The Great Gatsby

I should've never waited so damn long to teach this novel.

Those are the words that continually flash through my mind everyday I teach my juniors. I am having no success at all and I wish I would've taught this novel earlier in the year. I should've taught it after Huck Finn. I love F. Scott Fitzgerald's descriptive writing and elaborate vocabulary, but my students upon seeing a word they do not know instantly hate the novel and say it is confusing. I have tried explaining the novel to them in the most simple manner, but it seems to elude them at every explantion.

When will it get easier? I feel I have not come into my own when it comes to teaching novels, except for Fahrenheit 451. I absolutely love that book and the message it sends to my students, especially because I don't preach on the censorship issue as much as I focus on the criticism of modern society and how the novel eerily captures how our society is turning individualistic with more and more focus on materialism and advancing yourself no matter the cost to anyone else.

This may be a rant about modern society and how The Great Gatsby is also eerily aware of how relationships and class divides work, but more importantly it's about the relevance to students of today. I feel that many of the students take the novel in a more modern pretext and they imagine that it is present day and they can't immerse themselves into the history of the time period. Bootlegging, speakeasies, flappers, and the economic boom after the first World War; easily a time to which they can relate since these events have impacted modern society.

This whole post may be random tangents of my thought processes, but the main point I am trying to get at is why am I teaching this novel to students who are already so challenged by picking up the simplest novel, when I could focus my energies on having them read something more appealing and modern? I am just literally at a loss as to how to approach teaching this novel. I wish I knew of a better way to get the students actively involved.