The Roaring 20s In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby tells the story of the lives of the wealthy living in New York during the period commonly known as “The Roaring 20s”. The story is narrated by Nick Carraway. Nick comes from the Midwest and has supposedly been raised on stereotypical Midwestern values like for example: kindness, perseverance, justice, etc. He is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “every man”. The “every man” character can be defined as “[being] constructed so that the audience can imagine themselves in the same situation without having to possess knowledge, skills, or abilities that transcend human potential. Such characters react realistically in situations that are often taken for granted with traditional heroes” (Wikipedia*). In the case of The Great Gatsby, Nick is

the most relatable character as he is not part of the same social class as the Buchanans and the rest of the socialites from West Egg. He is an outsider; he is different from the people that surround him. Nick's moral sense helps to set him apart from all the other characters.

From the beginning when he goes to the Buchanan’s house for dinner we can see that he clearly isn't like them. He confesses “you make me feel uncivilized, Daisy” while they are eating on the porch. Although Nick is and educated man, he graduated from New Haven and “was rather literary in college”, he does not know the same things Daisy Buchanan does (Fitzgerald. p4). Tom and Daisy are both very rich and come from old money, Nick however comes from a family of “prominent, well-to-do people” (Fitzgerald. p3). Their different backgrounds make them very different people. Another example of how Nick has values deviating from the ones usually observed from everyone else in the book is when he waits for an invitation to attend one of Jay Gatsby's parties. Nick says that “people were not invited- they went there” (Fitzgerald. p41). He stuck to the way he believed he should behave and waited for an invitation instead of doing like everyone else and just going. When he was finally invited, he took some time to look for Gatsby, his host. The usual party-goers did not conduct themselves in the same manner as Nick. He mentions that “sometimes [guests] came and went without having met Gatsby at all”

(Fitzgerald. p41).

Most of the people present at Gatsby’s parties only went to have fun and get a chance to act wild, not to meet Gatsby. Even though Nick is an “every man” and an outsider this does not mean that he is an impartial narrator. Nick recalls in the very beginning of the book that his father had told him when he was younger that "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one… just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had." Nick takes from this that he should reserve all judgments towards others. This makes him seem like he would be a trustworthy and unbiased narrator. However we can see that this is not true, as he judges everyone he meets in the novel. He describes Tom as supercilious and Jordan as very dishonest. When he attends Gatsby’s party for the first time he says that the guests “conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with an amusement park” (Fitzgerald. p.41). He judges them and how the act as almost organized chaos. Therefore we can see that Nick is biased. Especially against the wealthy people that enjoyed Gatsby’s

parties. He makes them appear, or reveals them to be, shallow and reckless.
In a story, the narrator needs to be unbiased in order to tell the story properly. Without an impartial telling of the story the reader may never really know the true character of the different people that take part in the story. We will never truly know if New York’s elites were as immoral as they come off in Nick’s narration of The Great Gatsby. A victim of Nick’s bias is Tom. He dislikes Tom and this is not at all surprising given that he is Daisy’s cousin and he is cheating on her. This will therefore cast a negative light on Tom throughout the entirety of the novel. However, negative biases aren’t the only ones that can affect the telling of a story. Jay Gatsby is adored by Nick. This could be because Gatsby is the only one of them, Tom, Daisy and Jordan, who made his own money instead of being born into it. One time, when Tom was talking about a book he had read called “The Rise of the Colored Empires” Nick says about him that “there was something almost pathetic in his concentration” (Fitzgerald. p.13). Although he knows that Tom is wealthier, stronger and better looking than him he does believe that he is intellectually superior to him.