F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a story of lost love, mystery, and an exciting tale from the “Roaring Twenties”. While considered a notable piece of literature in American history, perhaps the plot is not all it seems. This is because the narrator, Nick Carraway, is an unreliable one, based on his continuity errors, general racism, biased judgement, contradictory nature, and assumptions of others, all which blind his ability to effectively convey the true story to the reader. First off, Nick Carraway’s ability to keep continuity in line is revealed when he tells the reader things he could not have possibly seen, based on the account of how he was sitting, looking, or even what his own sobriety level. For example, Carraway tells us that during the confrontation with Gatsby, “Tom glanced around to see if we mirrored his unbelief. But we were all looking at Gatsby” (Fitzgerald 129). He said that Tom was looking for similar visages, but yet in the very next sentence says they were looking at Gatsby. Unless he turned to look at Tom without telling the reader, there’s no way he could have looked at Tom too. Also, after drunkenly conversing with Owl Eyes, Nick suddenly jumps in narration to “lying half asleep in the…Pennsylvania Station...waiting for the four o’clock train” (Fitzgerald 38). Nick makes no attempt at all to explain how he might of got there, how he left Owl Eyes, and after that never explains how he got home. Along with his continuity, one can tack on racism, ignorance, and biased judgement to the laundry list of narration flaws Nick has. In Chapter 4, Nick describes the drivers as “...three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl” (Fitzgerald 69). Even in today’s age, referring to someone as a “buck” is v... ... middle of paper ... ...ncompetent to tell the story correctly and with as little bias as humanly possible. To further solidify this argument, at the beginning of Chapter 4, Nick wakes up, drunk again, of course, on Gatsby’s front lawn the night after the part that takes place in Chapter 3. (Fitzgerald 61). Again, his drunkenness impairs our ability to believe his account of the story, as alcohol clouds judgement and separates his conscience from his actions, making him subject to random and unrealistic narration. To put the nail in this part of the coffin, after waking up from Gatsby’s party, he obsessively “wrote down the names of those who came to Gatsby’s house that summer” (Fitzgerald 61). This compulsivity and obsessiveness further hint at the possibility that Nick might have a few screws loose upstairs . Works Cited Fitzgerald, Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2004.
His duplicity continues, as he meets Tom’s mistress, and later arranges Daisy and Gatsby’s meeting, even going as far as to say “don’t bring Tom” (85). These are clear deceptions and violations of trust, which both reveal that Nick is not the honest and forthright man he wants the reader to believe he is; on the contrary, in many ways he is the opposite of honest and forthright. However, Nick’s most clearly professed lie is in protection of Daisy, when Tom insists that Gatsby had killed Myrtle, and Nick remains silent, forgoing telling Tom about the “one unutterable fact,” - that it had not been Gatsby who was driving the car when it had hit Myrtle, but Daisy - in favor of protecting Daisy (178). Once again, Nick mischaracterizes his traits and even fails to recognize his deceptions and violations of trust as being dishonest, failing to evaluate his own traits. By highlighting Nick’s opinions of and interactions with life amongst the rich, F. Scott Fitzgerald crafts Nick into a complex character whose contrasting thoughts and actions create a many leveled, multifaceted character who shows the reader that one’s appraisal of one’s own traits can often be incorrect.
Nick Carraway stayed out of the way when he sensed that there was going be drama coming. This kept him from losing his sanity and allowed him to witness the others as they went insane. Gatsby was one of the many that Nick had witnessed go through a mental phase. It all started when Gatsby met Daisy. That is where everything went wrong for Gatsby, is when he joined the wrong group of people. Everything could have been better if Gatsby would have just stayed away from Daisy. Daisy already had a husband, Tom Buchanan. Gatsby should have stayed away from a married woman and Daisy should have stayed away from having an affair with Gatsby. Mentally, this made Tom feel insecure and jealous but he knew that he could not do anything about it because he is doing the same thing. That would make Tom a hypocrite. G...
Even though he had some thought that the meeting would provoke harmful tensions between Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby, he went along with it anyways, further demonstrating his own innate lack of reservation. Ultimately, Nick is an unreliable narrator who overlooks Gatsby’s lies because of his biased judgment of him. Nick portrays Gatsby as a generous and charismatic figure while in reality, he is a duplicative and obsessed man entangled in illegal business who is determined on an unattainable goal. It is highly ironic that Nick judges others for their lack of morality and honesty; his own character is plagued by lies as he abets Gatsby in many of his schemes.
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...
