Students study Gatsby, celebrate Roaring ’20s

Posted on March 27, 2018 by Emily Lambie in Features // 0 Comments

Jazz music from the 1920’s is playing, students are dressed in traditional flapper outfits, and excitement all around. Every year, 11th grade AP English students read The Great Gatsby by Scott F. Fitzgerald, and for the past 15 years, students have been rewarded with a “Gatsby” themed party afterwards.

“The Gatsby Celebration helps students to bring the novel to life and it’s a lot of fun,” said Mr. Chuck Brittain, AP English teacher.

Throughout the school day on March 16, students enjoyed many different foods, 1920’s music and spending time with their fellow AP students. Many dressed in traditional Gatsby fashion, such as flapper dresses and a suit. The flapper dresses were covered in many sequins, all in different patterns, and some with fringed styles.

“I think the flapper dresses have a classy style,” said Kalianna Rager. “I really like the sequins and fringe.”

Students had to work hard to earn this celebration by doing a series of projects, such as a three to five page essay, a portrait of the three main characters, a model or diorama of Gatsby’s mansion, and many others.

“This was definitely worth all the work on our Gatsby project,” said Erin Polakovsky. “I did two posters, three duct tape portraits of the main characters, a model of the Gatsby mansion, a 20-slide powerpoint comparing the Kardashians to Daisy Buchanan, a paper about the author, a paper on symbolism throughout the novel and a poster with twenty slang words from the 1920’s.”

At the end of the Gatsby celebration, students left the room in disarray and returned to regular classes, leaving Mr. Brittain, like Gatsby’s staff, to clean up the mess.

“It’s like Fitzgerald wrote, ‘They conducted themselves with the rules of behavior associated with an amusement park,’” said Mr. Brittain. He added that he, like Gatsby, really didn’t mind all that much.

“The students came for the party ‘with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission,’” he added in quoting the novel..