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Attitudes In The Great Gatsby

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The Great Gatsby is the story of prosperous yet ambitious people who live in the high esteemed “eggs” of New York during the 1920’s. Nick Carraway is from the Western side of the United States and moves to New York for work. He soon learns that he moved in next to Gatsby, an eccentric man who throws mysterious parties for seemingly almost no reason. From the eyes of Carraway, Gatsby is intriguing and does not fit in his scope of common values. Throughout the rest of the book he tries to categorize the other characters based on their attitudes and behavior towards each other. In the world of Gatsby, Nick Carroway compares his personal morals to the wealthy western society and status quos including gender roles and loyalty.
Nick describes himself …show more content…

When Nick shifts into his narrator persona rather than a dialogist, he adds insight about these two distant friends of his, “they were careless people, Tom and Daisy-the smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money...and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (Fitzgerald 179). By the end of the book he comes to the conclusion that Tom and Daisy are a pair of terrible people, he wants nothing to do with them anymore because they provide a disloyal sense of faith in their relationships. Nick’s judgement is still up for debate; it’s hard to tell if what he says is accurate or opinion. Even when Carraway criticizes the others he overlooks the flaws in his own character,“...I even had a short affair with a girl in Jersey city” (Fitzgerald 56). Disloyalty pops up frequently in The Great Gatsby, all the characters struggle to stay loyal even Nick as exampled, but it’s only an Issue when Tom buchanan cheats on his wife. In the beginning of the book he completely ignores the fact that Tom is cheating without feeling any shame. “...and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress. The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known. Though I was curious to see her I had no desire to meet her-but I did.” (Fitzgerald 24). Tom doesn’t mind destroying other people even when it’s …show more content…

Nick cannot define him without talking about a mysterious green light. “Gatsby believed in the green light the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.” (Fitzgerald 180). In the end everyone has a lesson to learn. Gatsby doesn’t fit on Nick’s scale and Nick can’t seem to properly place him in any social status quo. What is known about Gatsby is purely Nick’s judgement which shapes the entire world of the story. Gatsby is clearly perceived to be distracted by something and that catches Nick’s attention away from the average behavior of everyone else. Who else throws large parties but doesn’t participate himself? Nick Carraway might not the most popular person around but he was a good friend to Gatsby. If there is only one moral thing Nick can do it is assemble the funeral for an eccentric but loyal man. Carraway learned the hardest lesson of all. Being modest won’t get you what you hope for in life since there will always be people in the world who cause a destruction that people like Gatsby pay for with their

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