explanations of how each piece of the passage is significant. Explain the HELL out of it.
Write like I need you to give me all the help you possibly can to follow what you’re saying. Never take it for granted that the quote speaks for itself.
Never assume I’ll automatically see the same things in it that you did. Put it all into undeniable words for me.
6. Notice how much more space it takes up than if you’d left it as a regular block quotation? It’s a win-win situation when you do it this way!
Important: You always need to put the authors name in every sentence that has a quotation.
If you mentioned the authors name in the part of your sentence thats connected to the quote, then you dont need to put it in the parentheses.
But if you introduced/explained the quote and referred to the author as he/she, then you need to put the authors name in the parentheses.
Example:
In his article, Tobi Adenugba says, Dinosaurs will return for vengeance (2). He goes on to state, Humans definitely deserve it (Adenugba 3).
3. English 101 Fearing & Loathing the American Dream
DIRECTIONS:
1. Completely finish Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Great Gatsby (the books, obviously. Don’t you dare just watch the movies).
2. Write two paragraphs in which you analyze the way the American Dream is portrayed in this book. How does Thompson treat the idea of the American Dream here?
How do the many different kinds of people in this text go about pursuing the Dream?
What’s the significance of where and how the two main characters finally “find” the American Dream in Part Two, chapter 9? And how does the American Dream’s portrayal in Fear & Loathing compare with its nameless presence in Great Gatsby?
Hint: address the numerous mentions of Horatio Alger in the text and what those mean. I vetted the wiki article on Alger, so read through it here (Links to an external site.) if you dont know who he is.
