Nick Carraway is the
novel’s narrator. Nick is a young man from Minnesota who, after being educated
at Yale and fighting in World War I, goes to New York City to learn the bond
business. He lives in the West Egg district of Long Island, next door to
Gatsby. Nick is also Daisy’s cousin, which enables him to observe and assist
the resurgent love affair between Daisy and Gatsby. As a result of his
relationship to these two characters, Nick is the perfect choice to narrate the
novel. Nick is also well suited to narrating The
Great Gatsby because of his
temperament. He is tolerant, open-minded, quiet, and a good listener, and, as a
result, others tend to talk to him and tell him their secrets. Gatsby, in
particular, comes to trust him and treat him as a confidant. Nick generally
assumes a secondary role throughout the novel, preferring to describe and
comment on events rather than dominate the action. Nick evidences a strongly
mixed reaction to life on the East Coast, one that creates a powerful internal conflict
that he does not resolve until the end of the book. On the one hand, Nick is
attracted to the fast-paced, fun-driven lifestyle of New York. On the other
hand, he finds that lifestyle grotesque and damaging. This inner conflict is
symbolized throughout the book by Nick’s romantic affair with Jordan Baker. He
is attracted to her vivacity and her sophistication just as he is repelled by
her dishonesty and her lack of consideration for other people. After witnessing
the unraveling of Gatsby’s dream and presiding over the appalling spectacle of
Gatsby’s funeral, Nick realizes that the fast life of revelry on the East Coast
is a cover for the terrifying moral emptiness that the valley of ashes
symbolizes. Having gained the maturity that this insight demonstrates, he
returns to Minnesota in search of a quieter life structured by more traditional
moral values.
Who is Nick
Carraway?
Well, according to his bio, he grew up in family of
"prominent, well-to-do people" in Chicago, and his family has a fun
little tradition of calling themselves the decendents of the "Dukes of Buccleuch," even though they actually made
their money two generations ago in the "wholesale hardware business" . He went Yale; he likes literature and considers himself one of those
"limited" specialists known as a "well-rounded man"; he
fought in World War I, which he found kind of exciting; and now he's moved East
to work in the bond business (that is, finance) in New York City.
Those may be the facts, but they don't actually give
us much insight into his personality. We learn more about him from the way he
talks than what he says. Like this: we find out that he's connected to wealthy
(as opposed to simply well-to-do) and important people, like his cousin Daisy
and Tom, a college acquaintance, but he isn't one of them: his house is a
"small eyesore," even though it offers him the "consoling
proximity of millionaires" .
Check out that "consoling proximity": Nick
is being a little self-deprecating, mocking himself for thinking that being
near rich people makes up for the fact that his house is small and ugly. At the
same time—doesn't he believe it, just a little? Doesn't he seem to enjoy being
around the wealthy, careless people who party at Gatsby's house?
In the end, Nick Carraway's perch on the outside of
these lofty social circles gives him a good view of what goes on inside; he has
a particularly sharp and sometimes quite judgmental eye for character, and
isn't afraid to use it.
No More Mr. Nice Guy
Nick calls himself "one of the few honest people
that I have ever known" , but that doesn't mean he's very nice.
Nick may be polite and easy to get along with on the outside, but he's not
afraid to tell it like it is. Nick still seems to see himself as a good
Midwestern boy with high standards for everyone he meets, including himself,
and prides himself on maintaining his standards, even in the corrupt,
fast-moving world of East coast high society.
And that actually brings us to our first "hey,
wait a minute" moment.
Check out what Nick says at the beginning. He treats
us to a little down-home wisdom that his own father passed along:
"Whenever you feel like criticizing
any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this
world haven't had the advantages that you've had."
He didn't say any more, but we've always
been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant
a great deal more than that. In consequence, I'm inclined to reserve all
judgments […].
Nick has told us that he reserves judgment, and he's
also told us that he's honest. So why does it seem that the entire book
consists of him judging one person after another? Gatsby represents everything
that makes Nick feel "unaffected scorn" ; Tom and Daisy are "careless
people" ; Jordan is "incurably dishonest" .
If you ask us, sounds like someone might not be
entirely honest about himself. In fact, it's dishonest Jordan who realizes it.
During the course of the novel, Nick gradually gets sucked into the world he's
observing, both through his friendships (if you can call them that) with Tom,
Daisy, and Gatsby, and through his romantic relationship with Jordan. The
deeper he's drawn into these relationships, the less honest he becomes – until
at the end, Jordan rebukes him for being just as dishonest and careless as the
rest of them:
"You said a bad driver was only safe
until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I? I
mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were
rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret
pride."
Change of Heart
If you wanted to be charitable, you could say that
Nick realizes he's being drawn into a dishonest lifestyle, and that's what
makes him scurry back West. Right after Jordan calls him a "bad
driver," he tells her, "I'm thirty … I'm five years too old to lie to
myself and call it honor" . But what is Nick lying about? That he
loves her? That he belongs in this world? That Tom and Daisy are living
acceptable lives? It's not entirely clear. What is clear
is that this crazy summer has jolted Nick back into real life. He's not cut out
for a world of moral ambiguity.
But is that because he's got more than his share of
the "fundamental decencies" , as he "snobbishly" says
at the beginning of the book? Or is it because he, like Tom and Daisy, is
careless, fleeing the mess he's made? Or because he finally realizes that
there's no real difference between himself and Gatsby? Look at what he says
about returning West:
When I came back from the East last autumn
I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral
attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses
into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was
exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an
unaffected scorn.
Nick is saying that he doesn't want to deal with the
immorality of the high society kids he's been hanging around with. But he
excludes Gatsby from that scorn. Why?
Well, maybe Nick and Gatsby aren't all that different.
Both of them want access to a world that they weren't born to; both of them
came by their wealth in slightly déclassé ways. Sure, Gatsby was a
bootlegger—but Nick's family came by their money selling hardware and then
invented a fake story about having ducal blood. If there's a difference (okay,
besides the fact that bootlegging is illegal), we're not sure what it is.
No, Really, Who Is
Nick?
Is he a morally upright honest narrator, giving us an
unflinching look at the consequences of unbridled wealth? Or is he
fundamentally untrustworthy, blinded by his admiration of wealth and glamor,
and his own failed attempts to access the world of the rich and famous? And has
he really learned anything from his experience?
We're not sure about the first question, but we think
we might have some clues to the last. Nick exposes Gatsby's obsession with a
fantasy. The Daisy he loves no longer exists, and trying to reach five years
back in time ends up killing him.
You'd think that this lesson would make Nick wary of
continually returning to the past. Instead, what has he done? Written an entire
book about it. He may want to return to the West, to the way things were before
he went East. Unfortunately for Nick, it looks like he may not be able to go
home again.
