Nick's Behavior In The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by a renowned American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. The magnificent tale is told through the eyes of Nick Carraway and it is through his perceptions of characters that influence our thoughts of the entire story. Fitzgerald allows Nick to see both worlds and sides of conflict, as he is the moral center of the book. Even though the protagonist can be considered as an unreliable author, readers tend to agree with his sincere perceptions distinguishing between right and wrong, good people and bad people, truths and lies and reality. However, this quality does not interrupt the fact that he is an unreliable author. Revolving around the criticism of the ‘American dream’, Fitzgerald clearly uses Nick Carraway

The line of attack we use in order to identify individuals around us is an intriguing thing. Our perception is forever shifting, forever building, and affected not only by the person’s actions, but by the actions of those around them. In Scott F. Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby Nick Caraway’s perception of Jay Gatsby is always changing. All the way through the novel, Nick’s perception of Gatsby changes from him perceived as a rich chap, to a man that lives in the past, to a man trying to achieve his aspirations but has failed.

In the opening lines of “The Great Gatsby” Nick refers to certain advantages he has had that others have not had. “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” All though they are not state specifically in the text,there is clear evidence of what they are throughout the novel. His father also tells him that “a sense of fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.” This quote shows that not all advantages are in our control and by the same theory not all disadvantages are in our control.  Sometimes advantages are just either inherited advantages or just plain good luck.

Nick’s father gives him this advice “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one”(Fitzgerald 1) and to keep in mind “People in this world haven’t had the advantages you’ve had” (Fitzgerald 1). Nick then claims that he is “inclined to reserve all judgements” (Fitzgerald 1). Nick was able to stand up for Gatsby rather than just let Tom have a skewed view of Gatsby when he said that he was “Some big bootlegger”(Fitzgerald 107). Many other people believed Gatsby had some illegal, high paying job. Nobody knows Gatsby’s job, but Nick wanted to make sure that his reputation was not tainted before he met Tom. Nick defended Gatsby well staying reserved and without being rude to Tom. and on the surface it hardly did anything to gatsby’s reputation at all Daisy runs over Myrtle, Nick

Throughout the story, The Great Gatsby, author F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays the narrator Nick Carraway as easily manipulated by others with greater influence or power. After meeting with Tom Buchanan and his mistress in New York, Nick drives them to Tom’s apartment. After Nick insists he simply drops them off, Fitzgerald writes, “‘No, you don’t,’ interposed Tom quickly”(32). By using the diction “interposed”, it is shown that Tom is able to use his authority to make Nick agree to what Tom wants. Additionally, when Gatsby shows Nick his metal supposedly earned during World War One, and a picture of Gatsby at Oxford, Nick exclaims, “Then it was all true. I saw the skins of tigers flaming in his palace on the Grand Canal; I saw him opening a chest

The novel The Great Gatsby is an interesting tale of two cities really. Nick Carraway; the narrator, represents all that is good an wholesome in the great midwest. He is a well-educated man who aspires to be a bond broker. His character is conflicted internally and externally throughout the novel but really culminates into a loathing for all things eastern. Carraway’s farmboy charm and doe-eyed innocence is put to the test when he meets The Great Jay Gatsby. Gatsby represents all things Nick is unfamiliar with and is curious about. Nick, being from the midwest, has no real street smarts so when he meets the “wicked” east, his lack of experience is proof positive that he really does not belong

“The orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” is the unattainable goal of those living in Tom and Daisy’s world—a world where lives are wasted chasing the unreachable (Fitzgerald 180). In his 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, author F. Scott Fitzgerald suggests that making any progress whatsoever toward this aspiration often requires people to establish facades that enable them to progress socially, but that a crippled facade will backfire and cause detriment to its creator. In the passage where Nick realizes who Gatsby is on page 48, Nick observes two different versions of Gatsby—one that is reassuring and truthful and another who “pick[s] his words with care” (Fitzgerald 48). Nick is at first attracted to Gatsby’s constructed

