APEL DLR

Day 1: What did you like about Gatsby and why?

I liked how "The Great Gatsby" was written from the point of view of Nick rather than an outsider. This gave the reader the feeling of looking in from the outside but also being a part of the story. Nick is the most honest and trustworthy character of the entire group of characters, so the fact that the book is written from his perspective rather than Daisy's or Tom's point of view makes the book much more enjoyable. It is hard to know at first whether the characters in the Great Gatsby mean well, but by the end it was clear that Nick was the only character that wasn't superficial and obsessed with money.
 I found the love triangles to be very cleverly set up throughout the "Gatsby" because it gave the book more depth and mystery. Everyone in the group of characters was connected in some way, which interested me the most when reading. I found it humorous that Tom Buchanan, while having an affair with Myrtle Wilson, also expected Daisy to love him. Daisy and Tom Buchanan were the most interesting characters in my opinion because they basically defined the Jazz Age and how the people who lived in the East Egg acted.
 In my opinion, "The Great Gatsby" was very well written and the characters were well developed but varied from one another, which made for an interesting read.

Overall, I did not like "The Great Gatsby." While it is considered an American masterpiece, I found the book to be rather boring. Not much important happens until about halfway through the book, so I was already bored of the book and had a negative attitude toward it before anything really happened. I literally fell asleep several times while reading the first few chapters of "Gatsby," which is usually a sign that I am not enjoying a book. To add to the boring introduction of the book, none of the characters seemed very intriguing to me; they all just seemed rather superficial. Tom and Daisy are obnoxious rich people, Jordan is a pretentious rich person, Gatsby is a lovestruck rich person, and Nick is a boring, slightly-less-than-rich person. A lot of the book is just chit-chat during teatime or at parties, which in my opinion does not make for an interesting novel. The basic plot seemed to be Gatsby trying to take Daisy away from Tom in a rather overt, not very well thought out way: yelling to Tom that Daisy never loved him, which ultimately fails. Then people die, which is always fun, but I did not feel attached enough to Myrtle, George, or even Gatsby to even care about their dying. None of the characters were interesting or likable enough for me to care about him or her, which usually results in my not caring for the book. Overall, "The Great Gatsby" had a rather simple plot with boring characters, and I really did not enjoy the novel at all.