The Great Gatsby is widely regarded as a classic of American literature. Written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1924, The Great Gatsby is a story about a man named Nick Carraway and his relationship and discovery of the history of the titular Jay Gatsby. This book has been analyzed by many critics and students long before I was assigned this paper. What I’ve decided to base this paper upon isn’t even an original theory, just my interpretation and case for it. I’m going to focus on the character of Nick, and his relationship with Gatsby. Nick in the book goes through a lot of trouble and drama that most people would want to stay away from. Nick however, stays involved. Many people would just believe that it’s simply a curiosity about this fascinating …show more content…
I believe that Nick Carraway, could possibly be gay, and have feelings towards Gatsby. (Now, as I stated, this isn’t an original theory, but I’ve gotta write a paper.) As a person who is a tiny bit gay and hangs around the LGBTQ+ crowd a lot, I would say I have a fairly accurate “gaydar.” So with the help of some textual evidence and speculation, I’m gonna make my case. If you take how Nick talks about men and compare it to how he talks about women, you can tell there’s a bit of a difference. When talking about the women of the story he’ll give a brief physical description, with some sort of comparison to help the reader understand better. “I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her gray sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, disconcerted face.” Now in this quote we do see …show more content…
It’s played up a lot heavier in the films but Nick always seems to be just an onlooker to the situation. Without his constant narration, he has no point in being there. Most people in his position would want to stay away from all the drama like broken marriages, Gatsby trying to steal Daisy away from Tom, it’s all too much. But, if I’m correct that Nick is gay, I propose that he’s staying to stay close to Gatsby. People can say “Oh but he was in love with Jordan.” I would argue that he could’ve just been using her to get closer to Gatsby. She is the only one who Gatsby told his life story to, and after this she tells Nick that she can’t tell him. Gatsby is quite the mystery man, and to Nick, that’s really hot. He wants to know more about the charming recluse with an amazing
Many people overlook their friends’ flaws due to their familiarity. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway, a bondsman from the Minnesota, meets Jay Gatsby, a mysterious neighbor who throws extravagant parties. As Nick helps Gatsby woo his selfish and shallow cousin, Daisy, the twosome bond and become close friends. Nick narrates The Great Gatsby and praises Gatsby in a heroic light. Yet, with his imprecise self-image and inability to identify with the East Eggers, Nick forms an inherent bias towards Gatsby, which ultimately compromises his credibility as an objective narrator.
Gatsby was just a man that was played. Whether it was the distant green light, the extravagant parties, or attempting to sweep her off her feet; he always resigned to his mansion waiting upon her to come save him. Gatsby was always bestowed as mysterious and secretive. People knew of him but never about him. In the beginning chapter, Nick’s first sight of his elusive neighbor, was when he “stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as [Nick] was from him, [Nick] could've sworn he was trembling” (Fitzgerald 152).
Nick's role in F. Scott Fitzgerald novel "The Great Gatsby" was to give a "outsider's" perspective. Nick is originally from the Midwest yet moved to the west egg in hopes of being a bonds dealer. Being a part of this elegant and fake lifestyle is new to Nick causing his reactions and feelings to be more like the reader than someone else from the story like Daisy or Gatsby himself. Also, this is the reason that Fitzgerald makes it a first-person narration novel to give you more emotion towards those actions. Out of everyone in the story, Nick would be the most trustable.
Nick Carraway constantly contradicts himself as he narrates F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. He could be seen as a liar or a hypocrite in the way that he says one thing and does another, and it is rather confusing for the reader to follow the events of the story. However, when he is not biased, he is quite observant and factual. He is likely the narrator for this story because he is the least involved, but often the reader questions his reliability. The book is really a way for Nick to come to terms with the events of the story, and the contradictions come from his own inward struggle. His inward perspective, nevertheless, makes it no less difficult for the reader to follow. Nick’s skewed perspective allows the
Nick Carraway’s personality is slowly revealed itself throughout the novel, The Great Gatsby. This occurs through certain events throughout his journey, if you will, and how he is influenced when he befriends Jay Gatsby: a wealthy young man who lives in a mansion next door to Nick in West Egg. Nick is both a character in the novel and the narrator. He is usually behind the scenes during confrontations between other characters, yet he is the one who brings these characters together through multiple occurrences. For example, when Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan meet for the first time, in Nicks house, after Gatsby returns to win her heart back. A term to describe him as a narrator is a “peripheral narrator”. He is like an outsider, who isn’t irrelevant or the center of attention. He also prefers to “reserve all judgments” (Fitzgerald 1), as he says in the first page of chapter one. This is because he likes to listen to the stories of the characters he meets, and since he refrains from judging before knowing the person, it allows him to judge accordingly to the characters and their stories. This allows Nick to adapt to his surroundings and act accordingly since he is almost like a foreign since he is new to living life in New York City.
