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Playlist The Great Gatsby: Shmoopversations 16 videos
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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?
Full Transcript
- 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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