Nick's Role In The Great Gatsby Essay

(Responses should be a minimum of three to five sentences each.) 1. What do you find is the most crucial in the plot in Chapter 1? Nick buying the house in West Egg village is crucial to the plot. He then explains the plot by talking about his rich neighbor. This helps to establish the setting for the story and describes Gatsby a bit. 2. How does Nick describe himself at the beginning of the novel? Nick describes himself as nonjudgmental. He also wanted the world to be uniform and trying to have morals. Nick describes himself as coming from a snobbish family and having snobbish values. 3. How does Nick describe Tom Buchanan? Tom appears to be leaning forward aggressively and is mean. Nick also describes him as having a powerful body. Nick is afraid of getting attacked by Tom because he is really muscly. 4. Who is Jordan Baker? What does Nick find appealing about her? Jordan Baker is Daisy's friend Nick meets in West Egg. He likes her for her slender body and gray eyes. Nick likes Jordan's voice too. 5. What is Gatsby doing when Nick first sees him? Gatsby is looking out at the water. When nick is about to call out to him, Gatsby stretches out his arms towards the water. Nick is shocked and puzzled by Gatsby's strange behavior. 6. How does the tone of Nick’s description of Tom reveal Nick’s feelings about Tom? Use a quotation from the text to justify your answer. Nick describes Tom as aggressive looking his voice as "a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of

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.

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

Honesty is one of the most pivotal traits for a narrator to portray. Nick is a very honest man and he often, through the novel is not afraid give his opinion. As he was introducing the novel to the readers he gives and honest assessment of Gatsby, Nick says “Gatsby , who represented everything for which I have unaffected scorn.” (Fitzgerald 2) This displays that Nick is willing to bring forth his opinion on Gatsby and shows that he will be honest if it is necessary. Nick is exclaiming that his first reaction to Jay was off-putting, and he rejected his lifestyle. Nick honesty fuels him into a friendship with Gatsby and lets the story flourish. Nick also seems to be in the thick of things whenever something went wrong. He gets insider information throughout the story and

Through the observations and experiences of Nick, The Great Gatsby exposes the temptations that men have towards the allure of the East and the consequences of giving into them. When Nick first attended one of Gatsby’s parties, he noted that “they [the guests] conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with an amusement park” (41). Nick describing the guests of Gatsby’s party with the behavior associated with an amusement park shows that people from the East are not truly any more civilised than those from the West. Throughout the book, the East is seen as being more privileged than the West, with grander houses and prestigious families, while the West is less fashionable with wide lawns and friendly trees. With the

Fitzgerald chose Nick to narrate the text because his perspective creates a multifaceted view of the world Fitzgerald portrays. He is an outsider to the wealthy materialistic world in which he lives. His similarity to Gatsby in that respect helps us gain an appreciation for Gatsby’s character, but although Nick and Gatsby are both outsiders Nick fails to fully understand Gatsby. This appreciation but lack of full understanding gives the reader a very different perspective than a narration from Gatsby’s point of view or that of anyone else in the novel. Nick is caught between the perspective of the man “looking up and wondering” (35) and the man in the party. Gatsby is neither; he holds the party but then scarcely shows up. Far from being an outsider to the world of wealth and materialism, he seems to embody it. Gatsby and Nick both disdain the world of vacuous wealth, but they do so from different perspectives. Gatsby has everything he needs to be part of it and chooses not to; Nick is caught on the edge, unsure whether or not he wants that world, but ultimately he cannot have it. If Nick is an outsider unsure about trying to become an insider, Gatsby is an insider trying, studiously, to make himself an outsider.