Though the story is told from Nick’s point of view, the reader gets many perspectives of Gatsby from different characters. One can see from characters like Jordan Baker -Nick’s girlfriend through the majority of the novel, or Tom- the husband of Nick’s cousin Daisy; that Gatsby is not as good as everyone where to think. Based on how these characters act and feel about Mr. Gatsby it is evident that they dislike him to some extent, showing a bit more of a flawed human side of him. Tom is quoted saying “I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn't far wrong.” about Gatsby depicting Tom’s harsh feelings towards him and showing the reader Tom’s negative feelings about Gatsby. Because the story is told from Nick’s point of view, Gatsby is still painted as this mysterious man because Nick is a bit curious of him and does not know Gatsby in the beginning. ‘"They're a rotten crowd," I shouted across the lawn. "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together."’ Nick says to Gatsby, showing that he thinks he is worth more than Daisy, Tom, or the other characters. With this quote one can infer that Nick holds Gatsby on a bit of a high platform than the other characters, giving the reader Nick’s indirect characterization of
Nick Carraway, Fitzgerald’s narrator, relates Jay Gatsby’s story in a manner that is at once concise and indirect. These two qualities are not at odds with each other; in fact, the more concise one is, the more one must leave out. Matthew J. Bolton points out in his article “A Fragment of Lost Words”: Narrative Ellipses in The Great Gatsby that “[e]very narrative has elisions” (Bolton 190). These elisions are known as gaps within a story. Without gaps, the story will become drawn out, making the readers bored while reading. The objective is to get the readers to desire what is about to happen next. If the reader is not intrigued, the objective will not be reached. Because he himself is so closely involved with the story he tells, Nick has an interest in leaving gaps between his narrative discourse and the “real” story. This is especially true when Daisy, Nick’s cousin, asks Nick about a rumored engagement. To which he responds:
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.
“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.
Nick attempts to deceive the reader at the beginning of the novel by describing himself as a man who is inclined to reserve all judgments (3). But Nick actually evaluates everyone based off his own bias judgments. He describes Jordan Baker as an incurably dishonest (57) and careless person (58). Tom and Daisy are careless people who “smash-up things and creatures and then retreat back into their money or vast carelessness” (179), according to Nick’s description. He describes Mr. McKee as feminine (30). Nick also describes George Wilson as a spiritless man (25). He is effectively not reserving his judgments. This deception and lying from Nick is another reason why he is an unreliable narrator, which goes against how Nick generally describes himself as an honest man who reserves all judgments, showing his non-objective stance.
"Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known" (Fitzgerald Gatsby 64). So writes Nick Carraway in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, characterizing himself in opposition to the great masses of humanity as a perfectly honest man. The honesty that Nick attributes to himself must be a nearly perfect one, by dint of both its rarity and its "cardinal" nature; Nick asserts for himself that he is among the most honest people he has ever encountered. Events in the book, however, do not bear this self-characterization out; far from being among the most honest people in world, Nick Carraway is in fact a proficient liar, though he never loses his blind faith in his own pure honesty.
Nick wants the readers to believe that the way he was raised gives him the right to pass judgement on a immoral world. He says, that as a consequence of the way he was raised he is "inclined to reserve all judgements" about other people (page 5). His saying this makes it seem like we can trust him to give a fair unbiased account of the story that he is telling, but we later learn that he does not reserve all judgements. Nick further makes us feel that he is a non-partisan narrator by the way he tells of his past. We come to see that Nick is very partial in his way of telling the story. This is shown when he admits early in the story that he does not judge Gatsby because Gatsby had a "extraordinary gift for hope, a romanric readiness". This made Nick more loyal to Gatsby than other characters in the book.
A soft breeze lifts off the Sound and brushes Nick Carraway’s face as he emerges from the shadows into the moonlight. His eyes first gaze across the bay to the house of Tom and Daisy where Nick sees past the walls to people who “...smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back to their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together...” (Fitzgerald: 187- 188). Nick’s head then turns to his side where he views Gatsby’ s mansion. His heart swells for the man who was unable to let go of the past, and move toward his future. With the two houses juxtaposed in his mind’s eye, Nick ponders his experiences in the East, and enters the car to take him home with a new perspective on life. Nick’s maturity becomes evident as his perspective of society becomes more realistic as a result of his observing the consequences which occur in unhealthy relationships.
In The Great Gatsby, Nick does not have the supernatural ability to read the thoughts of the characters around him, or the ability to be in multiple places at once. Nick does have the ability to look at the expressions of the characters around him and to conclude a possible thought that the character is feeling, but Nick does not have the complete assurance that the expression seen is the feeling being felt. Also, Nick misses opportunities to be in many relevant conversations and events that could have greatly influenced the understanding of the reader. In chapter 5, Gatsby arranges a secret meeting for Daisy and himself at Nick 's home. As Gatsby breaks the awkward wall established between Daisy and himself, Nick leaves the scene. When Nick returns "Daisy 's face was smeared with tears [... and Gatsby was] literally [glowing]" (89). Since Nick left his home to leave Gatsby and Daisy alone, the reader has no idea what they said to each other and what they said to produce those kind of emotions. The reader can assume that the tears were produced out of joy, but the reader loses the opportunity to gain information that would later have been essential in the novel. Another instance where an all-knowing point of view would have been significant is when Gatsby tells Nick that Daisy is the one that was driving the vehicle that killed Myrtle in chapter 7. Gatsby had previously established himself as a dishonest man when he lied about his humble beginning. Therefore, since Nick was not in the same vehicle as Gatsby and Daisy, he does not know if anything that Gatsby said is true. The reader is only exposed to what Gatsby says that occurred in that moment and that may very well not be the truth. The reality is that Nick is not a God and does not have a clear picture of
By meeting Gatsby Nick has changed for the better. His ideas and actions. all start to change. He becomes very genuine. Sometime after the party Nick says "I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. " Gatsby, p. 41. said this because most of the people at Gatsby's parties were just invited. themselves. This is the time when Nick's character is showing some.
Narrator's Perspective in The Great Gatsby. 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.