Nick’s Implied Feelings for Gatsby

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Recommended: Gender in literature

The Great Gatsby is a story set in the 1920’s, also known as the jazz age. It was published in 1925. In the 1920’s, new things were happening: women were becoming more liberated, there were many parties, and dating was more casual. The author Fitzgerald was also familiar with homosexuality even though it was illegal during that time (Froehlich; Heying). In the novel, Nick tells the story of a man named Gatsby, who was in love with his neighbor, Daisy. One of The Great Gatsby’s themes is love. In The Great Gatsby the author F. Scott Fitzgerald implies a deeper one sided relationship between Nick and Gatsby.
To start with, Nick and Gatsby are opposites. This makes each character compatible for the other. This also shows that the two characters can come together make one balanced character. Nick has a normal past life in which he listened to what his father told him. “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since” (Fitzgerald 1). The advice was to live a moral life, which restrained Nick from having an intimate relationship with Gatsby (Kerr 411). He got his education and “graduated from New Haven in 1915” (Fitzgerald 3). Nick lived the life of a scrupulous person and did not get in-volved in any criminal activity. Nick also joined “the Teutonic migration known as the Great War” (Fitzgerald 3). Basically, Nick leads an ordinary life for the time. His life is emphasized as normal when he states that “everyone was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man” (Fitzgerald 3). Gatsby, on the other hand, has a dark past because of the pursuit of his dream to get Daisy with money. In the journal, The Sexual Drama of Nick and Gatsby by Ed...

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...ritannica. 2 Jan. 2014. Web. 25 May 2014
Fitzgerald, Francis S. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2004. Print.
Froehlich, Maggie G. “Jordan Baker, Gender Dissent, and Homosexual Passing in the Great Gatsby.” Space Between: Literature & Culture 6.1 (2010): 81-103. EBSCOHOST. Web 6 May 2014.
Heying, Monty. "Gay Implications in The Great Gatsby's Nick Carraway." The Red Room. The Red Room, 11 May 2013. Web. 8 May 2014.
Hochman, Barbara. “Disembodied Voices and Narrating Bodies in The Great Gatsby.” Style 28.1 (1994): 95. EBSCO. Web. 12 May 2014.
Kerr, Frances. “Feeling "Half Feminine": Modernism and the Politics of Emotion in the Great Gatsby” American Literature 68.2 (1996): 405-431. JSTOR. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.
Wasiolek, Edward. “The Sexual Drama of Nick and Gatsby.” The International Fiction Review 19.1 (1992): 14-22. Google Scholar. Web. 6 May 2014.

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