Instructors’ Teaching Experience

The Great Gatbsy was a WONDERFUL book to teach for this course. Every semester without fail, whether they had read it before or not, students loved it. It is short, but the characters and the plot are complex, which makes for great literary discussions. There are also various movies to show alongside it, and tons of potential activities. [Victoria Sprow, victoria-sprow@uiowa.edu]

Classroom Strategies

Cover Analyses

There are over 20 different covers made for this novel, many of which are easy to find and interesting to examine. One great classroom activity can be to bring in some copies of these covers and discuss them as a class–for instance, what the covers reflect about deeper themes and characters in the novel. [Victoria Sprow, victoria-sprow@uiowa.edu]

Color Symbolism

Color is a big part of Gatsby, and it can be a lot of fun to consider what the colors might mean and how they might work to create interpretations. It’s easy to ask students to find examples from the text where colors are mentioned, and with those, it’s great fun to consider what these colors can mean. If you like you can even have them keep a color journal, keeping track of the colors as they appear. [Victoria Sprow, victoria-sprow@uiowa.edu]

Reviews Reviewed

It is fun to take students back to the original reviews that appeared for Gatsby, and you can have your students read these and compare them to their own experience of the novel. [Victoria Sprow, victoria-sprow@uiowa.edu]