Nick is shocked and disgusted by the greedy and selfish personalities of all of his friends and even his second cousin, Daisy. We can see many instances of this, a prime one would be when Myrtle Wilson was killed in a tragic car accident. After learning about how Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, and Jordan only were thinking about themselves, Nick was disgusted and had to leave them for a while. “I’d be damned if I’d go in; I’d had enough of all of them for one day, and suddenly that included Jordan too.”(142). Another example of Nick’s disillusionment could be at the end of the novel when he realizes that Tom and Daisy were careless people who cared about nothing but

In The Great Gatsby, Nick is a credible and dependable character. He attended an Ivy League School, Yale. In the beginning of the novel Nick tells about Gatsby and explains what he is like. Nick is very credible compared to Gatsby. Jay Gatsby’s credibility is shaken when he tells stories out of the proper order. Some of the other characters start to believe that he is just lying. However, Nick is able to observe the situations without judging others. There are rumors spreading about Gatsby throughout the story and Nick has to decide what is right and what is wrong. Nick has a moral sense about him. He is more practical than the other characters in The Great Gatsby. Gatsby even says to Nick, “I don’t want you to get a wrong idea of me from

Nick finally gets to know Gatsby on a more intimate level and sees how he is so full of hope and dreams and a need to create this back story of his life and how he went from war hero to a self made millionaire. Nick can see that he is only self made in his mind but that Gatsby is so desperate for him to believe him. But there is something inherently sincere about him even though he lives in an illusion he has created. When it’s all boiled down, the real reason he had done all this and his main motivation in life is to win a girl back-Daisy. He needs Nick because of his relationship with Daisy and that he can be the conduit for him to see her and win her back.

In the novella of The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald the characters drive the plot of the story. Nick is a major importance to The Great Gatsby because he sets up the beginning of the story. He starts off by talking in how his great grandfather's brother came over in 1851 in having someone else take his place in the civil war. “The actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War,” (Fitzgerald 3). The quote explains how his whole family is a bunch of liars, implying Nick’s character. He moved to West Egg to start in the bond business his father had financed him to go for a year. In Nick’s eye West Egg was less spiffy than East Egg had all of the better looking residentials.

In the novel, Nick is portrayed as a careful and considerate individual. He helped get Gatsby and Daisy together, showing he cares for both of them. Therefore, showing how considerate Nick is. Although, in the movie, Nick is portrayed in both past and present tense. In present tense, we have a broken Nick Carraway. He admitted himself into a sanitarium because he is “morbidly alcoholic”. From that moment on, Nick opens up to his doctor about the moment he met Gatsby till present day. In flashback scenes, Nick is happy and unconflicted. He also had a sense of innocence. In a way, Tom corrupted him by taking him to his apartment to get drunk. Then, continuously shoving drinks into Nick’s hands and encouraging him to drink more and hook up with

Nick was the only person besides Daisy who really got to know Gatsby. He knew all his feelings, thoughts, his past, and also his aspirations. There would be thousands and thousands of people at his parties, but not one of them actually knew who the host was, and some didn’t even know his name. No Another thing that proves to the reader that Gatsby let wealth get to him was that not even Daisy went to his funeral, only Nick. Nick tells narrates, “Next morning I sent the butler to New York with a letter to Wolfsheim, which asked for information and urged him to come out on the next train.

Gatsby tells Nick that he comes from a wealthy family in the Middle West and says that he went to Oxford University. When he says the Oxford line Nick realizes why “Baker had believed he was lying” it was because “he hurried the phrase ‘educated at Oxford’” and it was “as though it had bothered him before.” It was because of this that Gatsby’s statement “fell into pieces”. Because Gatsby couldn't say that line fluently Nick started questioning Gatsby by asking him where he specifically lived in the Middle West. Gatsby answers by saying “San Fransisco”, but in Nick’s mind he knew that San Fransisco didn't really count as Middle West. It’s interesting how Gatsby says that he doesn't want Nick to get “a wrong idea” about him, but meanwhile almost

Nick can stand in for the audience. The physical description for the character is vague enough so that a reader or viewer can relate to Nick without feeling too different from him. There is very little description so he can be seen as relatable, but also not too significant in The Great Gatsby, as he stands in as the narrator and not so much the main character. He is like what could be replaced with a film camera, taking in and observing everything around him, but not affecting anything drastically. To be blunt he could be a forgettable character compared to the others and is often used as a pawn between Daisy and Gatsby rather than a cousin or friend.

Nick’s character was made to be the narrator of the book. Why do you think the writer Fitzgerald choose him as the narrator of the book? To someone who had never read the Great Gatsby how would you describe Nick? How would the story have changed had Gatsby been the narrator of the book instead of Nick? Thinking on the ideals of the American dream what part of it does Nick represent?