Consequences of Nick Carraway as Narrator of F. Scott Fitzgeralds The

The Importance of Nick Carraway as Narrator of The corking Gatsby In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald critiques the disillusionment of the American Dream by contrasting the rot of those who adopt a superficial lifestyle with the honesty of Nick Carraway. As Carraway familiarizes himself with the lives of Tom and Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker and Jay Gatsby, he realizes the false seductiveness of the New York lifestyle and regains view for the Midwest he left behind. Fitzgerald needs an objective narrator to verbalise and prove this criticism, and uses Carraway not only as the point of view reference work, alone in addition as a counter example to the immorality and imposition Carraway finds in New York (Bewley 31). Fitzgerald must construct this narrator as reliable. payable to the nature of the novel, the ref would not believe the story if it were told from the perspective of each other character. Fitzgerald cannot expect the reader to believe what the immoral and careless c haracters drive home to say, and he spends so much time establishing them as such. Thus, Carraway is deemed narrator and the reader trusts him. As the practical character in the novel, Carraway is not rash he is not swayed by the greed and alcohol as some other members of East and West Egg society are. He proclaims, I bind been drunk just twice in my life (Fitzgerald 33). Fitzgerald constructs Carraway as a follower, not a man of action. He observes Gatsbys parties, never seriousy experiencing them. He observes the moment before the kiss between the starlet and her director, although Fitzgerald never details the animalism of his relationship with Baker. He observes the affair between Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson, solely he never confronts Tom Buchanan, nor does he e... ...y to tell the story, but also to critique the mass disillusionment with the American Dream. Carraways honesty makes him ideal to gift all that the Buchanans lack and legitimizes his admiration of Gatsby. No reader would consider the full impact of Fitzgeralds themes had less attention been given to the creation and execution of the character of Carraway. Works Cited and Consulted Bewley, Marius. Scott Fizgeralds Criticism of America. Bloomington Indiana UP, 1983. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York Macmillan Publishing Company, 1992. Hobsbawm, Eric. The board of Extremes. New York Pantheon, 1994. Raleigh, John Henry. F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby. Trilling 99-103. Trilling, Lionel. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgeralds Great Gatsby. Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston Hall, 1984. 13-20.