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The Great Gatsby Videos 16 videos

The Great Gatsby Part 1: Course Introduction
30263 Views

It's the roaring 20s. A time of wealth, partying, and a huge inequality gap. Fun, fun, and, uh...not-so-fun. Hit play to discover more about the se...

The Great Gatsby Part 2: Glittering Eggs
43690 Views

East Egg: East coast, old money, and ponies. Maybe unicorns. Those snotty East Eggers won’t tell us anything. West Egg: West coast, new money, an...

The Great Gatsby Part 6: Eternal Graceless Circles
58414 Views

Gatsby’s a man who throws huge parties and still has zero friends. Maybe they’re all like...Tupperware parties or something. Check out the vide...

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The Great Gatsby Part 11: Elusive Rhythms 3694 Views


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Description:

How do you achieve wealth and popularity? Easy. Just become a bootlegger. Oh, hang on...alcohol is legal now? Hm. Perhaps obtaining an education is the next best thing, then. Start by Shmooping it up and watching this video!


Transcript

00:01

We speak student!

00:05

The Great Gatsby

00:07

Elusive Rhythms

00:09

a la Shmoop

00:14

What's the real story behind Jay Gatsby?

00:17

Yeah, so he started off in the Midwest.

00:20

The middle west, as Nick likes to say,

00:23

as James or Jimmy Gatz.

00:25

And then he decided that he wanted to

00:30

become something more. And he's taken

00:32

onto a yacht by a guy named Dan Cody.

00:36

[ uh-oh ]

00:38

And, through that experience, and kind of continues on

00:41

just starts this process of making money somehow. Hmm.

00:47

And we don't really know --

00:49

I think it's okay, not a spoiler at this point,

00:51

to say that we find out that he's a bootlegger.

00:55

Which means he's making alcohol when it's illegal.

00:58

But, yeah, so we kind of see this --

01:02

We get his story that he started out

01:04

from basically nothing

01:06

and had this idea that he wanted to become rich and successful.

01:09

And, well, here he is.

01:11

He's rich and successful,

01:13

but still not fulfilled.

01:15

And we almost feel sorry for him, right?

01:19

Because he's gotten everything he wanted

01:21

and he still doesn't have what he wanted.

01:23

And that makes us think that

01:24

even if he were to get Daisy in the end, too,

01:27

it wouldn't be what he wanted.

01:28

And he'd get Daisy and achieve that dream, but

01:31

it wouldn't really mean anything exactly.

01:33

[ gasp ]

01:36

[ whoop ]

01:38

What's the real story behind Jay Gatsby?

01:42

[ evil laugh ]

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