Response To The Great Gatsby

“Material Without Being Real” Essay Response
The essay we read confused me, I didn’t get what photographs and pictorialists had to do with The Great Gatsby. I didn’t see the relevance of their views. Pictures may have small things to do with The Great Gatsby, but I don’t think there was enough to ramble on and on for nine pages. I feel as though by the end of the essay they weren’t even talking about The Great Gatsby at all, but photos and how they show the unseen. There were parts of the essay that did stick out to me. One that really made me think was, “appearances are not just deceiving: they are predetermined by prior appearances.” I don’t think they mean actually appearances necessarily, as more of the appearance of a person you’ve
I thought Nick was someone who was the same all the time, around any group of people. So this little phrase really made me think. Nick lives on West Egg, which is the poorer of the two Eggs, but he hangs out with the rich guys, such as Daisy, Tom, and Gatsby. Sometimes while reading the book I got the feeling that Nick was criticizing the richer people, like how Gatsby has parties all the time, he criticized their actions and their shallowness, but at the same time he was being shallow because he was criticizing them and hanging out with them on a regular basis. I just wonder why he would hang out with the richer folk when he criticizes them and thinks that they believe they’re better than everyone else? That doesn’t make sense, hang out with people who you don’t have to change for and you don’t think are lame. The way he talks of them when he’s narrating is different than the way he interacts with