In the film, this becomes Nick making out with Myrtle’s sister and waking up in his underwear on his own front porch at his house. When he’s singing these bombastic praises of Gatsby, it was a wonder of how much of his description is affected by his affection for Gatsby, and by bringing up this potential question of sexual preference. Its not the main plot, but it could have helped the movie to go into more depth of the friendship of Gatsby and Nick which is kinda the heart of the story.
In the book, Nick is writing the book in remembrance of Gatsby. Nick, in the novel, wrote the story about Gatsby. “I was Gatsby’s only friend”, Nick says this in order to point out the honor done. In “The Great Gatsby”, Nick is committed into a mental hospital for a problem with alcoholism. Some say that this is a portrayal of the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald. The producer uses this to show that Nick is an unreliable source. This makes the viewer question the legitimacy of Nick’s
The story of “The Great Gatsby” is told through the narration of Nick Carraway. It is apparent from the first chapter of the book, that the events Nick writes about had a profound impact on him and caused a tremendous shift in his views of the world. Nick Carraway is as much a symbol as the green light or blue eyes. Nick Carraway is unreliable because Fitzgerald intended him to be, he is heavily biased, extremely dishonest and a hypocrite.
Nick Carraway, the narrator in The Great Gatsby, is an open-minded individual with a fair sense of judgement. Despite seeing past the others’ facades into the ugly, dark heart they harbor, he finds a way to befriend them. In fact, he is Gatsby’s only true friend and arguably the hero of the story.
From the beginning of the book and onwards, Nick’s comments about and interactions with Gatsby reveal his attraction to Gatsby. The first time Nick mentions Gatsby, he states, “Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn,” (2) and, “[...] it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which is not likely I shall ever find again” (2). These excerpts expose Nick’s admiration for Gatsby, especially when he says, “which is not likely I shall ever find again.” This indicates the Nick considers Gatsby as one of a kind and an extremely special type of person who is hard to find. Considering Nick’s great respect for Gatsby, when Nick attends one of Gatsby’s many parties and meets him, Nick describes Gatsby as having, “an irresistible prejudice in your favor,” (48) and, “one of those rare smiles with a quality
“And with this doubt, his whole statement fell to pieces, and I wondered if there wasn’t something a little sinister about him, after all.” (Fitzgerald, 65). That first conversation Nick had with Gatsby was shot down quickly for Nick thinking that Gatsby could be a great guy without having something to hide. There is also the fact that Gatsby also annoyed Nick to the point where Nick doesn’t really like the guy much. “I hadn’t the faintest idea what ‘this matter’ was, but I was more annoyed than interested.”
An American classic, The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is both an exhilarating and thought-provoking novel from the 1920’s. The story of a man’s slow rise to the upper class and his downfall in a single summer makes the theme of The Great Gatsby extremely relevant from its publishing to this day. Jay Gatsby, the main character of the novel, embodies Fitzgerald’s ideas of the truth behind the “American Dream” as well as the human nature of obsessing over the passage of time. This novel is narrated by the neighbor of Gatsby, Nick Carraway, allowing the reader to experience and witness Gatsby’s decisions and actions. Through Gatsby, Fitzgerald plants his ideas of the emptiness of the upper class and the downfall of the “American
Furthermore, Nick’s perception of other characters, although contradicting at times, shines through in his narration from the novel. Nick describes himself as having an “intense personal interest” and “shame for Gatsby” but also describes Gatsby as his “closest friend” (Fitzgerald 172). This prejudice towards the novel’s characters adds drama to the story and forces the audience to side with Nick while detesting his passive
Welcome to an analyzation of Nick Carraway: the awkwardly aloof, not very upstanding character who is, as much as we hate to admit it, the true antihero of The Great Gatsby. He pulls off the gig very well, being so prodigiously mediocre in his actions that he frustrates and puzzles the readers. He is slow to judge, making that clear on the very first page, saying that he tends to be “inclined to reserve all judgements” (Fitzgerald 1). Nick has a way of charming as well as vexing the audience with his open-mindedness and his innocence. Nick Carraway’s “innocent bystander” approach to his social life blends with his
It is clear that, out of the two gentleman, Tom and Gatsby, Nick would be on Gatsby's side. For most of the book, Tom is portrayed as the wicked and brut kind of a man. This may very well be the