The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Pages 1-12
"'Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had,'" (Fitzgerald, 1).
As the story opened with some background information on the narrator and the purpose of the story, I realized that we were still missing critical information: who the narrator actually was. I was unable to decipher whether I would be reading the novel through a first person point of view, a third person point of view, or even an objective point of view. It wasn't until the story actually began two pages later that I ascertained Nick Carraway would be my guide through the life of Gatsby. Only, I didn't know his name till ten more pages later. The opening quote of the book also has some foreshadowing behind it, letting the reader know that money, possessions, and experiences will come into play in the evaluation of certain characters. However, as the old cliche goes, we must not judge a book by its cover and instead wait until we can fully critique the whole of a character.
I can already tell that Fitzgerald doesn't like to spoonfeed his readers; he likes them to figure things out on their own. Some might call it ambiguity, but I like to think of it more as a challenging adventure in which I have to navigate my mind through a perilous sea of words and phrases. But then again, that might just be me wanting to make my summer work more exciting...
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