From West to East and Back Again: The Implications of Movement in My Antonia & The Great Gatsby As Jim Burden in My Antonia craves and thinks back on his presence in the Midwest, he displays the idea that movement from places and settings exemplify reactions to aspects of the world characters live in, just as Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby rejects the lifestyle of his East Coast counterparts and desires a life only the Midwest can give him. Movement from west to east and back again, allows both Jim and Nick to think back on what matters most to them and the lifestyles they prefer. Both Cather and Fitzgerald show the reactions Midwesterners invoke as they try to assimilate to life on the East Coast that leads to dissatisfaction and eventual …show more content…
removal. They use dissatisfaction of East coast life to portray the implications of failed acculturation and allow the characters to think back on their past lives. Early on in their novels, both Cather and Fitzgerald provide the feelings of desire places of origin hold for Jim and Nick. Interestingly, both novels start out with the narrators in places far from the East, with Jim on a train crossing Iowa and Nick, readers can assume, is far from New York. While Jim is originally from the east coast, the core of his life is spent with his grandparents in Nebraska and Nick, who comes from a privileged family, grew up in Minnesota only to leave for college in Connecticut. Jim, who “loves with a personal passion the great country through which his railway runs” (Cather 2) and Nick, who “wanted the world to be in a uniform and at a sort moral attention forever” (Fitzgerald 2), reach out for a life that only the Midwest can give them. Jim flees New York to try and obtain the feelings Nebraska once gave him, the remembrance of youth and of love. Nick, uses the Midwest, a place he once shunned, to regain stability after his experiences of “riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart” (Fitzgerald 2) in New York. While the east offered something their places of origins could not give them, for example New York gave Nick Gatsby and it gave Jim economic and social gains. However, the reverse is also true, there are things the east could not provide that the west could. For example, there is no Antonia in New York for Jim just as there is no stability in New York for Nick. The things they once tried to forget or shun or even leave behind, are in fact what they desire and think about most. Jim and Nick initially leave the Midwest for good intentions, for school in the east.
As a way of bettering themselves, they leave behind the only life they knew. Jim goes to law school at Harvard and Nick studies at New Haven in Connecticut. On their return from the east back to the Midwest both come to the realization that everything is different. Nick, on one of his first return trip home, felt that “instead of being the warm center of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe” (Fitzgerald 3). Nick was excluded from a life he had previously felt comfortable in. Instead of trying to re-adjust to his old life, Nick makes his way back east to try and reestablish himself somewhere else. Similarly, when Jim returns home from Harvard he is disappointed in his hometown. When he first arrived he was able to reminisce about his past, but he was soon able to see that everything was different, as “most of my old friends were dead or moved away. Strange children, who meant nothing to me, were playing […] I hurried on” (Cather 237). Movement from the Midwest to the east coast has caused both Nick and Jim to shun their places of origin. They do not completely fit in anymore or feel like they still …show more content…
belong. It is only failure in their new lives in the east that causes both men to question their motives and yearn for a past life.
Neither were capable of fully assimilating to that chaos life on the east coast offered. After the death of Gatsby, Nick packs up and moves out of New York. The East became “haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes’ power of correction” (176). The power the East held over Nick, died with Gatsby in the pool. He was no longer capable of keeping up with the charade of his new life. Nick understand his failure, “conduct maybe be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point” (Fitzgerald 2) it really does not matter anymore, he does not care anymore. There is nothing left for Nick in New York, not even Jordan Baker, a potential
lover. Jim uses the pull of movement in and out of the Midwest to flee from domesticity and a life that did not really give him great pleasure. He displeases his wife as, “his quiet tastes irritate her” (Cather 1-2). They live separate lives, just share the same name. Jim is constantly using his job on the railway reach out for something he is not obtaining in New York. Despite his rather successful life, Jim is not capable of letting go of the life he once had. Unlike Nick, the east did not have as much power over Jim. It is his job that keeps him there, and even then, his job allows Jim to constantly return to the place of his origins. It is the west that has the power over Jim, not the east. Jim and Nick are comparable in the sense that they are both westerners, and that despite where they chose to go, they will always be from the west. Nick reiterates this fact by saying, “I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life” (Fitzgerald 176). Jim is the same way. Even though he was born in the east, the largest influence in his life was Nebraska and his family in the Midwest. Neither Jim nor Nick are capable of staying completely stationary in the east. However the two characters differ in many ways as well. Nick failed in the sense that he could not fully accept and assimilate into the culture of Daisy, Tom, Jordan, and even Gatsby. As mentioned before, it is not until Gatsby dies does Nick come to the realization that he has failed. Jim, while fully assimilated into the life of a New Yorker, he has a wife and a job he loves, fails because he is not capable of letting go of the past. The Midwest still draws feelings that Jim wants to continue to experience. Cather and Fitzgerald do a beautiful job at underlying what it means to feel the need to come back to a place a person had once considered inadequate in their lives. Both Nick from The Great Gatsby and Jim from My Antonia feel the pull of their origins, their homes, and decide to return to the places they had once shunned. Their failure in places where they thought they could once succeed allowed both characters to understand what it means to leave and having to return, despite changes. Both Jim and Nick come to the realization that what they actually needed was not in the East but back home in their own Middle West.
