Significant connections

“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”

This essay will be focused on the idea of illusion and how it links to the charters of 4 different texts. the texts consist of: The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald, Now You See Me directed by Louis Leterrier, The Lost Decade by F Scott Fitzgerald, and The Landlady by Roald Dahl. Each of these has a main character chosen for representing illusion, Jay Gatsby, how he has built a life that is really all an illusion just for a long lost love named Daisy; Dylan Rhodes, a man who fixed himself a new identity, just to get revenge with the one of the greatest magic ticks ever; Louis Trimble, the man who has been drunk for a decade and is shows it as an illusion that he has been away from civilization; and The Landlady, a psychopath woman that is an illusion of a harmless, hospitable old lady.

The best example of self deception is the life of Jay Gatsby. F Scott Fitzgerald is the author of The Great Gatsby. A novel telling the story of a successful young man living in West Egg, New York. James Gatz was raised on a small farm in North Dakota, he left home at the age of seventeen and changed his name jay Gatsby. At the age of twenty seven Gatsby fell in love with eighteen year old Daisy Fay. He loved her so much, that when he was called off to war he thought through just how he was going to end up having her. After leaving the army, Gatsby made his way to New York. He knew that he needed wealth and influence to have Daisy so that’s the life he built. “I don’t think she ever loved him.” Gatsby turned around from a window and looked at me challengingly.” Gatsby tells this to Nick in a way that almost seems to be self assurance. He wants to believe that Daisy doesn’t love her Husband Tom and only ever loved him. Gatsby has to keep telling himself every day that everything is alright. It helps him to keep his illusion alive. “I did, old sport,” he said automatically, “but I lost most of it in the big panic – the panic of the war.” This piece is the same, Gatsby replies to Nick, “automatically”. Showing that he is lying and that he has practiced that line before. Gatsby is man living so much of an illusion that everything he now does turns to self-deception. The name, “The Great Gatsby” even fools him as he is far from great. 

The film Now You See Me, directed by Louis Leterrier, is about 4 magicians, called the Four Horsemen. Led by a man named Atlas, they preform a stage trick in Las Vegas and have a bank robbed in France. Federal agent Dylan Rhodes suspects that they really did rob the bank and tries to accuses them for it. In this film Dylan Rhodes displays illusion, by pretending that he is someone else. The whole movie is centered round the idea of illusion in magic, and a common sentence the viewer hears is, “The more you think you see, the less you’ll actually notice.” This is said by Atlas multiple times as it is another thing for his views to think about while he tricks them. Dylan Rhodes isn’t really that focused on during the movie as the viewer knows of him as the, “cop”. A debunker, named Thaddeus Bradley, tries expose the horsemen’s tricks for his personal gain. Later on the horsemen rob a safe and leave the money in Thaddeus’ car, making everyone believe that he is the fifth horsemen and getting him thrown into jail. In jail Thaddeus is visited by Dylan. Bit by bit Dylan lets him put together the pieces, disappears and then reappears out side of Thaddeus’ cell. Turns out Dylan was the mastermind behind everything but doesn’t say why. The viewer can guess thought that Dylan is Lionel Shrike’s son. Lionel was a magician, who died in a escaping safe trick, the movie showed it in a way that the son had to be Dylan Rhodes. Why he changed his name or secreted himself, who knows. But like Gatsby he had a goal that was primarily focused on the past. He started living this illusion of someone else for a purpose not known yet, but as the viewer guesses it is all about revenge.

