The Great Gatsby Influence

Words: 498
Pages: 2

Since I can remember, The Great Gatsby by Scott F. Fitzgerald has been glamorized. “A true masterpiece in the world of literature”, I was constantly told. A book with so much love and is considered an American classic surely would be an amazing read. However, after finishing the book I discovered that this novel is not as “great” as the name implies. This novel fails in one of the most important aspects of novels: the characters. None of the characters in the novel are likeable, to the point where I hardly felt any sympathy towards Gatsby when he was shot. The main reasoning for this lies in the narrator of the novel, Nick Carraway. I read The Great Gatsby only a few months ago, yet I can hardly remember any details about Nick’s personality or influence. Nick is an observer, merely acting as a way for relay to the audience the interaction between characters. There are some good aspects to this way of narrating, as it allows Gatsby’s character to be shrouded in mystery, allowing the reader to pick apart Gatsby to better understand him. However, it also made me as a reader feel detached from the characters. …show more content…
One exceptional case of this is The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, in which I felt as though I were apart of Holden Caulfield's world due to his bold and unique narrative of his thoughts and interactions with others. On the other hand, Nick as a character did relatively little but allowed a connection between Gatsby and his love interest, Daisy. Other than that, he hardly intervened in the affairs of the other characters. Nick’s opinions and thoughts of events in the novel filled pages, but with his little interactions with character I could not be fully immersed in their