The Great Gatsby is a difficult book to interpret, particularly because of the style in which it is written. Not only must the reader differentiate between the separate views of Nick as the narrator and Nick as the character, but he or she must also take into consideration at what time period, relative to this story, are these views being expressed. After all, Nick the narrator is presently evaluating the manner in which his character behaved the year before, as well as allowing his character to voice his opinion, as his opinion had been during that time frame. We learn to trust Nick as a narrator, because all the pieces of information he gives to us, received through symbolism, imagery, or personal reflection, lead us to make significant decisions regarding the other characters of the novel. His character, on the other hand, cannot be looked upon in the same manner; it can be seen as dishonest and hypocritical, yet it is these negative characteristics that humanize him, allowing readers to relate to him as a person.
The classic novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is one that opens reader’s eyes to the clouded hallow hopes and dreams that came with the famous idea of an American Dream. The hopes that one day a person could make their own wealth and be successful quickly became dead to many around this time and it is played out by characters and conflicts within The Great Gatsby. Nick Carraway is the very first character we meet in this story. A young man who came to West Egg, Long Island the summer of 1922 for work unknowingly walked into a summer that would haunt him forever. The character of Nick Carraway is one who is characterized as someone who is extremely observant as well as the mediator between many of the characters. He is always involved
...d Nick of being dishonest I agreed with her. In the beginning I thought Nick would be the most honest character, but he wasn’t. I think the environment and people around Nick changed him. Especially when everybody in the book was being dishonest (Jordan by cheating at golf, Tom by having an affair with Myrtle) which influenced Nick. Nick portrays how not only the city but the enviroment you live in can change you. It is hard to relate to stories that happened in the earlier days, because it is like two different worlds. Fitzgerald uses societal developments of the 1920’s to build the story, for example Gatsby’s automobile and his stories from the past. In conclusion Nicks change of character and development is displayed throughout the Great Gatsby. Nicks opinion of Gatsby changes as well, showing how Nick Carraway is maturing, and he’s leaving behind his innocence.
Nick notices that although the characters had lived in the east they were not truly from there. “I am part of that”, he mentions as he realizes he is a part of the West and not the East. Fitzgerald also adds realization that “this has been a story of the West, after all.” upon having Nick reminisce on his origin and that of his one time friends (176).
This immediately marks Nick as being dishonest. Nick also admits to lying about his heritage, claiming “(his) family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch” but later admitting that his family is not noble “my grandfather’s brother… sent a substitute to the Civil War”, nor prominent “and (he) starts the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on to-day.” Nick also begins the book by trying to deceive his readers into believing “Gatsby… represented everything for which I had an unaffected scorn,” (Fitzgerald 2), when in reality he liked “the consoling proximity of millionaires” and admires their lifestyle. Although Gatsby’s parties are the very things he hates, he never fails to attend and even pursues an interest in the host of them. Nick’s inconsistencies in his opinions clearly begin to alter him as a person and the way he tells the story over
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. ‘Why of course you can!’” (110; Ch. 6).This quote shows Nick’s logical look on life and how he believes these hopeless romantic ways of Gatsby’s will not always work . “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.” (154; Ch. 8). Contrary to the previous quote, this quote shows Nicks admiration for Gatsby. This quote also may suggest that Nick wishes for something better; he longs for a love like Gatsby’s.This possible romantic side of Nick is also shown by his relationship with Jordan, “.... I put my arm around Jordan’s golden shoulder and drew her toward me and asked her to dinner.”(79;Ch. 4). Nick’s assessment and criticism toward Jordan, Tom, and Daisy also show his skeptical and logical outlook on others around him.This tone shows Nick’s struggle between being like the emotionless and careless people around him (like Tom) or to be his own hopeful and romantic man (following
Jordan’s and Gatsby’s memories of Daisy, the piecing together of Gatsby’s actual history and Nick’s reflections on his own life belong to different eras and possibly jumping between these different timelines and impressions and Nick’s present impressions would have been inelegant. Fitzgerald places him in this hard position for a reason, to help him reveal just how befoul the society was becoming. Rather, William Voegeli, a critic of “Gatsby and the pursuit of happiness” shows a different side to this, he states, “Nick rents, Gatsby buys, and the Buchanans inherit,” also stating “”you’re no better than anybody else and no one else is better than you” (William Voegeli 1). Which shown in the novel is not true, Nick is a middle class character compared to the magnificent West Egg class.