The Lost Decade by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a short story about a man in New York who has been drunk for 10 years, he displays the illusion of being away from civilization, when in a sense he has. “I’ve been in it — lots of times. But I’ve never seen it. And now it isn’t what I want to see. I wouldn’t ever be able to see it now.” Louis Trimble is meet at the offices of news-weekly by a man named Orrison Brown. Brown is instructed to show Trimble around town for a bit before letting him go, a “feeler” they called him. Orrison shows him the city while letting Trimble actually point out things. Every word that Trimble puts out, Brown grasps on to it trying to figure out who this man really is. “Orrison was sure he had his clue now, and with nice delicacy did not pursue it by a millimeter…” Finally Orrison hears something that gives a clue that Trimble had been drunk, for “ten years” where as he was actually at one of the restaurant’s “last May”.  Another part to the illusion that Trimble is putting off, is his image. “Orrison looked after him when he started out, half expecting him to turn into a bar. But there was nothing about him that suggested or ever had suggested drink.” This quote from Orrison Brown shows of what he thought of Louis Trimble, he never thought of him as the drunkard. This illusion is very similar to Dylan Rhodes in the film “Now You See Me”. Rhodes let everyone think that he had a hatred for the 4 horsemen. Even fooling Thaddeus Bradley the debunker, who thought he found Rhodes’ secret of being a famous magicians son, but didn’t realize that he was also the mastermind behind the organization called “the eye”.

The Landlady by Roald Dahl is another short story. This text is about an old lady that owns a bed and breakfast in London. Billy happens to stumble upon it and decides to get a room there. He is greeted by the Landlady, who doesn’t give her name. She gives off the illusion of a frail old lady in a nice old Bed and breakfast. After a lot of discussion Billy finds out that he is only the third person to come here, from what the log book says.  “Oh, I am, my dear, I am, of course I am. But the trouble is that I’m inclined to be just a teeny weeny bit choosy and particular – if you see what I mean.” This gives off a bit of a clue that she isn’t any old lady, but Billy still doesn’t pick up on it. “Left?” she said, arching her brows. “But my dear boy, he never left. He’s still here. Mr Temple is also here. They’re on the third floor, both of them together.” Here she tells us that the two other boys are still here on the third floor, and just before this she tells Billy that she stuffs all her animals. This is a great illusion relating to Gatsby as he, like the landlady gives off a persona of some that he clearly is not.

This report links four different texts on their ideas of illusion and describes each individual text itself.

 

 

 

unfamiliar text work

  1. Family Holiday, by S Daly, from Phenomena a short story
  2. tick
  3. Q1

a)The swing bridge would be the first dangerous event, and the drop off under the waves would be the second.

b) (i) A verbal language feature in this is onomatopoeia, “crashed”, “The waves crashed down and sucked everything away,”

(ii) The writer could be using onomatopoeia to give a depth and memory in to the text. “Crashed”, shows that the waves were strong and powerful, this could develop feelings that the writer is having towards this holiday. She could have been a bit scared or curious

 

a.  Identify 2 language features that develop the narrators feelings about the holiday. Give an example of each.

“The waves crashed down and sucked everything away,” the use of the word “sucked”, might be being used to describe how the holiday she is on sucks. She doesn’t like it and it feels like she has been dragged away on it and everything around her is crashing down.

“I could move.” Is a simple sentence used to show the intensity of the situation, suddenly she is frozen.

 

b. Discuss how your chosen language features along with others in the text, develop an emotional theme for the family holiday.

These two examples are used in the text to show how the holiday isn’t going well at all, from the writers perspective. She really doesn’t want to be here.

Speech/ The Illusion of time.

 

The Illusion of Time

“The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Albert Eisenstein said that once, now a quote stuck in time. Just to be clear I don’t think that time is an illusion, I think that way we chose to value our time and the power that we have given it, is a stubbornly persistent illusion. Time is relative, I’ve come to that conclusion, it flows in one direction, occasionally pulling things from the past along when it needs to. Like said before the power we as humans have given time is an Illusion, we have made this illusion, just like Gatsby did. He built a life that was a total illusion just for Daisy, but it was still a life based on your point of view.

