How Does Nick Caraway Change Throughout The Great Gatsby

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Throughout F. Scott Fitzgerald’s work The Great Gatsby, Nick Caraway undergoes a large transformation. His character arc demonstrates the negative effects of being part of a rich and privileged society, and that even though the 1920’s era looks beautiful and fun, a great many of its inhabitants were empty. Nick Caraway starts the novel hopeful, but as he is exposed to the amoral culture of the rich socialites and businessmen, he becomes cynical, bitter, and he abandons his habits of honesty, and reserving judgment. After his time in the army during World War I, Nick Caraway refuses to return to the kind of boring life he thinks he would find back home. He consequently migrates East. As he moves near New York City, at the beginning of …show more content…

This respect slowly develops into love, but he doesn’t act on these feelings. Just as Nick struggles with justifying the fun but empty lifestyle he finds in New York, he struggles with loving Jordan despite her carelessness. At the point in the story where Jordan says, “I hate careless people. That’s why I like you,” (58), Nick is willing to overlook her dishonestly because he sees a bit of his affection reciprocated. He suppresses the thoughts of her flaws, but only temporarily, and decides to break it off officially with his rumored finance back home. At the same moment he breaches his self imposed rule of not judging, as he acknowledges the fact that, “I am one of the few honest people I have ever known,” (59). Nick has been exposed to an unprecedented amount of dishonesty, and as he observes the realities of human nature, it slowly changes him; he chooses love and glamour over his characteristic moral rectitude in the case of Jordan …show more content…

Although here Nick is talking about looking out of Myrtle and Tom’s apartment, it can be applied to his role in the book overall, “I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled,” (35). He is fascinated with these rich people, but is also disgusted with them as general human beings. This ambivalence is something he struggles with, but by the end his disgust overpowers anything else he might feel toward the other main characters. As is characteristic of Modern writing, the character arc of Nick Caraway is a story of lost innocence. He starts the summer optimistic and has a strong conscience, but as he becomes involved in the lives of the privileged he finds himself embodying the exact opposite qualities that he initially said he

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