The Great Gatsby's Transformation

    The setting of a story is one of the most important components of the entire plot as it sets the tone for how the story is going to end and also how certain characters are going to act. In the novel “The Great Gatsby” the protagonist, Nick Caraway is an ambitious individual who is the neighbour of Jay Gatsby. Nick is very inspired by the way Gatsby lives and how he takes care of himself, but Nick never really attempts to make any type of interactions with him in the beginning of the story. Nick’s character changes entirely when he is invited to one of Mr. Gatsby parties and agrees to help him meet up with Daisy Buchanan after five long years of separation. Nick’s character changes in terms of behaviour, attitude, and relationships when he meets Gatsby and is ambitious to help him and act more like him. Nick’s character does not change immediately when he meets Gatsby, but throughout the course of the story the reader is able to recognize the significant changes.

Nick is a truthful man within a bunch of liars. Nick moves to New York to make his own money selling bonds. Tom and Daisy are both cheating on each other with different people along with Myrtle. Gatsby lies about his life to fit in with other people. Nick is the only one who does not lie to himself. Fitzgerald was truthful to himself, when he published books he did not say he was famous to fit in with other people. Nick heads east seeking his own fortune and not to be given one. Nicks moral sense is also like Fitzgerald’s, at the beginning Nick starts to interact with the others and is not like them at all. He is set off to be more practical, down to earth person. This is evident in chapter two when he does not know how to respond to Tom and Myrtle’s secret life. Fitzgerald was also a down to earth person who was realistic. He told his wife that she should stay with him because of an educated guess that he was going to make money off of his books. His wife did not go and cheat on him because he did not have money, she waited for him and eventually married

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, is a story filled with love and loss. Love of people, love of things, loss of dreams, loss of innocence, loss of love… The Great Gatsby can be seen as a romance novel, or a tragedy, or possibly even a coming of age story for the narrator, Nick Carraway. His position as narrator of this novel shows how Fitzgerald wanted to keep the mythical and almost surreal nature of Mr. Gatsby. Gatsby has money, a high social ranking, extravagant parties, and a girl to dream about endlessly, whereas Nick exists almost in the shadows of Gatsby with no dream at all. Nick watches as Gatsby’s life changes and falls apart around him, and Nick’s opinion of him varies and fluctuates at times, but he was also the closest friend Gatsby had ever had. Nick illustrates loyalty, divergence, and a lack of ambition throughout his telling of the story, but he is in no way a static character. He is also human, and is flawed, and has kept his morals throughout life, making him the only character in the story who can really change at all. When Nick moved to West Egg, he probably did not expect to learn so much in the

Everyone knows that people change throughout their lives whether that be looks or character, but how much might you change if you were involved in an illegal business, war, deaths and having more money than most can even imagine? In my opinion, the Great Gatsby was a dramatic love story that told the fictional story of a man and his love for riches and the determination he used to get what he wanted.Throughout the life story in the book “The Great Gatsby” characters change so much from the beginning of the book to the end. In this book you’ll see Nick, Gatsby, and Daisy all express changes in their characters throughout the book.

Fitzgerald uses Gatsby's parties and the way in which Nick views them to reveal that whilst Gatsby is surrounded by shallow and vulgar people, he is above this. Fitzgerald also uses these parties to expose Gatsby's isolation which leads us to feel sympathy toward Gatsby. Despite the amount of people at the party, Nick observes Gatsby's seclusion and loneliness, "my eyes fell to Gatsby, standing alone on the marble steps". This evokes a great deal of sympathy from us as although Nick describes Gatsby in a warm and friendly way, "It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life", we now can see that Gatsby is a lonely figure. This sympathy is accentuated when Nick is the only person to turn up to Gatsby's funeral, as we know that Gatsby is a decent and honourable character and thus our sympathies are emphasised by Gatsby's isolation. When Nick first meets Gatsby, he reveals Gatsby to be a fascinating character that we would like to know more about. The warm and assuring smile that Nick describes is in antithesis to the

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 passage is structured into three sections, each differing in the use of narration, description, and dialogue. The first paragraph is Nick’s narration that prepares the reader to discover the “strange story” of Gatsby’s youth. The following five paragraphs are an intriguing mixture of narration and description. Gatsby’s descriptive revelation of his past is retold through by Nick’s narration. The filter of Nick’s own opinions inevitably affects the nuance of Gatsby’s experiences. Nick’s biased disapproval of the rich is conveyed through subtle words such as “bought luxury,” which implies his scorn for the rich who enjoy excessive luxury at the expense of others’ efforts.The last paragraph consists of Gatsby’s monologue only, in which the expression of his thoughts are independent of Nick’s opinion. Through this Fitzgerald provides the reader with Gatsby’s honest thoughts, in which his illusions are further made obvious. For example, his misguided belief that Daisy thought he “knew a lot because [he] knew different things from her” is overconfident and idealistic, giving the reader an insight into his character.

