Musical books!

Although the song I chose for The Great Gatsby may be a bit weird, I feel as though it suits the book well. Grace Kelly, by Mika, is an upbeat song and is hard to get rid of once it's in your head. After reading the majority of this book, even the first couple lines of this song remind me of the character Daisy: "Do I attract you?/Do I repulse you with my queasy smile?/Am I too dirty? Am I too flirty?/Do I like what you like?" These lines remind me of parts throughout the book when Daisy warms up to other men besides her husband, even to Nick. "'Are you in love with me,' she said low in my ear, 'or why did I have to come alone?'", it states, on page 85, Daisy talking to Nick.

The lyrics "Gotta be green, gotta be mean/Gotta be everything more/Why don't you like me/Why don't you like me?/Walk out the door!" remind me of the character Tom. When Tom realized that there was something going on between Daisy and Gatsby,  Tom was determined to win, to prove to Gatsby that Daisy loves him, not that she's never loved him. After Tom stated that he's won, he wants Daisy and Gatsby to leave and tells Daisy to meet him at home. On page 135, Fitzgerald wrote, "She looked at Tom, alarmed now, but he insisted with magnanimous scorn. 'Go on. He won't annoy you. I think he realizes that his presumptuous little flirtation is over.' They were gone, without a word, snapped out, made accidental, isolated, like ghosts, even from our pity."

I think that Nick's attitude in this book goes well with the lyrics, "Say what you want to satisfy yourself, hey!/But you only want what everybody else/Says you should want, you should want." It seems as though throughout the book Nick can't think for himself; he just goes along with whatever people tell him to do. For example, on page 94 it reads, "I tried to go then, but they wouldn't hear of it; perhaps my presence made then feel more satisfacorily alone." I found more than a couple of passages in this book that were similar to this one, where Nick is trying to leave (mostly when he's with Gatsby, it seems) but when he's told to stay where he is, he simply follows instruction.

Am I a transcendentalist?

I would say that I am a transcendentalist because I do think that everyone is their own independent self, and it should stay like that. Everyone should be themselves; if they're not, they keep living a lie because they seem as something they're not to other people. In Emerson's "Self-Reliance", he states, "To believe your own thought, to believe what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, --that is genius." Although I think this applies to women as well, I think that this statement is true for everyone. People should know what they believe is true and what is not in their own heart, and they should follow their heart.

Americae nova tabula

There are a lot of descriptive things in this map. One is that there are ships all over the oceans that surround the Americas, and also to the left of the top of South America is what looks to be a sea monster. There are four of these monster-like creature drawings on this map. At the top of the map there also appers to be drawings of what the towns, possibly sky views of what looks like in either different parts of  America, or different parts of the world.
The ships might represent different ways/paths/routes that different people took on a voyage to America(s).  It also seems as though this drawing has South America pretty accurate, but North America seems way off, although I'm not sure if this is because they were still exploring America or not.
Another thing I noticed about this map was that most of the flags on the ships look the same, excluding only a couple.
The last thing was that on both sides of the map there seems to be drawings maybe of how men dealt with different things, such as one of the pictures on the left look like they're almost arresting a man for doing something wrong.

http://www.libs.uga.edu/darchive/hargrett/maps/1665b5.jpg