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URGENT A level Engish lit Coursework help! (the great gatsby)

Hi so Im doing english lit a level and we're meant to have picked our second book for coursework but i have no idea!

I'm struggling to pick a book to compare with The Great Gatsby.

I want to focus on either the hopelessness/uselessness of the American dream or maybe wealth and how it masks people's immoralities.

Thank you and any help/advice is welcome :smile:
(edited 4 years ago)
Original post by Faeeza.Ifti
Hi so Im doing english lit a level and we're meant to have picked our second book for coursework but i have no idea!

I'm struggling to pick a book to compare with The Great Gatsby.

I want to focus on either the hopelessness/uselessness of the American dream or maybe wealth and how it masks people's immoralities.

Thank you and any help/advice is welcome :smile:

What are the parameters for choosing a second text? If you can do one by the same author (this usually works well) then you could try Tender is the Night. Other texts that may also work are Of Mice and Men (it has a rep for being a GCSE text though), A Streetcar Named Desire (Blanche is a Southern Belle who can't deal with the grisliness of modern America). If one of your texts needs to be pre-20th century, then Song of Myself by Walt Whitman would be a good comparison.
Original post by EnglishStudent*
What are the parameters for choosing a second text? If you can do one by the same author (this usually works well) then you could try Tender is the Night. Other texts that may also work are Of Mice and Men (it has a rep for being a GCSE text though), A Streetcar Named Desire (Blanche is a Southern Belle who can't deal with the grisliness of modern America). If one of your texts needs to be pre-20th century, then Song of Myself by Walt Whitman would be a good comparison.

Thanks for replying!

The 2nd text has to be an text set in 1920s/30s America with similar/relating themes. It can be a text by the same author but we can't choose any GCSE style texts or texts that we're already studying i.e a streetcar named desire.
We can pick either a novel, short story, play, or a poems anthology.
(edited 4 years ago)
bump
Original post by Faeeza.Ifti
Thanks for replying!

The 2nd text has to be an text set in 1920s/30s America with similar/relating themes. It can be a text by the same author but we can't choose any GCSE style texts or texts that we're already studying i.e a streetcar named desire.
We can pick either a novel, short story, play, or a poems anthology.

OK. So if streetcar is ruled out, then I'd suggest other works by Fitzgerald and Williams. Tender is the Night is long but would be a good choice.
I did mine on On the Road by Jack Kerouac, which if you can get past the unusual (lol) writing, would be an interesting comparison of the American dream. It is 1950s though.

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