Chapter Summary Of The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Nick longs to live the life of a millionaire, but for now the most he is able to do is to live next to one who represents his ideal life. Nick’s ideal world is one of money, and to him, Gatsby represents the life in which he thinks he would like to live. Nick demonstrates his admiration for Gatsby and his wish to be able to live that life when he says, “there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life” bespeaking that Nick finds the wealthy to be “gorgeous” and that he represents everything Nick finds to be the ideal life. Nick finds wealth to be something fantastical and it is something he strives to attain for himself in order for him to live his ideal life. Nick believes himself to be in the pursuit of the ideal life in his new home in West Egg, and that to be wealthy is a life of ease in which there is little struggle, the ideal life.

Summary- In Chapter 3, Nick's long awaited and wanted introduction of Gatsby happens. It happens at Gatsby's party, in which Nick is given an invitation to by a chauffeur in symbolic robin's egg blue. While at the party, Nick searches for a friend in which to attend the party with

In the beginning of the chapter, he tries to win Nick’s favor, offering him a trip to Covey Island and, when he declines, to “take a plunge in the swimming-pool” together (82). During Daisy and Gatsby’s reunion, Nick acts as a third wheel toward the pair. He’s cast aside, but Gatsby refuses to let him leave because “[his] presence made them feel more satisfactorily alone” (94). Though Gatsby does show some genuine affection towards Nick, it’s mostly to earn his kindness and better use him for his own purposes. From Nick’s perspective, he and Gatsby are great friends - and to a certain extent, that is true. But in the end, it wasn’t necessarily Gatsby himself that attracted Nick, it was his incandescence, his dreams and aspirations; he was an enigma - a bright, sparkling enigma in Nick’s eyes. Throughout the book, Nick unconsciously denies this fact, allowing himself to believe that he and Gatsby are close friends. As a result, he continues hanging out with Gatsby, doing whatever he asks, and taking his side in conflicts - not always outright, but in subtle ways.

In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, the narrator Nick Carraway's loss of innocence and growing awareness is one of the significant themes. Nick moves to West Egg, Long Island, an affluent suburb of New York City, where millionaires and powerbrokers dominate the landscape, from his simple, idyllic Midwestern home. In his new home, he meets Jay Gatsby, the main character in the novel. Throughout the novel, Nick's involvement in Gatsby's affairs causes him to gradually lose his innocence and he eventually becomes a mature person. By learning about Gatsby's past and getting to know how Gatsby faces the past and the present, Nick finds out about the futility of escaping from the

     Jordan Baker, Daisy's friend, is portrayed by Fitzgerald as a masculine figure. One of the first things we find out about this woman is the fact that she is a professional golf player. Nowadays, we don't find anything unusual about this, but, in the twenties, it was quite unusual to

When considering Nick’s reliability as a narrator, several contradictions also exist concerning the consistency and dependability of his thoughts about Gatsby. Although Nick states that “Gatsby represented everything for which I had an unaffected scorn” (2) he also describes how Gatsby is “worth the whole damn bunch put together” (154) and that “there was something gorgeous about him [Gatsby]” (2). The above quotes contrast both Nick’s unfavorable and positive opinions of Gatsby and further add to his volatility and unpredictability. The greatest inconsistency occurs when Nick conveys how “Gatsby turned out all right in the end (2)”, despite later saying that he “disapproved of him from beginning to end” (154). It seems that by frequently changing his opinions on Gatsby, Nick is unsure and hesitant on portraying Gatsby’s character.

As a main character we may get a different impression of Nick since we are now analysing his personality and how he interacts with the other characters in the story. We read numerous pronouns in the first chapter, ‘I’, suggesting that he is self-indulgent and pompous. For instance, once at Gatsby’s party, Nick only kisses Jordan Baker because he ‘had no girl’, conveying he only kissed her because there was no one else there. This makes Nick seem selfish and arrogant as he is only thinking of himself. To the reader, we

The reader receives the impression that Nick’s self analysis of his own character tries to influence their opinion of him. Therefore the reader becomes inclined to question his judgements. Nick Carraway’s narration takes the reader into his confidence; he describes significant experiences in an almost voyeuristic way. Nicks narrative style uses elaborate and very mature vocabulary that gives extra depth and description to his account; drawing the reader further into the story. Additionally Nick’s tone creates a sense of authority and immediacy which encourages the reader to read on.

At the beginning of the book Nick sees Gatsby as a mysterious shady man. In the beginning of the chapter Nick somewhat resents Gatsby. In Nick’s opinion Gatsby was the representation of “…everything for

Nick Carraway is the most reliable character for the choice of narrator. At the beginning of the book Nick’s father

    The Unreliable Narrator: Nick Carraway starts out the novel by explaining the the reader that his dad gave him advice that he lives by, “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages you’ve had” (Fitzgerald 1). Nick says he is inclined to keep all of his judgements to himself, and looks up to his dad and these words. In the very next few pages, Nick describes Tom’s body, someone he knew in college after seeing him for the first time, as, “It was a body capable of enormous leverage-a cruel body” (Fitzgerald 7). Nick goes against his father's words by judging Tom’s body. This tells the readers that Nick might not be very social and be a person that stays in the background of situations judging people and their actions. This action can foreshadow to the remainder of the novel, that the narrator, Nick, will be unreliable.

Nick is the main character and also sets himself as the author, and narrator of the book. At the begining of the chapter Nick tells us that he learned to not judge others, and to hold them to his own moral standards from his father. He describes himself as highly moral and tolerant as well. 3. Tom Buchanan is the husband of Nick's cousin Daisy.

Nick’s summer in the East egg is and educational experience. He learns about Tom’s affair with Myrtle and how abusive tome is- breaking Myrtle’s nose because she wants him to leave his wife. Nick about Tom and Myrtle “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (P 188). Now it’s true the education he came East Egg for was to learn about the bond business. The timing was great. It was 1992 and the economy was great. The 1920’s a happy extravagant time. Unfortunately Nick learned more about the business of the newly rich in East Egg. He discovers that Gatsby’s car was involved in an accident in which Myrtle Wilson was killed.

Due to the fact that Gatsby is possibly making up his own backstory, any identity can be simulated or made-up, endangering the physical foundation of Nick's own privileged identity. Nick's reaction to Gatsby’s lying about his past with the argument that Benjamin Schreier points out in his article Desire's Second Act: "Race" and The Great Gatsby's Cynical Americanism:

In the beginning of this novel, Nick caraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn about the bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but not fashionable area populated by rich people. Nick is unlike all the other people in West Egg, he was educated at Yale and has social connections in East Egg. Nick’s next door neighbor in West Egg is a strange man named Jay Gatsby, who lives in a huge Gothic mansion and throws parties every Saturday night.