The Great Gatsby Response Essay

Dear Mr. Quinn, This quarter, when reading “The Great Gatsby,” I learned about the importance of a narrator’s perspective from an introductory homework assignment as well as developed a strategy for myself in which I learned to overtime notice key details of texts from the close-read chapter assignments. Something I found interesting while initially reading the book was the importance of perspective in narration. One of the first Gatsby related assignments was to pick a character from chapter 1 and write about first impressions of the character. I chose Daisy, but in choosing Daisy I missed out on the initial importance of Nick. After discussing it in class, I began to understand more why Nick is so important to the story. Because Nick is not the main character, but rather the

So throughout the story, the events are detailed based on what he knows, or wants to make known. This insight made me think about how the speaker influences the credibility of the story told, not only in literature but also in day-to-day life. It led me to think about when I tell my mom about my day, how she only knows the people I am describing from the events I choose to share, and the same goes for other people whose day I am involved in. The observation sort of led me back to wondering, how the story would change if Tom or Daisy were narrating, and how the characters would be portrayed differently to the reader. A challenge I faced while reading Gatsby was understanding the meaning of a passage as a whole. Often when reading books for other English classes, the final essay is about the whole story and how the author hints at the theme chronologically. In contrast, with past assignments, was your emphasis on how Fitzgerald’s specific language was important to directly emphasize what is being emphasized in the passage, not the book as a