I love Fitzgerald for the lyrical beauty of his words.  Almost no writer writing in the English language has ever composed sentences with such gorgeousness as Fitzgerald.  He is near unparalleled.  Being a master, of course, that beauty which oozes from every syllable of his writing echoes the Romantic themes of The Great Gatsby. 
    There is magic in the pages of the novel.  Let it transfix you. I have heard tell that a high school teacher or two has asked her class whether Jay Gatsby is a moral man.  If you must answer such a question, the answer is neither yes nor no.  You know why.  "Morality" shifts back and forth during the decade of decadence within which Gatsby, Daisy, Jordan, Tom and Nick live.  Morality, regardless of era, is a slippery concept.  The carelessness of the Buchanans is juxtaposed against the earnestness (note:  not carelessness) with which Gatsby goes about amassing his wealth.  He does it to enter society.  He does it with intensity.  Gatsby becomes wealthy to recapture love, innocence and youth.  Daisy and Tom are wealthy almost by accident.  Although, it can be convincingly argued that Daisy becomes wealthy out of necessity.  This reading would be in accordance with the image of woman succumbing to fragility that is a constant in the literature of Fitzgerald.  That is not to say that Fitzgerald was misogynistic or sexist.  Quite the contrary -- dealing with the erratic behaviors of his own wife, Zelda, he was in awe of, slightly afraid of, and constantly committed to protecting, the woman of fragile means.  (I use "means" intentionally.  Means refers to mental faculties, social domination, and poverty, all at once).
    And so what of Gatsby as an immoral Modernist?  Although it is strongly suggested in the novel that Gatsby's wealth was acquired through illicit means gained through complicity with shady figures, such as Meyer Wolfsheim, we do not ever really get to specifically understand where Gatsby obtained all of his money.  This is purposeful.  It is purposeful because it attributes to the magic surrounding his image.  It underlies the significance of his American way of following the Puritan work ethic, sprinkled with the conflicting American propensity for materialism and self absorption, in order to obtain a Benjamin Franklin plotted identity.  To call Gatsby immoral is to say America is immoral.  Of course, Fitzgerald does think America can be immoral.  However, he does not think that it is the Gatsbys of the world who render it immoral.  Rather, it is the desire to achieve thwarted by an opposing impulse of Americans to crush innocence in favor of self- fulfillment. 
     There is no way for Gatsby to ever attain the status of Daisy and Tom.  They are old money.  They play by different rules.  The game is, in fact, rigged in their favor from the start.  Gatsby does not understand this.  He proceeds from the proposition that he can succeed.  He can achieve whatever he desires through hard work and dedication.  Perhaps, he can achieve his desires by playing the system the way all of the players seem to be playing it.  That is, with numbered cards. 
    In any event, Tom and Daisy understand the playing field.  They understand the game and its consequence.  They just do not care who is hurt.  They do not understand the gravity of the death of Myrtle Wilson at Daisy's hands.  They do not even flinch at any repercussion that will inure to Gatsby. Gatsby does, in fact, care about something.  He cares about Daisy.  He cares about the purpose, the focus, his love for her gives him.  He understands nothing about his future until he falls in love with her.  He cannot fall out of love with her.  It is an innocence that transcends time and space. 
    Gatsby is unique, and Nick identifies him as such, at the same time as he decries the origins of Gatsby's wealth. If Jay Gatsby were a Modernist, he would understand his sins and haughtily absorb them into himself, in a declaration that they edified his being and led to his own redemption.  Fitzgerald cannot do that.  Fitzgerald is a Romantic, staring ever at the Grecian Urn and Nightingale problems posed by Keats.  Beauty is truth, but it is ephemeral.  It is ever out of reach.  There is no full self realization for Gatsby.  His whole self, his soul, his innocence, his striving to recreate himself into the ideal  that he feels is true beauty akin to God, collapses just as he does, in a pool on the eve of the fall, a victim of the bullet that signals the Valley of Ashes asserting itself into the lives of those who created it.
     Gatsby -- The Great Gatsby -- performs a disappearing act as the novel ends and we are introduced more to his alter ego, Gatz.  Just as Gatsby's image recedes from the social circles of Long Island upon Gatsby's death, however, Nick observes that Americans will always engage in Gatsby's tragic quest.  That is, to see truth, beauty and innocence, grab it fast and hard, and watch as it slips away.  It is a quest that repeats itself, never to be fully achieved, but always to be undergone.  Just as the Knights Templar rode off in search of the elusive Holy Grail.

