Nick Carraway Essay, Research Paper
Nick Carraway?s view on Gatsby
In the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitgerald, the narrator is Nick
Carraway. We trust the narrator. We take on his perspective. He becomes our eyes
and ears in this story. In The Great Gatsby, Nick goes to some length to
establish his credibility. He starts off right away by mentioning his upbringing
by using his fathers words about his own ?advantages?. Nick tries to tell us
that his upbringing gave him the morals to withstand and pass judgement on an
amoral world, particularly talking about the one he lived in, NYC. He says that
such an upbringing has "inclined [him] to reserve all judgments" about
other people.
He admits early into the story that he makes an exception of judging Gatsby,
because Gatsby had an "extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic
readiness". Nick overlooks the moral entanglements of Gatsby’s bootlegging,
and with Meyer Wolfsheim, the man rumored to have fixed the World Series in
1919. Yet, he is scornful of Jordan Baker for cheating in a mere golf game.
The only genuine affection in the novel is shown by Nick towards Gatsby. He
admires Gatsby’s optimism. Nick is "in love" with Gatsby’s capacity to
dream and ability to live as if the dream were to come true, and it is this that
defies his judgment of Gatsby and therefore conceals our grasp on Gatsby. When
Gatsby
that he was "the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West – all dead
now . . ." The truth (of his origins) doesn’t matter to Gatsby; what
matters to him is being part of Daisy’s world or Daisy being a part of his.
Gatsby’s sense of what is true and real is of an entirely other order to Nick’s.
If he were motivated by truth, Gatsby would still be poor Jay Gatz with a
hopelessly vain dream.
Recall the passage where Nick says to Gatsby that you can’t repeat the past,
and Gatsby’s skepticism at this. Nick begins to understand for the first time
the level of Gatsby’s desire for a Daisy who no longer exists. It astounds Nick:
"I gathered that he wanted to recover something . . . that had gone into
loving Daisy . . . out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of
the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the
trees . . . Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I
was reminded of something – an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I
had heard somewhere a long time ago . . ."
Nick Carraway admires Gatsby because of his strong hope in a dream that he
has. Although Gatsby is lost and becomes corrupt, he is different then the
others because he holds on to something that he chrerishes.
The Great Gatsby. F. Scott. Fitzgerald. 1998 Penquin. NYC