“The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a book about a young rich man that had a mysterious past. The author intentionally chose Nick as the narrator of this story. He is Gatsby’s neighbor, and he often contradicts himself. He said he was taught by his father to not criticize people, but he often criticized people including Gatsby. Critics in real life often behave like Nick and are hypocritical. One of the aspects I enjoyed about Fitzgerald’s novel is that Nick is a very intriguing character to discover. He has a rich back-story. He was a mid-western man who graduated from Yale. Later, he served in the army during the First World War, and this caused him to be restless, which led him to discover the bond business. He earned some money …show more content…
and moved to West Egg where the new rich lived. He moved close to his cousin. The author did a great job in shaping a character so well in a book that is not so long. The author also successfully created Nick’s contradictory behaviours without overly emphasizing it. Fitzgerald did well in creating the back-story. Another aspect that I liked was the exaggeration that the author uses.
One example was how Daisy was so materialistic that she cried for an expensive shirt: “They’re such beautiful shirts……I’ve never seen such-such beautiful shirts before.” (Fitzgerald, 89). Nick is a critic that contradicts himself very often just as most of the other critics are in this world. I have an excerpt from Professor Xenophon Zolotas’ speech, which explains how politicians are examples of these hypocrites: ”My diagnosis would be that politicians are rather cryptoplethorists. Although they emphatically stigmatise numismatic plethora, they energize it through their tactics and practices.” (Zolotas, bilibili.com). Fitzgerald used this idea strongly, creating Nick as a character that never realizes that he had been contradicting himself. No one in real life ever contradicts themselves so often like Nick does. This is why I believe Fitzgerald used exaggeration. I find this aspect of the novel …show more content…
outstanding. No one story can be praised forever.
“The Great Gatsby” is one of these stories with its amazing characters and its exaggeration. This book has a major drawback. Gatsby and Nick’s relationship was too close. Gatsby was so cautious that he fired all his servants, but he allowed Nick to stay with him to peek on Daisy and Tom and to make sure Daisy was not hurt. Nick accepted his request to stay outside. This is where Nick contradicts himself again, “I disliked him so much by this time that I didn’t find it necessary to tell him he was wrong.” (Fitzgerald,136). He disliked Gatsby but he still stayed to help. But why should Gatsby, such a cautious person, allow Nick to stay beside him? And why would Nick be willing to stay even if he dislikes Gatsby so much? This part of the story is illogical, and that is why I don’t like this
aspect. In conclusion, I would say that this story has reason for its success. Fitzgerald successfully created Nick as a character that has significant depth. Nick, like most critics in the world, contradicts himself very often, in an exaggerated manner. However, this story has some flaws as well. The relationship between Nick and Gatsby is awkward and illogical. However, I would still recommend this book.
The most memorable figures in literature are not created simple, instead their lives are not easy to understand. These characters have multiple perspectives of the imaginary worlds that they are placed in, which allow readers to associate themselves with such a literary idol. One of these notorious figures recognized as a powerful symbol is Jay Gatsby; this man is described as a “criminal and a dreamer” in Adam Cohen’s article of The New York Times. When reading “Jay Gatsby, Dreamer, Criminal, Jazz Age Rogue, Is a Man for Our Times”, the audience is exposed to many sides of Gatsby. We are able to observe this complicated yet fascinating character through various rhetorical techniques in which Cohen uses to fully convey the image of the “mysterious Prohibition-era bootlegger”.
As much as generous and honest Nick Carraway is, he still needs a few important improvements in himself. Nick went to Yale, fought in world war one and moved to East of New York to work in finance. After moving to New York, Nick faces tough dilemmas throughout the story such as revealing secrets, and witnessing betrayal. His innocence and malevolence toward others was beyond his control. He did not have the ability or knowledge to know what he should have done in the spots he was set in. He seemed lost and having no control of what went on- almost trapped- but indeed, he had more control than he could have ever known. Because of the situations he has experienced and the people he has met, such as Gatsby, Tom, Jordan and Daisy, his point of view on the world changed dramatically which is very depressing. Trusting the others and caring for them greatly has put him in a disheartening gloomy position.
Nick Carroway is not a very judgmental person, in fact, he himself states that he withholds judgment so that he can get the entire story out of the person to whom he is listening. To say that Nick is both approving and disapproving is not suspiring, for Nick rarely looks at things from only one perspective. Nick finds Gatsby to be ignorantly honest, in that Gatsby could not fathom the idea of saying something without really meaning it. He respects Gatsby for his determination to fit in with the East Egg crowd, though Gatsby does not realize that he does not really fit in with them. On the other hand, Nick sees Gatsby to be excessively flashy and, in the words of Holden Caulfield, 'phony.' Gatsby's whole life is a lie from the moment he left behind the name James Gatz and became Jay Gatsby. Gatsby lies about his past to try to have people perceive him as an 'old money' guy when that really is not necessary. Gatsby's valiant efforts to lure Daisy are respectable, yet they show Gatsby's failure to accept reality and give up on his long lost dream.
