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Apply two of the schools/approaches of literary criticism (New criticism, psychoanalytic, mythological, feminist, postcolonial) to a literary text...

If we use The Great Gatsby as our text of choice, we could examine it through both a New Critical and a feminist lens.


A New Critical reading aims at finding unities in a text and employs the tools of close reading we typically learn in high school, with a focus on plot, theme, setting, characterization, symbols, metaphors and repeated patterns. In Gatsby, we see the color yellow associated with money, and more particularly with Gatsby,...

If we use The Great Gatsby as our text of choice, we could examine it through both a New Critical and a feminist lens.


A New Critical reading aims at finding unities in a text and employs the tools of close reading we typically learn in high school, with a focus on plot, theme, setting, characterization, symbols, metaphors and repeated patterns. In Gatsby, we see the color yellow associated with money, and more particularly with Gatsby, who, for example, drives a yellow car. Green is another symbol in the novel, representing desire: the green light at the end of the pier represents Gatsby's yearning for Daisy. What about clocks: do they symbolize Gatsby's desire to stop time? We might also look at name symbolism: does Nick Carraway get 'carried away' by Gatsby? Is Mr. McKee a 'key' to the novel? 


A feminist reading would examine how women are portrayed in the novel. How have gender roles limited Daisy? Would she be a different person if she had had opportunities other than marriage? Why does she hope her daughter will be a beautiful "fool?" What about Jordan? Is she forced into deceptions to live her atypical, androgynous life? What can we say of Myrtle? Is she trapped in a mindset that sees sex with a wealthy man as her only "career" path? Whether conscious or not on Fitzgerald's part, it's difficult not to read the novel as a critique of the constraints still put on women in the newly liberated 1920s. 

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