Some of us wonder about computer assisted anything in the language arts classroom. Well, Tom can help you with that. In the decade or so that I have known Tom, he is always thinking way out ahead of the pack in terms of technology and the classroom. Early this summer we had a great conversation about this topic. Take a moment to see want Tom has to offer.
The Good Gatsby: Using Literary Data to Review The Duke of Bannerman Prep
By: Tom Liam Lynch
Understandably, I opened The Duke of Bannerman Prep by Katie A. Nelson in the shadow of The Great Gatsby. Nelson’s novel was heralded as a timely re-telling of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic, set on a debate team at a California private school. At the book’s start, I understood the comparison.
In Bannerman Prep, we meet high schooler Tanner McKay who has a beautiful cousin named Abby who is eyed by the larger-than-life Duke even though she is dating the witless Blake. In Great Gatsby, we meet Nick Caraway who has a beautiful cousin Daisy who is pursued by Gatsby even though she is married to the brutish Tom Buchanan.
In Bannerman Prep, we meet high schooler Tanner McKay who has a beautiful cousin named Abby who is eyed by the larger-than-life Duke even though she is dating the witless Blake. In Great Gatsby, we meet Nick Caraway who has a beautiful cousin Daisy who is pursued by Gatsby even though she is married to the brutish Tom Buchanan.
Table of Comparable Characters.
As someone who develops instructional methods to help students and teachers use quantitative literary data to explore and enjoy literature, I naturally turned to the data to see if it supported the novels’ initial parallelism. (To explore the data, I used an online tool on my new blog and website Plotting Plots. Plotting Plots is a free site “for booklovers who like data” complete with graphing and search tools for popularly taught books as well as blog posts about data science and reading literature.) The novels seemed to run in parallel: A look at the word frequencies of both Gatsby and Nick as well as the Duke and Tanner reveal comparable usage. There is even a similar dip in the frequency of character pairings between Chapters 1 and 2, for instance.
Graph Gatsby Chapter 1 & 2
Graph Duke Chapter 1 & 2
But as I continued reading Nelson’s novel, I began huffing in objection to the book’s title. Whereas The Great Gatsby is actually about a mysterious man named Gatsby, The Duke of Bannerman Prep is less about the Duke than it is about the story’s narrator, Tanner McKay. Say what you want about Gatbsy’s narrator Nick Caraway, he mostly maintained a disciplined narrative distance from the titular character whose story he told.
What makes Bannerman Prep interesting to me, however, is how its author chose to diverge from the book’s literary inspiration, a departure that was most pronounced in the original novel’s central love triangle.
When I have taught Fitzgerald’s novel, I often focused on students examining Gatsby through his love triangle with Daisy and Tom. With this in mind, I fixated on how the sadistic Tom would appear in Nelson’s young adult adaptation. So I examined the literary data for the love triangle in both Great Gatsby and Bannerman Prep. Using tools freely available on my website Plotting Plots, I plotted the names Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom across each chapter in Fitzgerald’s novel. I then plotted the names Duke, Abby, and Blake in Nelson’s retelling. Here’s what I saw.
What makes Bannerman Prep interesting to me, however, is how its author chose to diverge from the book’s literary inspiration, a departure that was most pronounced in the original novel’s central love triangle.
When I have taught Fitzgerald’s novel, I often focused on students examining Gatsby through his love triangle with Daisy and Tom. With this in mind, I fixated on how the sadistic Tom would appear in Nelson’s young adult adaptation. So I examined the literary data for the love triangle in both Great Gatsby and Bannerman Prep. Using tools freely available on my website Plotting Plots, I plotted the names Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom across each chapter in Fitzgerald’s novel. I then plotted the names Duke, Abby, and Blake in Nelson’s retelling. Here’s what I saw.
Plotting Gatsby, Daisy and Tom
Plotting Duke, Abby and Blake
In the Gatsby data, we see how Tom’s and Daisy’s names appear with similar frequency at the beginning of the book, that they diverge as Fitzgerald develops their individual characters, and as Daisy rediscovers her feelings for Gatsby. Arguably, Chapter 7 is the most powerful part of the book, both quantitatively and narratively, where the car accident occurs and Tom gains the advantage he needs to precipitate Gatsby’s fall. And look: Tom’s name overwhelms the story in that chapter, doubtless because of his clandestine affair with Myrtle before her demise and successive manipulation of Myrtle’s husband George to commit murder.
