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The night our book club debate on *The Great Gatsby* turned into a shouting match
We were meeting at Lisa's living room last Tuesday, and someone brought up whether Gatsby was actually a tragic hero or just a rich creep. I argued he was a wannabe who wasted everything on a girl who never really cared. Then Karen jumped in and claimed Daisy was the real victim, and for a solid 15 minutes people were practically yelling over each other about who had the worse moral compass. By the time we got to chapter 7, two members had their arms crossed and wouldn't even look at each other. I finally told everyone to take a breath and focus on Fitzgerald's writing style instead of taking sides. We ended up hitting a consensus that the green light symbol was more about greed than love, but only after I pulled out my marked up copy to show specific quotes. Has anyone else had a book debate get this heated over a character?
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stone.evan11d agoMost Upvoted
Man that thing about "two members had their arms crossed and wouldn't even look at each other" really hit close to home. Me and my buddy Frank got into it so bad over whether The Catcher in the Rye was actually a good book or just whiny that we didn't talk for two weeks. You handled it way better than I did though, getting everyone to focus on the actual writing and quotes. Sometimes you just gotta pull the receipts on people to cool things down, and it sounds like your marked up copy did the trick. Glad y'all found some common ground on that green light symbol, that's actually a solid take.
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taylorcarr11d ago
Hate that you went through that with Frank, two weeks is rough over a book debate. Pulling out the marked up copy to focus on the actual text is smart though, sometimes you just need a neutral anchor to get past the heat.
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