Nick Carraway illustrates the West by stating, “ One of my most vivid memories is of coming back West… the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances and the matchings of invitations “ Are you going to the Ordways’? the Herseys’? the Schultzes’? ” (175). The West represents wholesome people and even though there is old money and prominent families like in the East they still retain a sense of purity and do not convey an extravagant image. The West is also described as a place where everyone knows each other and seem synced as a traditional society of genuine people. On the other hand, the scene where Mrs. Sloane invites Gatsby and Nick with no actual intentions conveys the falseness of the East, “You come to supper with me? said the lady enthusiastically. “Both of you” … “ My God, I believe the man’s coming,” said Tom “Doesn’t he know she doesn’t want him” (102-103). The Eastern United States society functions in a manner to make themselves adhere to society's views of them as others would want to see them and with this falsehood they make artificial invitations and greetings that they have no intentions of fulfilling. In this scene there is a clash of Eastern and Western United States personalities and this starts with Loane giving a “fake” invite as socially accepted and normal in the East to Gatsby and Nick but

This section of the paper will focus on Nick’s dishonesty. As previously noted, Nick claims that he is “one of the few honest people that I have ever known” (60). Through the events of The Great Gatsby, the actions of Nick demonstrate dishonesty. Throughout the novel, Nick is fully aware of the affairs and wrong-doings of many of the characters. Regarding the affair between Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson, Nick chooses to hide this information.

The flamboyance of Gatsby’s house mirrors his desire to impress. From the moment Nick meets Gatsby, Gatsby starts to show off. He offers to give Nick a ride in his new “hydroplane” (47). Furthermore, the house’s opulence matches what society views as wealth, just as Gatsby adjusts his own thinking to the opinion of an outside source. When Gatsby shows Nick and Daisy around his house, he “revalued everything” based on “the

Throughout The Great Gatsby, the main character and narrator, Nick Carraway reflects on his younger days. The days he spent getting to know the mysterious man next door, Jay Gatsby. Nick has known there to many parties at the house next to his but he has never attended any of them. After spending an afternoon with his cousin, Daisy, her husband, Tom, and their friend, Jordan, Mr. Carraway decides to join the guests at the Gatsby mansion. To Nick's surprise, the majority of the quests have never even met Jay Gatsby. They only know of the rumors about the host that have flown. Throughout the novel, Nick Carraway grows close to Jay Gatsby and discovers his

Throughout the course of The Great Gatsby, discontent is widespread among all classes, even among the wealthy, who seemingly have it all. Rather than satiating desires, wealth seems to only make those with it crave for even more. In the beginning of the book, Nick recognizes the manifestation of his own discontent when, instead of “being the warm center of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe” after he “came back restless” from the “Great War” because he “enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly”. Rather than feeling at ease back home in the Midwest after coming back from a war, Nick exhibits restlessness and a desire to return back to the past and to the battlegrounds that he enjoyed “so thoroughly”. It seems as though Nick’s time spent in

During the 1920's American culture was centered around status and wealth, especially in the east, in hopes of living the true "American dream". Although most people became shallow, empty, and careless in their paths to wealth, often hurting those who have less then them, and making them pay the consequences of their immoral actions. But Jay Gatsby was unlike every other hollow person in the East, because he had something to live for, fight for, and dream for; Daisy Buchanan. His love for her gave him the strength to keep believing in the American dream and the drive to accomplish it. Gatsby restores Nicks faith in the people of the 1920's by showing him that not everyone is shallow and selfish, and that in order to live the American dream, hope and determination can not be lost.

Without even meeting Gatsby, Nick delves into a world of delusion and carelessness that marks Gatsby’s party, emphasizing how just mere taste of extravagance and wealth can have such a

In the Buchanan household, which has been relocated several times to escape the bad publicity wrought by affairs, this kind of behavior is to be expected, showing how even the educated upper class is unable to escape the corruption of America, and what it stands for. The general lack of concern for affairs continues when Gatsby believes that he can turn back the clock and rekindle what he and Daisy once had. Gatsby not only hopes that Daisy will wait for him, but expects it, scoffing at Nick’s assertion that things have changed over time, and that Daisy is now married and a with a child and therefore uninterested in him: “Can’t repeat the past?...Why of course you can!” (116). Gatsby believes that Daisy will be willing to give up what she has for him, building his whole life on the assumption that she will be willing to forget all she has for him. This attitude of indifference for marriage is mimicked in the actions of Tom as well as Myrtle Wilson, showing that it may be widely held. Tom takes advantage of Wilson, replying to Nick’s concerns by simply saying that Mr. Wilson “thinks [Myrtle] goes to see her sister in New York. He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive” (30). Myrtle’s ability to easily lie to her husband shows that the marital corruption of the upper class is prevalent in the lower classes as well. Fitzgerald uses the diverse characters, from the removed yet decidedly elite character of