When approaches to critical inquiry and critical literacy are used by students to interrogate the dynamic between both fiction and nonfiction texts simultaneously, they shape a classroom culture of questioning that empowers students to take an informed and more activist stance about larger issues in the world. This article explores how nonfiction reading and writing, combined with both oral and written argument and exposure to theories of inquiry, can help students make sense of, and find the significance in, their reading of literature--in this case, "The Great Gatsby". It offers a way-in to literature using a critical pedagogical approach, one that invites students to take control of their own knowledge construction and empowers them to question the world--the political, cultural, and social forces that shape it and their own and others' ability to act in it. Here, the objective is for students to look beyond the novel to a range of nonfiction texts for answers to troubling questions they have about the way the world works (or for that matter, doesn't). (Contains 1 figure.)