...eep my refuse away” (Pg. 177). This shows Nick’s sense of decency and friendship. He realizes that fast carousing life of the East Egg is a terrifying cover for moral emptiness from inside just like the valley of ashes. Before leaving to go back home he took care of all unfinished business. He ended his relationship with Jordan and walked away from Tom Buchanan who he only shared college experiences with. Nick needed to go back to a cleaner simpler time in life away from East Egg and the Great Gatsby. At last his greatest fear came true; he became all alone by himself. At the end he realized that he has been changed and won’t be able to go back to how he used to be. Even though his personality remains the same he is stronger from inside; not afraid of anything.
The maturation of Nick begins with his description of his time leading to his arrival in West Egg, “I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War” (Fitzgerald, 3). The protagonist comes into the story having not lived much of his life in the normal world that he desires to successfully conquer. He goes directly from schooling into the war, where he found heroic satisfaction. Yet, somehow, Nick is able to keep part of himself innocent and pure despite being in the horrors of war. It is not long after attending his first party at Gatsby’s that Nick confesses that “Every one 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, 59). The level of Nick’s idealism and virtuousness begins at such an innocent pl...
To begin with, after the party from the city returns to Tom’s home, Jordan invites him inside, but he responds, “‘No, thanks…’ I’d be damned if I’s go in; I’d had enough of all of them for one day, and suddenly that included Jordan too” (142). By refusing to enter Tom’s house, he symbolically declines the acceptance of the upper class; something he, Gatsby, and Myrtle all avidly desired and worked towards up to this point. Rather than value those material characteristics that had appealed to him before, he chooses his moral principles instead. His relationship with Jordan perfectly symbolizes his primary choice . Later on, after Gatsby’s death, Nick “found himself on Gatsby’s side, and alone…it grew upon me that I was responsible [for Gatsby’s funeral], because… [Gatsby deserved] that intense personal interest to which every one has some vague right at the end” (164). Once again, Nick favors his personal beliefs over following societal expectations. He stands by the mysterious figure of Gatsby, who possessed “an extraordinary gift for hope”(2) that Nick admired, while everyone else keeps a safe distance and watches, as onlookers in a zoo does to the animals. By admitting his part in the events that took place, primarily Gatsby’s downfall, Nick shows he is not the same careless person as Tom and Daisy who leave their mistakes for others to fix . Whether Nick’s belief that everyone should have a living person stand by h im/her after death is a universal truth or not, he follows his heart rather than the crowd. Finally, before he leaves to the Midwest, Nick “wanted to leave things in order and not just trust that obliging and indifferent sea to sweep my refuse away” (177). Particularly, Nick wanted to end his relationship with Jordan, supporting his original belief that a person should only have one
At the beginning of the book, Nick's dependability is demonstrated as he recounts various information about himself. He is “inclined to reserve all judgments”(1), a trait that implies objectivity and therefore reliability as a narrator. However, he continues to say that this reservation of judgment has certain limits, especially recently in his life. These limits, apparently, do not apply to Gatsby, as evidenced in the next line. Nick says that only Gatsby “was exempt from [his] reaction”, even though Gatsby “represented everything for which [he has] an unaffected scorn”. He then continues to praise Gatsby's “heightened sensitivity to the promises of life”, and his “extraordinary gift of hope”(2). This beginning excerpt from the book in the first two pages sets the tone for the rest of the book and foreshadows the events that are going to happen. It is one of the most important sections of the book, as it lays out ...
...standing alone on the marble step’ as ‘No one swooned backward on Gatsby’, however Gatsby was content standing alone looking over his ‘constant flicker of men and women’ but Nick was also alone. He tries to inflict his loneliness into other characters and he refers to his loneliness many times in the novel ‘I felt a haunting loneliness’. So clearly Nick was unhappy with the fact that he was lonely, and he wanted to come to West Egg to become a Bond salesman but this dream fails in the end too. His happiness lies in the thought of him being with Jordan whom ‘he thought he loved’ and kissed but he rejected her in the end shattering both their dreams of happiness with each other. Also in the end he ends up going back to his ‘bored, swollen town’ in East Egg where he felt comfortable, so his search for independence was broken with the ‘death of Gatsby’ that haunted him.
“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
Nick is the overseer in the novel, and shook by the pretentious of the upper class 's carelessness, causing him to desire to leave the East back to where he originally began. He witnesses innocent dreamers get crushed by the harshness of the world. The fallacies of America are utilized to depict the faults in the dreams of each character. In the end, death inevitably killed their endeavor to pursue the American
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...