The Great Gatsby Narrator Analysis

Every great story has a secret hero, the narrator. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, that narrator is Nick Carraway. His willingness to withhold judgment, his positive relationship with the main characters, his outsider status and his perceptiveness are the characteristics that make Nick the ideal narrator.
Every narrator needs to be willing to withhold judgement if he is to be a great narrator.
“In my younger and more vulnerable, years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
‘Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’
In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgments.

A habit that has opened up many curious natures to me...”( Fitzgerald 1)
This quote is from the very beginning of The Great Gatsby. in which Nick explains why he does not judge people before he gets to know them. Nick is willing to change his mind about people if he does judge them wrongly in the first place. This is a rare quality for a person and the perfect quality in a narrator. If Tom Buchanan were the narrator, the story would completely change. The story would go from being the fatal tale of Jay Gatsby and a tragic commentary on the American dream to a story of a loving husband who saved his wife from a crazed ex-boyfriend.
Since Nick is open minded and nonjudgmental, people are more open with him and tell him their secrets, which is how he knows a secret about most every character in the novel Knowing the character’s secrets allows him to give us an unbiased opinion on those secrets and gives you a different view of the person. “His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people—his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself.” ( Fitzgerald 98 ) In this quote, Nick is telling the reader about Gatsby’s real past. Nick is the only one told such secrets, and when he is told by his cousin and friends he does nothing about them. Some think this is stupid, but this way he does not change the story. Every narrator needs to not only know people's secrets, but also have different points of view.
Nick’s relationships to each of the main characters of the novel is another reason for Nick’s position as the narrator. Nick is the best choice for the narrator because Tom, Daisy and Gatsby all come to him to tell secrets and ask him for help.
“I talked with Miss Baker,” I said after a moment. “I’m going to call up Daisy to-morrow and invite her over here to tea.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” he said carelessly. “I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”
“What day would suit you?”
Gatsby is the character that asks the most of Nick. he asks Nick to invite Daisy to his house in order to get her and Gatsby together and asks him not to tell anyone they are together. As cousins, Daisy and Nick have known each other for most of their lives, as a result he knows most everything about her. Then in the second chapter of the book Tom takes Nick into the New York City and shows him his secret life in the city, Nick is the only one Tom shows this world too so he can tell the readers about Tom’s city life. As he is helping them, he is telling the reader every secret and every lie that he is told. Nick is close to all of them but at the same time he remains an outsider to the world of the rich and spoiled people.
Nick Carraway’s outsider status is another great contributor to him being the best choice for a narrator.
I wanted to get out and walk southward toward the park through the soft twilight, but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life. (Fitzgerald 35)
This quote takes place when Nick and Tom are in the city with Myrtle and her friends, sitting in this crazy world of drunken affairs and ridiculous behavior. While Nick is in the apartment with Tom, at the same time he imagines himself standing on the street looking at the apartment above in wonder as to what it is like to be involved in one of those parties. Even though he is now inside one of the parties that others may dream about, Nick still feels as if he is not really one of them. He feels like this throughout the novel, he has rich friends and he goes to luxurious parties, but he never feels like he belongs and he is never treated like he belongs. This outsider status helps him be a great narrator because it helps him give the reader the insider experience but also helps keep their distance and not get too attached to that world. If Nick were an insider the reader would not be shown a fair view of Gatsby's story. The reader would only see the East Egg side and never explore the West Egg side of life. Having Nick as both within and without gives the advantage of introducing the reader to certain aspects of New York’s elite world, while also being shocked and skeptical of them as an outsider would be.
Nick’s defining characteristics is his perceptiveness and attention to detail, which are the ideal qualities in a narrator.

A narrator needs to see things in great detail and be able to describe physical characteristics. “It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor.” ( Fitzgerald 48 ) Nick’s ability to illustrate characters attributes is far better than any other character, and while describing physical traits is important, a narrator also needs to be able to notice subtle differences in human behavior. Throughout the novel Nick is describing every character's different behaviors and his opinion of their behaviors. One example is when Nick and Gatsby are talking after one of Gatsby’s parties.
‘I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,” he said, nodding determinedly. “She’ll see.’
He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was. . . . ( Fitzgerald 110 )
Nick see how Gatsby talks about his past and discerns that Gatsby is longing for the life he has already lived. Neither Tom nor Daisy would have ever notice how Gatsby talks about the past, they would have dismissed it as a man remembering his

past.
A great novel demands a great narrator and the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald has the ideal narrator, Nick Carraway. His willingness to withhold judgment, his positive relationship with the main characters, his outsider status and his perceptiveness are what make Nick the ideal narrator.