Great Gatsby-- Finished!

The first thing I'm going to say right now is that if you haven't yet finished the book, don't read this. I happened to have nothing else to do during study hall today, and decided to finish it. Anyway I was quite surprised by what happened in the end of the book.

When Myrtle Wilson gets hit by the yellow car, I knew right away that it was Gatsby's car that hit her. I figured he hit her on purpose because he was mad at Tom for saying that Daisy never loved Gatsby and she loved him, etc. However, what I didn't guess was that the person driving the car wasn't actually Gatsby, it was Daisy herself. Well then after reading that, my first reaction was that maybe Daisy had done it on purpose so that Tom wouldn't cheat on her anymore. But then I realized that probably wasn't the case, because Tom would cheat on her anyway. Not to mention, it wouldn't be fair of Daisy to get mad at Tom for cheating when she herself had been canoodling with Gatsby recently. Anyway, then as I read further I learned that Daisy hadn't meant to hit Myrtle. Myrtle had seen Tom driving the car earlier in the day, and so when she saw the car again she immediately assumed that it was Tom driving. She ran out into the road to talk to Tom, and was hit by Daisy.

The next few pages go on to talk about how crazy Mr. Wilson was going because of the fact that his wife was dead; basically his friends and neighbors stayed with him so that he wouldn't do anything crazy. Clearly they weren't too successful though, because he ran away and ended up at Gatsby's house. This is the part in the story where I got very confused. The book says that Gatsby and Nick and the butlers saw Mr. Wilson's body laying on the ground. It also says the Gatsby told Nick to talk to Meyer Wolfsheim (however you spell that) because he didn't want to be alone at a time like this. So what I though was that Mr. Wilson had come to Gatsby's house to kill him, but then Gatsby ended up killing Mr. Wilson. Well then to throw another loop into the story, Gatsby's dad shows up to attend his son's funeral. WHAT?! Needless to say, I was quite confused. Here I had been thinking that Mr. Wilson was dead because Nick talks about seeing his body on the lawn and talking to Gatsby in the days following. But then Gatsby's dad comes to his house to attend the funeral, and Nick starts calling Gatsby's friends and inviting them to the funeral. So what is it? Who died? I'm pretty certain at this point that Gatsby did die, but did Mr. Wilson also die? This has me so incredibly annoyed. Did Mr. Wilson shoot Gatsby and then shoot himself, thus the reason why Nick saw Wilson's body? But then if Gatsby is dead, why was Nick talking to him if he was dead? Not to mention, I found it a little humorous that no one showed up to Gatsby's funeral except for Nick, Gatsby's dad, the butlers, and the "owl-eyed man." Clearly something was messed up with Gatsby since no one showed up to his funeral.

Despite the fact that the end of the book left me very confused and slightly pissed off, I enjoyed the book overall. It was very descriptive, and I think it would be impossible not to find the writing in the book exceptional.

Minister's Black Veil

"The Minister's Black Veil" was a pretty interesting short story. It took me a while to get into the story and figure out what was going on, but after reading the note at the end of the story and talking about Handkerchief Moody it all started making sense. The connection to Handkerchief Moody and how he had murdered his friend on accident as a child caused me to start thinking deeper into the story of the "Minister's Black Veil". I wondered what Hooper had done in his past that caused him to suddenly start wearing the veil. Had he committed a crime or done something that made him feel extremely guilty-- thus he decided that it was too shameful for him to even show his face ever again? Or had his face suddenly disfigured and it was so ugly that he felt no one should see it? Also, what did he look like before he started wearing the veil? From what I could gather from the story, he hadn't always worn the veil, so wouldn't the people in the town know what he looked like and not be quite as nervous about it? What could happen in one night that would make him suddenly be afraid to ever see his face?

I especially liked how at the end of the story when the other pastor tries to take off Hooper's veil, Hooper acts very calm at first and says that he is going to let the pastor remove his veil, but then he freaks out and says "Never on Earth!" and won't let anyone see his face.

Also, when Hooper was drinking the wine at the wedding that he crashed and got a glimpse of his face; he spit out the wine and left. I found this to be very curious. Was his face that ugly or startling? Although this story was interesting, I still have numerous questions that I can't seem to get past.

Corporate Sponsorship

After doing the timed writing yesterday about the advantages and disadvantages of corporate sponsorship in high schools, it really got me thinking as to whether or not I ever really see it in any of the high schools I travel to for sports.

Thinking about it, I don't really remember seeing it in many schools. There's one school in the Rock Valley conference that I remember distinctly having some advertisements up around there school, and this was one of the poorer schools in our conference. I guess it makes sense though-- that school didn't have the funding to pay for things on their own, so they turned to large corporations and had them foot the bill instead of raising property taxes or whatever else they decide to do in order to bring in more funding. However, you'd think that since the school was receiving corporate sponsorship in addition to the other funding they receive from the government and property taxes it would have been a nicer school with better quality facilities... but it definitely was not a nice school. So where is all this money going? Obviously I don't know all the details about what the teachers' salaries are and what the expenses are for that school, but it just makes me curious as to how a school like that can be so crappy when ours is so nice? We are a public school too, so why is our school so much nicer than so many of the other public schools in our area?

It seems to me that if a school feels it necessary to contaminate their students' learning by placing advertisements up all around the school, they might as well put up advertisements for a good company that will actually give them enough money to fix some things and create a some what decent learning environment. Otherwise, what's the point? You're going to contaminate their learning, and still have a crappy school? Pointless.