Cheat sheet / Admittedly a cheap shot

In my Law / Literature / Social Sciences class at NYU Law School, we read The Great Gatsby 2 weeks ago, and we’ll be reading The House of Mirth for next week. For each week’s reading, I attach a short “Advance Discussion” doc with lots of questions that the students can use to organize their thinking. (I.e., they don’t have to answer any of the questions – it’s just to stimulate thought and offer possible discussion topics, etc.)

Here is a question that I just added to my House of Mirth list,  reflecting the view that it’s pedagogically good to link different weeks’ discussions:

“In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is deliberately built up as a mysterious character. But is Lily Bart also mysterious, in the sense that we often do not know why she makes particular choices throughout the novel? Is she also a mystery to herself? How would you compare these two mysteries (if such they both are)?”

If I were to answer this question myself – and notwithstanding that I actually do like (albeit, not love) The Great Gatsby - the first difference I’d point to is that the “mystery” in The House of Mirth is actually interesting.