Static Character In The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby, Francis Scott

Fitzgerald’s third book, was first published in 1925. It is a tale of love, loss, and betrayal set in New York in the mid 1920’s. It follows Nick Carraway, the narrator, who moves to Long Island where he spends time with his cousin,

Daisy Buchanan, and meets his mysterious neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Nick can be viewed as the voice of reason in this novel. He is a static character that readers can rely on to tell the truth, as he sees it. However, not only the readers rely on him. Daisy, Gatsby, Tom, and Jordan all confide in him and trust that he will do the right thing. Nick Carraway is the backbone of the book and its main characters. In The Great

Gatsby Nick’s physical appearance isn’t described in great depth,

Because of this he doesn’t say anything to Tom about his promiscuity or to Gatsby about his infatuation with Daisy.

It’s also the reason he sees Jordan. She’s obviously dishonest but he overlooks it as a way of being tolerant. This is another reason why everyone likes him; he doesn’t say anything about their bad deeds. This is not one of his best traits. It’s good to be tolerant in some cases, but Nick can sometimes act as an enabler. His tolerance can also lead him to awkward situations. For example, he could’ve pushed harder to leave when Tom invited him to spend the day with him, Myrtle, and the others, but he doesn’t want to judge Tom so he stays. This happens again when he spends the afternoon with Gatsby and Daisy after they first reunited. Although, at the end of the book Nick becomes tired of being tolerant of things he doesn’t agree with.

As mentioned before, Nick doesn’t change. He came to New York with good morals and he left New York with those same morals. This speaks more to his character that he held onto who he was, even though the friends he had were bad influences. At the end of the book when Nick realizes how rotten the

In the last chapter of the book he said, “Even when the East excited me most, even when I was most keenly aware of its superiority to the bored, sprawling, swollen, towns beyond the Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which spared only the children and the very old- even then it had always for me a quality of distortion.” New York was never home for

Nick, but Gatsby’s death and the way people reacted to Gatsby’s death left such a bad taste in his mouth that he had to leave.

I’ve always wondered where Nick ended up after he left New York.

Did he ever see Daisy again? Did he get married? But I forgot about those questions because I knew they’d never be answered. Then one day I started volunteering at a nursing home. After a few months of volunteering there I met a resident named Nick Carraway. I found this very curious and asked him many questions and it turned out he was the very same Nick Carraway from The Great Gatsby. I couldn’t believe it. This was a dream come true for me. I could finally ask all my unanswered questions.

After a few months of volunteering at the nursing home and getting to know Nick, I felt confident enough to ask him all the questions I’d