Views on the role of Nick as a narrator in the Great Gatsby have

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Recommended: Explain Nick's complex attitude toward Gatsby

Views on the role of Nick as a narrator in the Great Gatsby have

varied greatly. How do the views of Arthur Mizener and Gary J.

Scrimgeour relate to your own view of Nick's function in the novel?

Published in 1925, and written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'The Great

Gatsby' is a brilliant and scathing illustration of life among the new

rich during the 1920s; people who had recently amassed a great deal of

wealth but had no corresponding social connections, or a sense of

morality. Nick Carraway is the narrator of the novel; he rents a house

on Long Island next door to Jay Gatsby, the title character. Gatsby is

in love with Nick's cousin Daisy, who is married to an obnoxious man

she does not really love, and he has no strong feelings towards her

either. Her and his extramarital affairs are set against the

background of the extravagant parties that Gatsby is famous for

throwing, while Nick struggles to reconcile his attraction to a lavish

lifestyle with his feeling that a moral grounding is missing. The

writing style throughout 'The Great Gatsby' is terse and the book at

times is depressing, with an overall message of hope and the American

dream, discouraging.

The story is told through the eyes of an active, biased, participant.

Nick Carraway has a special place in this novel and has many

functions. He is not just one character among several, it is through

his eyes and ears that we form our opinions of the other characters.

Nick is both within, yet outside the occurrence of events as he is

friends with Gatsby and related to Daisy, but is still not involved

fully in all that occurs, even though somebody else often tells him

about it. Often, readers of this novel confuse Nick's stance towards

those characters a...

... middle of paper ...

...atsby is Nick's opinion. Gatsby's dream and the purity of

his vision is the 'great' part, rather than the wealth. In one sense,

the title of the novel is ironic; the title character is neither

"great" nor named Gatsby. He is a criminal whose real name is James

Gatz, and the life he has created for himself is an illusion. By the

same token, the title of the novel refers to the theatrical skill with

which Gatsby makes this illusion seem real.

Fitzgerald has created a most interesting character in Nick because he

is very much a fallible storyteller. When an author unsettles an

accepted convention in the art of storytelling by creating a narrator

like Nick, it draws attention to the story as fiction. Ironically, in

doing this, he has created in Nick a figure that more closely

resembles an average human being and thus has heightened the realism

of the novel.

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