The Relationship between Brett and Jake in The Sun Also Rises

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Without some sort of relationships you and I would not be here today. Obviously, relationships are important and significant things. No doubt that Gordon Korman’s Jake Reinvented does this, which it depicts the story of a high school boy who brings himself, and his peers, into a mess of lie-driven drama. Jake Reinvented accurately portrays the life of a high school teenager today. Many think the theme is people may obsess over one little thing and get lost in something completely unimportant. The book can depict this very well.

The book Jake Reinvented accurately portrays today’s high school teenager life, due to the levels of social ‘coolness’ the collection of diverse people, and the truth behind high school life. An ambitious teen analogue of The Great Gatsby, Gordon Korman’s new novel, Jake, Reinvented, makes explicit its literary antecedents: Jay and Daisy have been replaced by Jake and Didi; Tom and Nick by Todd and Rick. Affluent Long Island in the 1920s has been relocated to a contemporary suburban high school called F. Scott Fitzgerald High. Korman even opens the novel with a portentous epigraph from Gatsby, and playfully dedicates it “For Jay and Daisy.” In Korman’s retelling, the beautiful people all play on the football team. Rick Paradis, the story’s dyspeptic narrator, succinctly defines his social ranking: “I was the kicker and backup QB. Second fiddle to Todd. Story of my life.” But Jake Garrett, a new student who manages to win a coveted position on the football team, and within days establish himself as the Zeus of Cool with his unrivalled house parties, threatens Todd’s Olympian position. As one character puts it: “The guy is like a walking zone of happening “Each year, the young salmon swim up stream, figh...

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...sed when the men departed, leaving Todd’s free agent status intact.”(Pg. 84). “The pathetic amount of resistance offered up by our defense? If all his anger could be channeled into a tackle or two, it was worth the risk of putting him out amongst humans.”

Writing homage to a literary masterpiece is always a risky proposition; it invariably invites comparison. But given my own tepid teenage reaction to The Great Gatsby, I’m willing to bet that Jake, Reinvented, though flawed, may well speak more successfully than Gatsby to high school students about the nature of thwarted ambition and unrequited love. These are all great reasons why the theme is people may obsess over one little thing and get lost in something completely unimportant. So this is why I think that the theme is people may obsess over one little thing and get lost in something completely unimportant.

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