In this day and age, our lives have so much more structure and direction, all built around the idea of time. We wake up to an alarm that forces our body to awaken. We quickly get ready for a day of events starting with us needing to be somewhere at sometime in the day. We look down at our clocks, and remember to eat lunch, dinner, and eventually go to sleep. That is our day right there. Some people might call this society’s structure. We are very unlike other species, and i hope you noticed that, see we have this idea of time and we let it control our lives. But all these other species don’t, they work when they need to and eat when they are hungry. Funny enough we did actually work like this, at one point in our lives, when we were children. As a child that is just how your life worked, you wake up when your body wants to, you eat when you’re hungry, play when you feel like it and eventually go to sleep when you feel tired. A child really doesn’t have that concept of time until a certain age when it all starts to kick in. To them each day is what it is, and there is no worry or concern about tomorrow or the day after.

Don’t think though that this is the perfect reality that we are missing out on, because it’s not. There is no such thing as perfect and reality is called a Utopia. Something fictional and made up. I know you all see time as valuable, but only when you want it to be. Obviously, then it becomes of value, because you desire it. To us as students in high school we quite often don’t value all of our time. We can value the minutes we are given for interval and lunch, like most people in life do, and those last couple minutes of the school day as they count down to the bell ringing, and the very short 4 hours of time we have for an internal to be due. But we don’t chose to value every other minute, hour or second. Why?

For me, it all comes back to how much value you place on the good big things, leaving only a small value on the smaller things.

 

 

I really like a quote I found during my speech research, it said, “Time is long but life is short.”

To break this down, time is to endless and complicated to understand so don’t waste your time thinking, or researching it, because life is to short to endure that hardship.

 

 

The Great Gatsby Character

“I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ventured. “You can’t repeat the past.”

“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!”

He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.

“I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,” he said, nodding determinedly. “She’ll see.”

 

Gatsby
Nick
Daisy

A novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, titled “The Great Gatsby” is set in the 1920’s and tells a story of a man, Jay Gatsby, still longingly searching for the love of a girl so lost to him. Although this seems to be the theme to the story, it is only the surface to everything. The Great Gatsby is strongly built on illusion and is alluded to the whole idea of “the American dream”. The two other characters this essay will be explaining are Nick Carraway and Daisy Buchanan.

Throughout the novel we are observing a man known to be The “Great” Gatsby, a man too good to be true. The idea of Gatsby being Great, is a false assumption. A man of mystery and wealth, who throws the most lavish parties for everyone is only the surface of lies yet to come. Jay Gatz or Gatsby as he’s known now, is a wealthy man that lived in his Gothic style mansion in West Egg, New York. The name “Gatsby”, was such a mystery to many folk. Only the who’s who, considered themselves to know this person. Telling the most far fetched stories of their host during his parties they attended. Gatsby was raised as the son of farmers in North Dakota. Even though his life started out this way he knew it could be so much more and he sought out to rewrite himself for the better.

 

Nick

 

Daisy

 

 

The Great Gatsby level 1 English MD

Nick Carraway:

Nick Carraway is a young man from Minnesota who, after being educated at Yale travels to New York to seek a life in the Bond business. He starts off the novel appealing to us as the perfect narrator, “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.” ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’ In consequence I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me…” Through the book, Nick meets new people that challenge this part of him. He tries to separate him self off from the pulling of the New York party life, that seems to pull apart the very world he tries to fit into. When introduced to Gatsby, Nick gets involved into his life and starts to realize how little of him everybody knows. Nick gets himself tangled up into Gatsby’s fantasy; that Daisy, Nick’s cousin, has always loved him and will leave her husband for him.

 

Gatsby:

Jay Gatsby is a man described greatly by Nick as, “the single most hopeful person I’ve ever met”. Gatsby is a successful, very wealthy young man, known for throwing the wildest parties over in him West Egg mansion. Jay Gatsby was soldier in WWI, a lieutenant that was stationed near to Daisy’s home town Louisville. After meeting each other a couple times, Daisy and Gatsby fell in love. Unfortunately Gatsby was called off to war and Daisy was left to marry Tom Buchanan, a young man of extreme wealth from an aristocratic family. Tom had the support of Daisy’s parents and could give her a rich lifestyle, so off Daisy went and married him. Once Nick learns that Gatsby isn’t who he says he is, Nick sees him as a deeply flawed man and dishonorable also. Gatsby is definitely a man who can be admired though. His desire to have a life with Daisy is so unrealistic but he still lets it lead him into a life of lie. Gatsby acquired his wealth through illegal means of organized crime; he distributed alcohol and traded in stolen securities.