      April’s finally here, which means two things: it’s  National Poetry Month—and spring! What better way to celebrate the season of all that’s flowery and fair than by dragging the most chaotic novel in the literary canon—Wuthering Heights—back into the classroom spotlight? Ah, Heathcliff! Toxicity with a traumatic “T.” Wuthering Heights isn’t a love story, people. It’s a tale of betrayal, revenge, and excellent planning. Let’s give credit where credit is due: our brooding, Byronic baddie is a master of the long game, systematically ruining lives without ever picking up a weapon.
     Emily Brontë’s writing is Gothic Romance at its finest. Her story spans three generations of love, loss, class struggle, and horrible characters making horrible choices. Her symbolism is as thick as the Yorkshire fog: weather mirrors emotions, houses reflect their inhabitants, and the moors seem to scream, “Abandon hope, all ye who wander here!” If nature had a warning label, it would be welded to a chain-link fence at the Heights.
     Heathcliff and Catherine are sardonic and codependent to the extreme. Their conversations drip with scorn, passion, and the kind of declarations you’d expect from people who’d welcome death rather than go to couple’s therapy. And the funny part? Heathcliff begins the novel as a rational (well, somewhat) character. Before the grave-digging and the real estate power plays, Heathcliff is our moral compass. He arrives as the “other”—possibly gypsy, possibly Irish, definitely unwanted. He suffers quietly, is repeatedly humiliated, and yet still manages to behave better than anyone else in the house. Nelly Dean is a two-faced gossip, the Lintons are whiny and entitled, Hindley is a shot glass full (see what I did there?) of toxic masculinity, and Catherine? Er, well... she marries Edgar for his money while famously spewing some insane nonsense about how she’s madly in love with Heathcliff: “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same..” Then she betrays him for a fancier house and a dolt of a sister-in-law who doesn’t know when to heed others’ advice. “Oh, Isabella—plot twist: I am the villain!"
   Happy flower picking, people! 🌸
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Try these class activities:

A. Create a “Which Heathcliff Are You?” quiz: the Lover, the Brooder, the Hellhound.

B. Write a 4-paragraph essay: How do Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange symbolize Heathcliff and Edgar’s love languages?

C. Choose a passage where Heathcliff is spiraling (well, that narrows it down to every scene he’s in) and create a Found Poem by our favorite anti-hero.
You know... one you honestly wouldn’t mind getting lost.

When reading The Scarlet Letter, don't overlook the crucial introductory section, "The Custom-House." Encourage your students to tackle the challenging prose and see how they rise to the occasion.

Some may wonder, "Why should I make my students read such challenging prose? Can’t it just be skipped?" Remember, it’s essential to engage advanced students too. By providing an outline and strategically pairing reading buddies, you might be surprised by how much your students can grasp.

I advocate for reading "The Custom-House" because it weaves together the central themes of The Scarlet Letter. The question you're asking is why Hawthorne wrote "The Custom House" as his introduction to The Scarlet Letter. It's a good question.  Hawthorne answers it for you. As Hawthorne relates, in the flowing music of his prose that I love so well, an author is compelled to find within his reading public some kindred spirit who will connect with what he has written.   However, authors are skittish about revealing too much of themselves.  Some parts of the human soul are not so eagerly revealed.