“The Great Gatsby” is a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald set in the 1920’s and is a recollection of a man named Nick Carraway's memories of the summer he met Jay Gatsby the person he could not judge. Jay Gatsby changed the most throughout the novel because He started the novel as a rich and extravagant man with a mysterious background, but it was revealed that he didn't start his life this way, James Gatz was a seventeen-year-old fisherman on Lake Superior who had big dreams that he thought he never could make a reality. But he adopted a persona that modelled the ideal person through the eyes of a seventeen-year-old, and met his good companion and friend Mr. Dan Cody. But towards the end of the book the window that is Jay Gatsby is shattered

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.

Why is affluence so significant? It was not always this way. For hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies, personal properties were insignificant or even disadvantageous unless it was food. For the sake of development and standards of life, this had to change. As wealth gained in value, people also lived better, longer lives, but at a certain point, it began to manipulate the society around it. Some may argue that this occurred around the 1920’s in America. The changes of this time were monumental. People were moving to cities in large numbers, the party lifestyle was adopted by men and women alike due to dramatic social change, and the economy was booming, they were not called “the roaring 20’s” for nothing. The large economy enabled people to gain more wealth than ever. A multitude of people, primarily in older generations, did not encourage this lifestyle, finding it fake, licentious, flashy, and unchristian. This disapproval of change is apparent in The Great Gatsby due to Nick’s distaste for the frivolous and gaudy lifestyles of the East and West Eggers and Gatsby in particular. This distaste, also conveyed heavily by the author, is most significantly formed around the iniquitous value of money and adultery. Ergo, In the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald suggests that Modern America has become irrationally focused upon immorality and wealth rather than the true American values of hard work and faith, which is demonstrated through the motif of the colour

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.

Scott Fitzgerald chose to tell the story of The Great Gatsby in a somewhat unconventional way by using a narrator that is a main character himself. Fitzgerald presents Nick in a specific way to serve a particular purpose. Fitzgerald uses Nick to demonstrate that people naturally judge others and that it is impossible for someone to remain completely unbiased when making these judgments. Usually, the sole purpose of the narrator is to give a medium in which to tell the story, but Nick tells the story and is involved in it at the same time. He has his own thoughts and feels different emotions throughout the novel and some of these emotions and feelings creep into his recollection of what happened. Because of this, the reader feels a stronger connection to him but at the same time, can be easily persuaded to have the same opinions as him about other characters. This also may be why Nick changed the most throughout the novel. He started out as a young man who is looking to make his fortune in the bond business out east but ends up moving back west because he is fed up with the corruption and greed that comes with the wealthy lifestyle of the east coast. At the close of the novel Nick says this about the eastern lifestyle, “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.”

Fitzgerald writes a story with a character that is considered “larger than life”; he throws massive parties, is in love with a married woman, is rich and goes by the name of Jay Gatsby. Nick is the narrator who is sees a different side of Gatsby that sees him “great” aside from his wealth and corruption. Nick grew up in the Jazz age and it was replaced with the vitality, and favor of the artificial American dream. Gatsby’s life was full of winnings along with failures that followed him into death throughout the novel; never the less he achieves a form of “greatness” because of his morality in Nick’s perspective.

Nick is very secluded from the group and tends to be an outcast. He leaves everything bottled up within himself and does not discuss it with the others. (Fitzgerald 1)”I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened many curious natures to me”. This quote discusses how Nick keeps everything to himself and how it has opened all gossip he hears. Throughout the novel uses Gatsby uses nick for support, reassurance, and to be able to see Daisy. (Fitzgerald 79)“Why didn't he ask you to arrange a meeting? He wants her to see his house and your house is right next door”. Nick here is being used by Gatsby to be able to daisy again. Everyone comes to nick and tells him all these things all he can really do is listen. For example, Tom telling Nick about his mistress knowingly that he is Daisy's cousin. Overall Nick is a character that sees everything but does not discuss it with the others he keeps to himself. This makes him an honest and loyal person.

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.