Most great American classics have a reason behind their fame. However with books such as The Great Gatsby and As I Lay Dying, I simply can not understand why the have made into lesson plans still around today. Both of these books are just so seemingly unimportant. Since when did anyone care about a guy who goes to parties and complains about dishonest people? Never? Exactly! From what we have read of The Great Gatsby, that is all it has been about. In As I Lay Dying, the characters barely seem to speak English. This leads to no end in the frustration experienced while suffering through the pages.
Nick Caraway is possibly one of the most pointless narrators I have ever experienced. I really can not say I care, even slightly, about his life. He goes to little dress-up parties and runs around town and aspires to be a bond salesman. I don’t understand how this book, written a considerable amount of years ago, can still even be called relevant to today’s society and students. This book is reminiscent of the Catcher in the Rye. Both are pointless exploits of young men wandering and attempting to find some sorts of meaning in their life. I can not stand these types of books. When I begged to move on from poetry, I had no idea this would be the following little section. I want the poetry back now. Along with our wonderfully pointless narrator, we have a cast of equally mindless and/or conceited individuals. To further imbed my ideas and impressions of the characters, we were assigned to create a cast list. This list would describe the descriptions, physical and mental, of each important character introduced so far. This turned out to be pretty much every character that had a single line. Great week so far.
As well as reading The Great Gatsby, another, equally boring and confusing book was assigned. This book, As I Lay Dying, is seemingly not even written in English. The characters remind me of the backwoods inbred families found in most horror movies. When they start killing and eating unsuspecting travelers, I will not be surprised at all. These characters are completely stupid. With one brother making a coffin in front of the dying mother and a money-obsessed father, I can’t see where the author can take this book. The narrative seems to have a very simple plot behind it. I don’t know how this can stretch on for more than 100 pages. This one does seem to be a little better that Gatsby though, seeing as how it actually has a plot.
So as a conclusion for this week, I don’t like either of these books. They confuse me and just have no point behind them. The one thing that annoys me the most is the fact they have no meaningful point behind the plot, well at least that’s the case with Gatsby. Then reading the two at the same time just makes it all worse, too. I will be such a happy person as this unit draws to a close. I just want it too end.