In Bannerman, the love triangle data tells a very different story. In fact, there are only two chapters in which the name of Tom’s counterpart, Blake, appears more frequently than the Duke’s. The first is in Chapter 7 where Tanner, Abby, and Blake attend one of the Duke’s Gatsbyesque parties. (Abby abandons the ever-imbibing Blake to find time with the Duke; Tanner covers for her.) Then, in Chapter 15, when the love triangle converges at a dance club on New Year’s Eve. In both instances, Blake might yell and shout, but that’s it really. One could hardly call Blake guileful let alone murderous.
Exploring the literary data focused my attention on Blake in a way I hadn’t expected. In my original reading, I identified Blake as Nelson’s version of Tom Buchanan. But that isn’t true. When I read the data more closely, I saw that Blake never really achieves the quantitative dominance that Tom does. The name “Blake” spikes, but never overwhelms. When the frequency of his name usage fades at the end of the book, which Tom’s name does as well, it isn’t in the wake of any real cruelty. Just a fight. Blake is a one-dimensional grunting oaf whose presence serves as color but never a catalyst for real character development.
So in the adaptation, what happens to Tom’s viciousness? Does it just disappear?
Kind of. Nelson redistributes some of Tom Buchanan’s traits in Bannerman Prep, but not into a single character. Tom’s oafishness can be found in Blake. But Tom’s capacity for violence is bestowed on Tanner himself when he steals his brother’s painkillers to repay a debt and successively sends Sam to the hospital writhing in pain. Sam’s suffering is the apex of agony in Nelson’s novel. Like Tom’s responsibility in the death of Gatsby, Tanner’s culpability is indirect: Tanner didn’t directly cause Sam’s suffering, but his actions ensured it would ultimately come to pass.
From a pedagogical perspective, it is unfortunate that Tom’s twisted elitism, his loud insecurity, his repugnant racism, his forceful misogyny, and his barbaric brutality are sanitized in the modern adaptation. Today, students need opportunities to grapple with the complexity of individual greatness in society, whether that greatness is driven by love like Gatsby’s or hatred like Tom’s. Readers won’t, however, find occasion to grapple very much here. The Duke of Bannerman Prep is an enjoyable read, a good read even. But, for me, not as great as Gatsby.
In Bannerman, the love triangle data tells a very different story. In fact, there are only two chapters in which the name of Tom’s counterpart, Blake, appears more frequently than the Duke’s. The first is in Chapter 7 where Tanner, Abby, and Blake attend one of the Duke’s Gatsbyesque parties. (Abby abandons the ever-imbibing Blake to find time with the Duke; Tanner covers for her.) Then, in Chapter 15, when the love triangle converges at a dance club on New Year’s Eve. In both instances, Blake might yell and shout, but that’s it really. One could hardly call Blake guileful let alone murderous.
Exploring the literary data focused my attention on Blake in a way I hadn’t expected. In my original reading, I identified Blake as Nelson’s version of Tom Buchanan. But that isn’t true. When I read the data more closely, I saw that Blake never really achieves the quantitative dominance that Tom does. The name “Blake” spikes, but never overwhelms. When the frequency of his name usage fades at the end of the book, which Tom’s name does as well, it isn’t in the wake of any real cruelty. Just a fight. Blake is a one-dimensional grunting oaf whose presence serves as color but never a catalyst for real character development.
So in the adaptation, what happens to Tom’s viciousness? Does it just disappear?
Kind of. Nelson redistributes some of Tom Buchanan’s traits in Bannerman Prep, but not into a single character. Tom’s oafishness can be found in Blake. But Tom’s capacity for violence is bestowed on Tanner himself when he steals his brother’s painkillers to repay a debt and successively sends Sam to the hospital writhing in pain. Sam’s suffering is the apex of agony in Nelson’s novel. Like Tom’s responsibility in the death of Gatsby, Tanner’s culpability is indirect: Tanner didn’t directly cause Sam’s suffering, but his actions ensured it would ultimately come to pass.
From a pedagogical perspective, it is unfortunate that Tom’s twisted elitism, his loud insecurity, his repugnant racism, his forceful misogyny, and his barbaric brutality are sanitized in the modern adaptation. Today, students need opportunities to grapple with the complexity of individual greatness in society, whether that greatness is driven by love like Gatsby’s or hatred like Tom’s. Readers won’t, however, find occasion to grapple very much here. The Duke of Bannerman Prep is an enjoyable read, a good read even. But, for me, not as great as Gatsby.
| Tom Liam Lynch, Ed.D. is the recipient of NCTE’s 2019 National Technology Leadership Initiative Award. A former English teacher, Tom currently directs education policy at the Center for NYC Affairs at The New School, while continuing to design methods for embedding computer science into secondary ELA classrooms. To explore The Great Gatsby and The Duke of Bannerman Prep using literary data and visualizations, as well as dozens of other popular books, visit Tom’s website at www.plottingplots.com. |  |
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