Nick as a narrator
In the opening pages of the novel, as caraway struggles to establish his credibility as Narrator (and I write this with capital N), he informs the reader that he is 'inclined to reserve all judgements'There are contradictions and perplexities such as these which, when you read the first passage are easily ignored, because of the characteristic suave of his prose. The chronicle, whose nature and purpose is an act of judgement and whose very title is an evaluation - not jay Gatsby, not great Gatsby, but THE GREAT Gatsby...is begun by declaring the limitation to 'reserve all judgements'. The words are barely digested when we find him judging:'the abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality (tolerance) when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret grieves of wild, unknown men'the tone here is unmistakable - it is a combination of moral censure, self protection and final saving sympathy that marks Nick as an outsider who is nonetheless drawn to the life he is afraid to enter.Nick deplores Gatsby's 'appalling sentimentality', his 'universe of ineffable gaudiness'. Yet he occasionally and ultimat
Fitzgerald's literary realism (again I use this term 'realism' loosely) illustrates the moral irresponsibility of the affluent american society of the 20s. He did not know it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity behind the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night'Woe poor jay Gatsby - he 'believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. America at this time experienced a cultural and lifestyle revolution. In the economic arena, stocks boomed, the rich spent money on fabulous parties and expensive acquisitions, the automobile became a symbol of glamour and wealth, and profits were made, both legally and illegally. He delivered a pathetic epitaph 'the poor son of a bitch'Fitzgerald completes his commentary on Gatsby; 'his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. When Gatsby dies, he kills the promise that desire can ever be gratified. This acceptance of collaboration with Gatsby symbolizes not the greatness of Gatsby, but the dream itself. Fitzgerald proves that the work ethic and frugality that originally gave rise to American wealth have been replaced by a wasteful materialism. They are not a sign of god, as Wilson thinks, but only an advertisement - like the false promise of daisy's moneyed voice, or the green light at the end of her dock -invisible in the mist. just how substantial is it?As you all should know in reading the novel, daisy becomes the embodiment of this American dream, and almost instantly Gatsby fell in love with her. It was a shocking end for someone so Great, to die in a manner of misunderstanding, not even the characters of the novel thought it possible the Great Gatsby would end like this. In effect, caraway embodies all of the 'greatness' of Gatsby without the (supposed deliberate) moral faults and corruption. When jay gatz first met daisy, he realised that he had 'forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath.
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Acceptance Essays
