The Great Gatsby Analysis

Nick Carroway is the main character of the book “The Great Gatsby”. The significance of this character being in the story is that he is an ordinary person who lives a regular life. The author expresses Nick Carroway as the main guy throughout the story. In the beginning, he lives in a regular home and works in the bond business. Coming to the end of the story, Nick turns dark realizing what happened in his life. The author describes Nick Carroway in the novel as a dynamic character because he changes from one person to another in situations.

In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nick’s unreliability as a narrator is blatantly evident, as his view of Gatsby’s actions seems to arbitrarily shift between disapproval and approval. Nick is an unreliable and hypocritical narrator who disputes his own background information and subjectively depicts Gatsby as a benevolent and charismatic host while ignoring his flaws and immorality from illegal activities. He refuses to seriously contemplate Gatsby’s negative attributes because of their strong mutual friendship and he is blinded by an unrealized faith in Gatsby. Furthermore, his multitude of discrepancies damage his ethos appeal and contribute to his lack of dependability.

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

Besides ignorance to thought, Nick being a practical, peripheral narrator, provides little to no, personal opinion. Although it could be argued that this is a negative quality for a narrator, Fitzgerald made sure he gives nothing away, nor forces any opinions on the readers. He leaves all final opinions in the hands of readers, which makes the novel such an interesting topic because of the variety of interpretations available. Nick never judges any of the characters for their immoral actions and poses as an innocent, reserved bystander. This leaves final judgment open to opinion, which is why The Great Gatsby can appeal to so many different audiences. At the end of the novel, Fitzgerald includes the statement “one gentleman to whom I telephoned implied that he had got what he deserved” (169) in reference to Gatsby’s death, which leaves readers to choose a side, whether readers should pity Gatsby, or if one has the right to believe that his unlawfulness lead to his own demise.

The plot of The Great Gatsby, a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is driven by Jay Gatsby's

Nick is an unreliable narrator. He seems, from the beginning, to be level headed and wholly observant. However, he blacks out when he gets drunk, and we lose time. Also, he is deeply embedded and prejudices us against Tom and for Gatsby.

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

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.

At the beginning of the book, he stresses to the readers that he is a trustworthy character. However, the favoritism he gives certain characters makes him seem unreliable. First of all, he is extremely sympathetic to Gatsby. He barely interacted with the rest of the characters in the book, but for some reason chooses to value Gatsby above all of them. On page 44 he says to Gatsby "They're a rotten crowd...you're worth the whole damn bunch put together”. It's hard to notice the favoritism he makes with the amount of unreadable characters, but it does over romanticize the root of the story. If the story was presented without Nick’s perception of Gatsby, it is just a man who longs for a relationship with a rich society

During one of the key scenes in the novel in the ------ hotel, Nick, his narration and point of view once again allow more of an insight to Gatsby, which allows my admiration to grow. If not for Nick, and his input in the events, many people would see Gatsby as a sly shallow liar who invents stories merely to entertain acquaintances. Instead of this however, nick says,

Nick could also be an unreliable narrator because he repeatedly says that he is honest and reserves all judgments. At a few points in the Great Gatsby Nick insists that he is honest. “Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues and this is mine: I'm one of the few honest

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 of his most unreliable moments was when he got drunk, at a time of

“The Great Gatsby” is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published in 1925, it is set on Long Island's North Shore and in New York City from spring to autumn of 1922. The novel takes place following the First World War. American society enjoyed prosperity during the “roaring” as the economy soared. At the same time, prohibition, the ban on the sale and manufacture of alcohol as mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers. After its republishing in 1945 and 1953, it quickly found a wide readership and is today widely

A main event in The Great Gatsby occurred at the end when Gatsby was found dead in his pool at his luxurious mansion. However, his murder was not solely the responsibility of the person who committed the crime. Many characters in the novel contributed to Gatsby’s final downfall into the pool. The responsibility of Gatsby’s murder was divided between the obvious killer, the sly betrayer, the guilty initiator, and the dead man himself.