Examples Of Heroism In The Great Gatsby

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Is there a hero in The Great Gatsby? Is Jay Gatsby a hero? The driven, welcoming, and caring bootlegger who is always there for Daisy, no matter the dysphoria between his delusion of her and reality. Or is Nick Carraway the hero? Whose kindness gives dignity to Gatsby in death, while he in turn struggles with his own base judgments of people. The answer is no to all of these people being heroes. There is no real hero in The Great Gatsby; nobody to save Gatsby from his wild chase of the past; nobody to save Myrtle from Gatsby’s car. A hero is simply too idealized to fit with any of F. Scott’s characterizations of characters. A more nuanced view however shows that F. Scott Fitzgerald wanted to characterize Nick Carraway as the outlet for humanity, however flawed, in this novel. …show more content…

The very opening of the book shows us this. Not even halfway through the first page does Nick say that he is “inclined to reserve all judgments”. However, shortly after, he shows his jaded judgment of Tom Buchanan when he describes him as having “Two shining arrogant eyes [that] had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward”(pg 7). This shows the bias and judgment Fitzgerald wanted to convey through him through choice of words. Instead of being the neutral observer he claims to be, he paints Tom as being aggressive and arrogant. While not being entirely untrue, this introduction sets our prejudice against Mr. Buchanan from the very beginning and shows a crack in the facade of Nick’s

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