Homosexuality In Gatsby

Secondly, Gatsby is a very mysterious character. Nick has been Gatsby’s neighbor, or so he thinks, and has never met him. Nick says “It was Gatsby’s mansion, or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name” (5). This shows you that even Gatsby’s own neighbor does not even know who he is; which shows that Gatsby is mysterious. Later on, once he actually meets Gatsby, Nick goes on to say “I don’t like mysteries, and I don’t understand why you won’t come out frankly and tell me what you want. Why does it all have to come through Miss Baker?” (71). As expected, this frustrates Nick and gives him more reason to believe that Gatsby is mysterious and not trustworthy. Nick doesn’t understand why someone who seems to be his friend is hiding so much

In the book “The Great Gatsby”, Nick has a front row seat to a horrific love circle. Tom and Nick are different in many ways. Tom is portrayed in the story as an antagonist, while Nick is a protagonist. Both of these characters have encounters with Gatsby’s lover Daisy. The story of a distressed lovers drags a newcomer of the city into their feuds.

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.

Not identifying himself as gay would be in keeping not only with the general tenor of the times but also with Nick’s typical caginess regarding his personal history.” (Bolton, 197) Is Nick only attracted to men? It's possible, but I believe he's attracted to both genders. He was somewhat attracted to Jordan Baker, they had a relationship of sorts. But there was no passion in it. He didn't talk or think about Jordan nearly as much as he did about Gatsby. Not to mention, he explicitly stated that he wasn't in love with her. He said this about her, “At first I was flattered to go places with her, because she was a golf champion, and everyone knew her name. Then it was something more. I wasn't actually in love with her, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.” (Fitzgerald 57) He may have used her as a way to get closer to Gatsby, whether he did it purposefully or subconsciously. He broke up with her once Gatsby was killed because there was no point anymore. “This change, personified by the character of Baker and marked by Carraway’s complex and not wholly honest breakup with her, is ultimately what allows him to reflect on and appreciate Gatsby as a human being by the end of the novel.” (62,

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

In the beginning of the novel the narrator Nick Carraway says, “Gatsby turned out all right in the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men”. Well we don’t know how justified Nick is saying this since it’s in the beginning of the novel. So we only see Gatsby through Nick’s eyes, so all of our opinions of him are based on what Nick sees and thinks. I can assume what he writes about Gatsby is the truth, since Nick says he reserves all judgments. I believe what he says because he makes us trust him through his comments on the first few pages. For example, on the very first page of the book Nick says, “Gatsby represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn”. Even though, Nick had doubts towards he could not help but admire him. From the beginning when Nick first met Gatsby he recognized his faults, but Nick still liked Gatsby. Nick is attracted to Gatsby’s bright and understanding smile. That’s why I feel like Nick said “Gatsby turned out all right in the end”.

In regards to the expression of love , Gatsby and Nick themselves highlight this worldwide concern by expressing feelings about love. “Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can” (Fitzgerald 110). Revealing the extent of Gatsby’s commitment to his dreams, he is sure that the past can be repeated. One of his dreams is to be with Daisy and he worked hard to renovate himself just to get her back. “...And for a moment I thought I loved her but I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires” (Fitzgerald 58). Nick takes things seriously when it comes to being with someone he wants to be with. It is not his intention to flirt with Jordan until he is done with his girl back at home, this shows that Nick is very serious about love.

These characters live in the age of the “Hollow Men,” and are portrayed as empty and absent-minded people. In fact, Nick voices his grievances with this at the end of the story; after Nick meets Tom Buchanan a couple months following Gatsby’s death, he takes time to reflect, pondering, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness” (179). Shaking Tom’s hand, he states that he feels like he “were talking to a child” (179). Nick feels a personal disdain for the carelessness of the characters in the book. Gatsby, however, acts with real thoughtfulness, as he exhibits his authenticity multiple times in the novel. Reflecting on Gatsby’s life, Nick proclaims that Gatsby’s heart “was in a constant, turbulent riot” (99). He then tells that “the most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted [Gatsby] in his bed at night” (99). These examples help validate that Gatsby, unlike the other characters, was genuine enough to feel passionate and convey emotion. While the readers dislike Tom and Daisy’s emptiness, they favor Gatsby’s compassionate and sincere personality, as they can relate to his

The real contradiction to Nick is The Great Gatsby himself, Jay. Jay and Nick share a similar small town upbringing but Jay was able to parle his stolen trades into the corrupted version of the American Dream. Most of what Nick knows about Jay is based on his reputation and it’s not until they actually meet and Nick sees the “quality of distortion” in Jay’s New York lifestyle that Nick sees for himself the illusion that Jay created. Nick is attracted to the high life that Gatsby has created in the valley of ashes. Who can blame him with all the lavish parties, cars, mansions, women and other temptations. It’s like Fitzgerald has placed Nick in the Garden of Eden and the two characters; Nick and Jay, represent the good

beginning to end.” What does this curiously ambivalent admiration for Gatsby tell us about Nick,

We know that Nick is an unreliable narrator from the very first page of the book. He begins by telling us that he is the most honest person he knows, and that he does not judge anyone for any reason. However, one paragraph later, he says “Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.”(1) He is saying that Gatsby is the epitome of

One thing that surprises me about Nick is that he was loyal to Gatsby who seemed likeable enough but empty inside. He seemed like the picture was more important than the real person. Nick was interested in person and would put himself in a bad light to help a friend. “I didn’t want to go to the city. I wasn’t worth a decent stroke

Regarding Gatsby, Nick "had enough of all of them [referring to Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, and Jordan]"(Fitzgerald 79) and he thought Gatsby was "despicable."(Fitzgerald 79) This is all just after the accident. By the end of the whole story though, Nick's sympathy toward Gatsby improved. He felt terrible that no one paid honor to this man or cared that he was dead.

According to Maggie Froehlich, Fitzgerald’s odd references to racialist discourse in The Great Gatsby reflect the author’s recognition of the associations between two incipient ways of conceptualizing social identity and that his illustration of such intersections in the novel in 1925 affirms recent insights in contemporary studies of race and sexuality. Lisa Duggan asserts the relatedness of racial and gender discourse in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries in Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence, and American Modernity: “The increasingly rigid racial binary of the 1890s encountered a shifting gender binary and interacted to produce a new sexual binary implicitly marked by race and class” (26). In Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture, Siobhan Somerville states, ‘’[A] range of literary, scientific, and cinematic texts that foreground the problems of delineating and interpreting racial and sexual identity [to demonstrate that these] simultaneous efforts to shore up and bifurcate categories of race and sexuality in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were deeply intertwined’’ (Somerville 3). Perhaps most relevant to The Great Gatsby, particularly with regard to discussions of Gatsby’s parties, and New York city (Froehlich 82).

Although to Nick, Gatsby seems at once completely unoriginal, extremely knowable, being with him, he notes, was "like skimming hastily through a dozen magazines” (Fitzgerald 55). Gatsby, in Nick’s point of view, was disruptive. He is unable to trust Gatsby, for a fear that he would just vanish at the moment in which a promise leans toward its fulfillment.