Nick_Carraway_in_the_Great_Gatsby

Linda 1 Linda Yang 楊子儀 97121382 Prof. Joel Janicki American Literature 22 May 2011 Nick Carraway’s Self-understanding in The Great Gatsby At the first sight of the title, The Great Gatsby, one might expect to have a vivid picture of how this Gatsby be presented as a legendary person; however, the central puzzle of The Great Gatsby is actually the seemingly simple and heart-to-heart Nick Carraway, who eventually transforms into a whole new version of himself that even he himself has not expected to be. Unlike the static characters in The Great Gatsby, including Jay Gatsby, Daisy Fay, Jordan Baker, and Tom Buchanan, Nick changes substantially during the course of the novel, which makes he stand out a mile among the crowd, change his points of view on Gatsby and his dream, and finally assert the “greatness” of Gatsby. Therefore, the story can be considered the process of illumination and self-understanding of Nick Carraway. Slow-thinking Nick does not learn immediately from his experiences with Gatsby, but retrospectively. Nick’s slowness in learning makes his narration and Linda 2 enlightenment credible to readers who witness what his experience may teach him (Parker, 35). Growing up in a prominent family in the Middle West, Nick Carraway feels a little bit complacent and snobbish. In spite of his social connection with well-to-do people, like his distant cousin Daisy and a college classmate Tom, Yale-educated Nick doesn’t belong to them. Unlike the people who surround him, Nick has a particularly sharp and judgmental eye for everyone he meets, which unveils his inclination to analyze and criticize other characters although he is pretty good at getting along with everyone in public. It seems that Nick sees himself as a gentle Midwesterner, whose well-established background provides him with the “secure sense of moral standards and identity” (Parker, 36) -- as the self-sufficient young man says that he “frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon (Fitzgerald, 1).” Being slowly immersed in the world of the interwoven relationship of the other characters in The Great Gatsby, Nick gradually changes in the end. As Jordan rebukes him for being just as dishonest and careless as the rest of them, Nick realizes that he is changed and will never be the same. Due to Gatsby’s death, Nick reaches the climax Linda 3 of his understanding of life and self awareness. “I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all -- Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life (Fitzgerald, 178).” Nick now is aware of the bareness and sterility of the East, of a world that pervades the material-centered thinking. After seeing what has happened, Nick declares that he wants “the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever (Fitzgerald, 2)” and knows the best way is to return home despite of the fact that he used to believe that no one could return to the past. Nick ends with his realization that his fascination for a gleaming and dazzling East is lost, whose standards are built upon superficial, immoral, and materialistic life. The final lines of the text suggest the inevitability of inability to separate the dreams of the past with the reality of the present. Nick presents the story as if he were the writer of the story; however, he is also a figure in the novel, involved in the action. Consequently, we see Gatsby only through the eyes of Nick. It is he that makes Gatsby “great” for us. On the surface, Gatsby’s illegal business dealings and dubious background make him both attractive and repulsive -- the people enjoying his riches at his parties are intrigued by him, but Linda 4 few know his whereabouts or the source of his wealth. Nick is one of these few and the only person who really comes to understand and appreciate the moral reality of this Mr. Nobody from Nowhere in the end. Gatsby represents almost all of the addictions for which Nick has an affected scorn, but he gradually likes him and admires him as the events move on. “If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life . . . It was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again (Fitzgerald, 2).” What makes Gatsby “great” to Nick is not the luxurious lifestyle or the enigmatic wealth, but his true personality; Nick slowly discovers that Gatsby doesn’t care about treasure or social status but the finest and most foolish of emotions -- love. “He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendor. The modesty of the demand shook me. He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths -- so that he could “come over” some afternoon to a stranger’s garden (Fitzgerald, 79).” So simple and pure the dream is that no one would believe in. Therefore, the key to Nick's admiration for Gatsby lies in Nick's identification with Gatsby's capacity for dreaming Linda 5 and his faithfulness to that dream. “It is in that all-encompassing commitment of self to his dream that Nick recognizes Gatsby's greatness and his superiority to himself (Rielly, 54).” Even if Gatsby is a self-created image built out of nothing, his emotional honesty and naïveness, believing that he can repeat the past, single him out as the only “true” person in a rotten crowd of fakes -- as Nick says, Gatsby is “worth the whole damn bunch put together (Fitzgerald, 155).” “[Nick] is attracted to the figure’s power had courage, especially since these attributes are persistently contrasted to the materialism and shallowness of many of the surrounding characters (Whitley, 46).” Nick’s attitude toward Gatsby develops unconsciously from contempt and doubt to understanding, trust, appreciation and finally admiration. Nick in the first chapter is greatly different from who he is in the last chapter. This transformation is obvious in the last chapter as the phraseology is poetic, reflecting that he is at the end of his enlightenment. As Parker says, “On reflection, Nick learns, not merely to asses experience honestly, but to accept the paradoxes of human conduct and personality, with sympathy as well as understanding (Parker, 39).” He finally learns to be mature and thoughtful but he is full of sorrow. Appreciating Gatsby’s capacity to his dream Linda 6 and how many efforts he has made to realize this pure dream, Nick comprehends Gatsby’s true personality. Through the novel, Nick grows mentally; from a man somewhat wishing for the wealth -- as he was “simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life (Fitzgerald, 36)” to a man who finally realizes what catastrophe a fortune can bring to devour one’s nature. Works Cited Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1950. Whitley, John S. F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby. London: Edward Arnold Ltd, 1976. Rielly, Edward J. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography. US: Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., 2005. Parker, David. “Two Versions of the Hero.” Critical Interpretations: The Great Gatsby. Ed Bloom, Harold. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. 29-44.