A ruthless oligarchy seized control of American society.
Day 3 · 목표 ⭐
London imagined a near-future America where a small group of industrialists, threatened by organized labor's growing strength, used their enormous economic resources to crush democratic institutions and establish absolute rule.
2Reading· 오늘의 본문
We · Yevgeny Zamyatin · 1924
In the glittering world of The Great Gatsby, the true sacrifice is often invisible. Myrtle Wilson, living in the valley of ashes, is a stark record of what is crushed beneath the wheels of immense wealth and power. Her desperate life and brutal end are a testament, a silent story written in dust, not in the society pages. Jay Gatsby himself becomes a sacrifice to his own dream, his history rewritten and his fate sealed by a system that protects the powerful. Nick Carraway, bearing witness, tries to make sense of these broken lives, understanding that the real tragedy lies in how easily such sacrifices are forgotten, leaving no mark on the world that caused them.
B2 · 128 wordsavg 25.6 w/s
Fitzgerald’s novel meticulously documents the sacrificial mechanics underpinning the emergent oligarchy of the 1920s. The valley of ashes stands as a permanent record of human cost, where lives like George and Myrtle Wilson are willingly expended to fuel the carefree prosperity of East Egg. Gatsby’s own demise is the ultimate sacrifice to the myth of self-made success, his past erased and his future annulled by the old-money aristocracy, demonstrating how the system consumes even those who momentarily breach its gates. Nick’s narrative itself becomes an act of preservation, a fragile testament against oblivion. Through his recording of these sacrifices, Fitzgerald argues that the true measure of a society’s corruption is not in its accumulation of wealth, but in its capacity to erase the evidence of what was destroyed to obtain it. What makes The Great Gatsby (심화) endure as a work of literature is precisely this refusal to offer easy consolation — it demands that readers sit with the discomfort of a world that does not resolve neatly, and find their own position within it.
C1 · 170 wordsavg 34.0 w/s
3Vocabulary· 핵심 어휘 & 연습
oligarchy
과두정치, 소수 집단의 지배
Tom Buchanan represents the old-money oligarchy that rules East Egg.
industrialists
산업가, 자본가
The novel's wealthy characters, like Tom, benefit from an economy controlled by industrialists.
enormous
거대한, 엄청난
Gatsby used his enormous wealth to try and rewrite his past.
democratic
민주주의의
The parties at Gatsby's mansion feel chaotic, but are not truly democratic spaces.
absolute
완전한, 절대적인
Tom exercises an absolute sense of entitlement over his life and those around him.
Activity 1 · 빈칸 채우기5 questions
1. Every hour of D-503's life was carefully ____ by the Table of Hours.
2. The ____ of privacy did not exist in the One State.
3. Individual names were ____ and replaced with numbers.
4. The glass walls guaranteed there was no ____ for citizens.
5. The State was ____ declared to represent perfect happiness.