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Playlist The Great Gatsby: Shmoopversations 16 videos

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The Great Gatsby Part 1: Course Introduction
30241 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...

1
The Great Gatsby Part 2: Glittering Eggs
43682 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...

2
The Great Gatsby Part 3: Dinner with the Buchanans
39536 Views

Wait. Tom and Daisy have a kid? Huh. ...Did anyone tell them that?

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The Great Gatsby Part 8: Old Sport 74437 Views


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Description:

Finally, the moment we’ve all been waiting for...Gatsby is kind-of sort-of revealing his origin story! ...Wait, seriously? That’s what we’ve all been waiting for? We all need to get out more.


Transcript

00:01

We speak student!

00:05

The Great Gatsby

00:07

Old Sport

00:09

a la Shmoop

00:14

What do we learn about Gatsby from his conversations with Nick?

00:19

Sure, yeah. Gatsby calls Nick "old sport,"

00:21

which is another one of these things where it's like

00:23

he's so clearly putting this on.

00:26

That's like something that the old wealth would say.

00:28

"Old sport."

00:28

[ elderly man groaning ]

00:30

So we get Gatsby's backstory.

00:33

He tells it himself for the first time.

00:36

We've had tons of rumors and gossip,

00:38

and he finally kind of tells his story.

00:40

We have to remember to take it with a grain of salt,

00:43

because not only is this Gatsby telling the story,

00:45

but then it's Nick telling Gatsby's story.

00:47

So he tells a story about how he

00:51

fought in the war.

00:53

How he went to Oxford.

00:56

He pulls out a medal

00:58

at one point, from the war,

00:59

like a medal of honor type thing to kind of prove it.

01:01

And we go, "Oh.

01:03

Maybe he is telling the truth.

01:04

He has proof here."

01:06

But all the while, we're like,

01:07

"This can't be real,

01:09

because if all these things were true about him,

01:12

why is he on West Egg?

01:14

Why is there this facade?" But he's telling his story

01:18

and he -- So he says he went to Oxford.

01:20

He says he

01:22

inherited some money

01:24

and that's how he got his wealth.

01:26

But there are some holes in his story for sure.

01:28

But it's cool because this is the first time that we actually get

01:31

Gatsby's story from Gatsby.

01:33

And it gives us another take on the man.

01:36

And we can see that even

01:38

when he's telling his own story, he's still not

01:40

being completely real.

01:43

And that's kind of one of the many ways we look at it and we say,

01:46

"Okay, we're getting this story from the source,

01:48

but is the source reliable? No. No it's not."

01:52

[ whoop ]

01:53

What do we learn about Gatsby from his conversations with Nick?

02:00

Oh, yeah.

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