In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Gatz, a man of low social standing, felt that he lost the love of his life, Daisy, because he did not meet her desired standards of sophistication. Therefore, James Gatz decided to reinvent his identity as Jay Gatsby in an effort to demonstrate to Daisy, that she had only ever loved him. In doing so, Gatsby decided to construct his new character traits based off of Daisy 's husband, Tom Buchanan, who she seemed to be attracted to. Through Gatsby 's rhetorical effort to persuade Daisy, Fitzgerald had Gatsby recognize and employ Aristotle 's first version of ethos, appeal of your own character, and Aristotle 's second version of ethos, appeal to the character of one 's audience. However, Gatsby fatally flawed his rhetorical strategy which caused him to lose
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is about Nick Caraway, a man who moved into New York in West Egg. He soon finds out that his house borders a mansion of a wealthy man, named Jay Gatsby, who is in love with Nick’s cousin Daisy Buchannan. Nick describes his past experiences with Gatsby. He is an unreliable first person narrator, for he is extremely subjective being biased towards Gatsby and he is deceptive, with his lying and past actions. His evaluation of Gatsby is not entirely just, due to his close friendship with Gatsby.
Through this character, Fitzgerald conveys a skeptical and logical, yet romantic and hopeful tone. This is shown by Nick’s cynical, but tender personality. “‘You can’t repeat the past.’ ‘Can’t repeat the past?’ he cried incredulously.
Is Gatsby truly great? It seems so according to Nick Carraway, the narrator in the novel “The Great Gatsby.” Nick has a moral background that allows him to judge Jay Gatsby accordingly. His descriptions did not only create sympathy, but also made Gatsby, the outlaw bootlegger, somehow admirable. F. Scott Fitzgerald presents this ethical trick to expose people’s delusions about the American dream, and uses Nick to show sympathy for strivers.
From the beginning of The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Nick Carraway is developed as a reliable narrator. His honesty and sense of duty are established as he remarks on his own objectivity and willingness to withhold judgment. However, as the book progresses and Nick’s relationship with Jay Gatsby grows more intimate, it is revealed that Nick is not as reliable as previously thought when it comes to Gatsby. Nick perceives Gatsby as pure and blameless, although much of Gatsby's persona is false. Because of his friendship and love for Gatsby, his view of the events is fogged and he is unable to look at the situation objectively.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a story told by a narrator whose name was Nick Carraway. The story is told from Nick’s point of view and you only hear his options about people, like it makes his friends sound really good and the people he dislikes really bad. Nick Carraway is an unreliable narrator because he is biased towards characters, gets drunk while narrating, and leaves parts out of the story.
Nick Carraway has a special place in this novel. He is not just one character among several, it is through his eyes and ears that we form our opinions of the other characters. Often, readers of this novel confuse Nick's stance towards those characters and the world he describes with those of F. Scott Fitzgerald's because the fictional world he has created closely resembles the world he himself experienced. But not every narrator is the voice of the author. Before considering the "gap" between author and narrator, we should remember how, as readers, we respond to the narrator's perspective, especially when that voice belongs to a character who, like Nick, is an active participant in the story.
“The Great Gatsby”, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, portrays a world filled with rich societal happenings, love affairs, and corruption. Nick Carraway is the engaged narrator of the book, a curious choice considering that he is in a different class and almost in a different world than Gatsby and the other characters. Nick relates the plot of the story to the reader as a member of Gatsby’s circle. He has ambivalent feelings towards Gatsby, despising his personality and corrupted dream but feeling drawn to Gatsby’s magnificent capacity to hope. Using Nick as a moral guide, Fitzgerald attempts to guide readers on a journey through the novel to illustrate the corruption and failure of the American Dream. To achieve this, Nick’s credentials as a reliable narrator are carefully established and reinforced throughout the story.
Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald in his book, The Great Gatsby, structures the characters Tom and Gatsby to demonstrate the difference between old and new money, and the class conflict within the upper class.His purpose is to emphasize the differences between the old and new money through the characters Tom and Gatsby. He adopts a wary tone when describing Tom and a fanatical tone to describe Gatsby through connotative words, advanced punctuation and sentence structure, and other details.
At the beginning of the book Nick sees Gatsby as a mysterious shady man. In the beginning of the chapter Nick somewhat resents Gatsby. In Nick’s opinion Gatsby was the representation of “…everything for which I have unaffected scorn.” (Fitzgerald 2). Nick sees Gatsby as what he hates the most in life, rich folk. Since the start of the novel it was obvious that had “Disapproved of him from beginning to end.” (Fitzgerald 154). As time passes, Nick realizes his neighbor has quite a mysterious past. Some think he’s a bootlegger, and a different person wa...
In The Great Gatsby, the narrator, Nick Carraway, aligns the nonfictional biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald in numerous ways. Nick and Fitzgerald were both Minnesota-bred, Ivy-league educated and both peregrinated East after World War 1 for the lucky chance in the bond business and writing. Fitzgerald’s father disciplined him at a young age to always demonstrate good manners and reserve judgment upon others. Fitzgerald and Nick never knew whom they would cross paths with in their social circle. The world of
Fitzgerald first starts by giving the reader a glimpse of the background of Nick Carraway. Based on the words of Fitzgerald, Nick seems to be a man raised with not only money but also with good values. Fitzgerald introduces this aspect when Nick recounts the words of his father "Whenever you feel like criticizing