: If your essay is analytical (and I'm struggling to think of any other reason you'd write an essay about The Great Gatsby) then I'd put it in the present tense. Gatsby loves Daisy, but

If your essay is analytical (and I'm struggling to think of any other reason you'd write an essay about The Great Gatsby) then I'd put it in the present tense.

Gatsby loves Daisy, but Daisy is married to Tom. Gatsby doesn't have the bloodline to impress her; all he has is money. So he throws lavish affairs at his ostentatious house in a effort to show her how riche he is, and only comes off looking painfully nouveau.

Even though the book is in past tense, as you read it you are in the book's "present," so you are in the action. When you're analyzing it, you're analyzing what occurs. You'd use past tense if you were talking about something which happened in the character's past:

Jane Eyre is hired by Mr. Rochester as a governness. When he asks her if she can play the piano, she modestly replies, "A little," and proceeds to reel out some Chopin. She learned the piece when she was a child, when she lived at Lowood. Mr. Rochester snorts at how English girls are brought up to downplay their achievements.

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: If your essay is analytical (and I'm struggling to think of any other reason you'd write an essay about The Great Gatsby) then I'd put it in the present tense. Gatsby loves Daisy, but

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: How to determine rates to charge as a freelance writer While I have a few articles published, they were easy fixed rates. Today, however, I've received this email (identifying details removed):

: What style suggestions are common for which words are used in hyperlinks? With a purpose of avoiding "More details here" style links that do not provide any information in the link

: What's "fair use" for borrowing someone else's invented term? Let's say I'm writing a sci-fi novel. I want to use a word which another writer has coined, which has become well-recognized outside

: "Streamlined and useful"? Which means punctuation is useless clutter? Ask the legendary guy whose life was saved by Czarina Maria Fyodorovna's misplaced comma. ("Pardon impossible, to be sent

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