Nick Carraway is a fairly straightforward man, but his character is lacking in depth and background. Self proclaimed to be moral and tolerant, Carraway’s character contains a small amount of pretentiousness, presumably from his wealthy background. Carraway is the type of person who is fairly down to earth, but will subtly brag every now and again, despite his self-image. Carraway has his merits, and he also seems to be smart. Graduating from Yale, Carraway has many connections on East Egg and he pays very close attention to the people he encounters. He only encounters a few people in chapter 1 but he is easily able to characterize each and every one of them, pointing out flaws and clues that the others may not have noticed. Jordan’s obvious boredom is immediately apparent to Nick, just like Daisy’s shallowness. He knows that these girls have deeper personalities, but something is holding them back from expressing themselves. Carraway builds his credibility by pointing out these things, things that an average person wouldn’t pick up on, making Carraway the perfect narrator in this story. Nick leaves Tom’s house disturbed, likely due to the broken people he just encountered. Despite his attention to detail, Carraway has questions about many people on the island, especially Gatsby. Gatsby is introduced but is only seen once, foreshadowing that he is going to be a major character later on. Carraway does a great job illustrating this, pointing out that Gatsby looked disturbed in his yard. This small detail leads to a lot of open ended questions that cannot immediately be answered such as “Why is Gatsby disturbed?” and “Who is this strange man?” Even though Gatsby is unrelated to Carraway at this point, Nick is still drawn to this mysterious man, building Carraway’s character. For a man who thinks he’s seen and knows it all, Gatsby is an outlier. An outlier that may go on to change the very way that Carraway thinks and knows himself to be.
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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
May 2015
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