Nick's Influence On The Great Gatsby

Nick’s description of Gatsby’s influence shows the reader the underlying details of Gatsby’s life and eventual death. The vocabulary that Nick employs shows the slow descent of Gatsby’s control over his life. By the end of the novel, it is believed that Gatsby did not truly have an end, but rather a gradual decline in liveliness and self worth, and an early ending. His descent began when he tried to draw Daisy back into his life. Gatsby goes through a seemingly vibrant life, full of parties and wealth, but Fitzgerald’s language alludes to the onset of his end years before he died. The word choice that Nick uses to convey his thoughts leads us to realize the artificiality of his narration. He begins using the words “gleaming”, “dazzling”,

Although humanly impossible, his final guest could have symbolically been Gatsby. For this to be true, it would be saying that his ending began while he was still alive: and it did. From the moment that he began trying to win Daisy back, he lost track of himself. His money and parties were made with the goal of improving his appearance to her. Similar to the previous idea about the parties being materialistic, Gatsby threw so much of himself into his appearance that he himself began to lose his humanity, substance, and self-worth. Everything he did was motivated towards reconnecting with Dais and his poured his soul into it, becoming “faint, barely perceptible movement of the water as the fresh flow from one end urged its way toward the drain” (162). He was not only slowly disappearing, but moving from an area of fresh flow, which signified his past prior to meeting Daisy. Back then, he was motivated to truly become the best version of himself. The “end” in this is mentioned when the water was flowing away from the freshness and towards the drain, signifying the end of Gatsby beginning while he was still