So we have The Scarlet Letter.  It is, as Hawthorne admits, his expiation for the sins of his forebears.  It is an unlikely attempt at salvation for his family name and his place of birth in that it is a work of literature that will, somehow, make public amends for the evil done in Salem.  Hawthorne is known as an author -- not as a man of commerce, government or business who would be looked upon more favorably in Hawthorne's native town by his ancestors and their society. The Scarlet Letter, the novel, is Hawthorne wearing his own red letter.  He wears it for his forefathers.  He also wears it to expose the sins that come from too close of a reliance upon commerce and custom.  

More provocatively, he wears the novel to force his own brandishing of his personal sins -- the sins that make him only half reluctant to reveal his true soul openly as a writer, as well as the sins that could lead him to either a rote literary existence or an overwhelming nostalgic yearning for the comfort of native soil. What of the officers of the Custom House?  What does Hawthorne feel about them?  Conflicted.  He becomes one of them, in a way, as he loses his ability to write and craft any writing of intellectual means when consumed with the practicalities of commerce.  And yet -- he cannot live as they do.  

Hawthorne aspires to exploration of the ideas that link humanity.  The Custom House officers do not and cannot so aspire.  However, as much as Hawthorne feels that the Custom House leads to evil and corruption, he understands that there is humanity to be revealed in the stories of the officers.  Hawthorne appears to be working out a resolution to the natural bonds that tether human beings to the lands and customs of their birth, but which must be snapped to ensure self reliance and human progress.  Salem's witch trials, one can extrapolate, were planted in the very earth of Salem by Hawthorne's (literal) ancestors.  Without the influence of the outside world and other customs from other places, and a resistance to the publication of contrary thought, those roots of the Puritans became long, invasive roots that led to destruction.

So it would appear that Hawthorne wrote "The Custom-House" for several purposes, all tied to his major themes.  He wrote it to engage the reader in the real life situation that inspired his writing of The Scarlet Letter.  He wrote it to expose his own potential lapses into sin and self involvement.  He wrote it so that we all remember that we all exist, partially, in a Custom House, ourselves.  We are our ancestors' descendants and we are, as well, our own escape from their (and our) ruin.

I Promise I’m tired and it's only November. I just finished handing back essays on “The Birthmark” that I assigned over three weeks ago, and I’m halfway through rewrites on Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman.”  Sound familiar? Wait for it. I still have group projects to grade, and we’re eight days away from the end of the first quarter.

I won’t lie: I rewatched the last two episodes of season two's Interview with the Vampire last night when I could have been tackling those piles of papers. I’m a sucker for Sam Reid’s Lestat. Get the joke? But seriously, when is enough enough? I should be allowed to unwind.

The first few months of a new school year are always a little bit difficult for me. I’m configuring seating arrangements, color coordinating my class files, and learning students' names.  This year, I'm not teaching juniors but all sophomores, so the bright, curious faces are new to me. Honestly, I believe a few of them in my honors classes may actually be more well-read than I am. American literature is not my thing; I’m Brit lit born and bred. 

In the summer, life felt much easier. I had my daily rituals. I exercised every day, ate healthy, and bicycled in the park. This morning, I packed a hard-boiled egg and a rather dry turkey sandwich in my lunch box. Then, I rushed out the door, shoes in one hand, bag in the other, and a chocolate chunk cookie sticking out of my mouth. My lunch, you ask? I ate my enticing lunch during 7th period while reviewing college essays for my last year’s juniors. “Can you take a looook puleeese, Mrs. Hernandez?” Sure. In 42 minutes, one done. Not the most relaxing meal.  

Something has to change. So, I promise myself that I will hide for one period in an empty classroom to mark papers, allowing me to take half an hour at home to work out with Lucy Wyndham-Read, my personal YouTube trainer. Oh, and I will get to bed by 9:30 p.m. each weeknight.These are my goals for the school year. Check in with me in a couple of months to see how I’m doing. In the meantime, I have to shove these fries from the cafeteria down my throat; I’ve got students coming for extra help!