 

Daisy Buchanan:

Daisy Buchanan is the pure, rich, innocent, white girl who during the novel seemed to be only stirring up trouble for Gatsby, and of course making trouble for her cousin Nick. Daisy isn’t all that bad though, she only wants to be with Tom, her husband, but knows deep down she still has feelings for her long lost love Jay Gatsby. After coming to one of Gatsby’s parties, Gatsby and her start to talk again. Although once Daisy and Gatsby walk off to talk more, Tom gets suspicious, knowing that they didn’t come to this party randomly. As said to describe Daisy, Fitzgerald used the color white. “The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed
up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both
in white and their dresses were rippling…” The reason that Fitzgerald has put Daisy and Jordan in white show innocence and purity. Another quote to describe the house Daisy and Tom lived in, “Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay.”  “The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass…”

New York City:

East Egg:

East Egg is the little nob

corrupt

West Egg: 

West Egg is were Gatsby and all the “New Money” live. Everyone that has  made their fortune from themselves is labeled that. Unfortunately, West Egg represents the American dream as corruption. The corrupt American dream, is about how all the new money, have made their fortune by illegal means.

Valley of Ashes:

The valley of ashes is a part of New York that lies between the city and the Eggs. The reason for this name, is that, this was where everyone dumped their ashes, therefore giving it the name valley of ashes. This setting is quite an important one, the but the valley of ashes represents a side of “The American dream”, as they all do, but this one represents the failed American dream. Where people, like George, are working for nothing, they are constantly controlled and pushed back by the top people. The valley of ashes is the consequence of being to greedy with wealth.

 

 

Creative writing

“Ring”

The bell goes, alerting everyone to hastily make their way to class.

“Bang”, doors swing open and a tidal wave of chatter and noise appear, quickly trying to nab a seat next to their best friends.

“Morning class,” says the gruff voice of potbelly teacher, sun reflecting off the top of his mirror like skull.

“Get out your books and we’ll begin; in silence.”

He keeps his gaze over the class trying to pick out the trouble makers, the ones that are going to attempt at best to make his life as difficult as possible. Not wanting to seem too paranoid he turns away, takes a seat at his desk and gives a sigh.

Minutes in and it still wasn’t silent, there were sniffles followed by whispers and the shuffling of papers followed by the tapping of keys. Every so often he’d catch a student with their head bowed too much and walk over to confiscate their brand new iPhone. Outside, the cheers of excitement from a P.e class cause more disruption in the room. Slowly but surely the noise starts to climb, higher and higher.

“Quiet!” yells the teacher, “there is meant to be silence in the classroom”.

……….

No ring, nobody rushing through the crowded hallways on a strict time frame. Doors, only to be pushed open by the cleaning lady’s trolley as she makes her way into the devastation. The desks stand in what are meant to be rows unmoved and undisturbed, she swings her gaze over the room picking out the parts that were going to be a problem, the trouble makers, the ones that will make her work as tiring as possible. She prepares to start cleaning, plugging in her Walkman and pushing on her headphones, she looks at the clock and begins. Moving from desk to desk she attacks, cleaning every little bit of grime. Apart from the occasional hum, and skiwrt! of the spray bottle, she worked in silence. Every so often she would take a glance through the windows as she wiped them down. Staring out into the darkness she’d remember the days when she played on a field, just like this one. Thinking of all the fun and games that took place, she returned back to work. Trailing off on her thoughts, the cleaning lady wondered what would be different if she had paid just a bit more attention, during those long school hours.