Great Gatsby: Is Nick a Reliable Narrator?

11/8/12 Is Nick a Reliable Narrator, Step 5: Rough Draft “Essay”

Is Nick a Reliable Narrator?

Nick Carraway, from the book The Great Gatsby, is a reliable narrator for the story because he uses lots of detail when he describes events or situations, he is able to give an exact date, time, and place, and not only does he give his side of the story, he can relay stories that other people tell him accurately. Nick can be trusted because of his attention to detail. He can be very accurate, even when he is telling another person’s story. While reading the story, the reader can come to realize that Nick is very sound, valid narrator because he describes everything with so much information and thoroughness. Nick has a great vocabulary, and his attention to detail is amazing. When he describes Gatsby’s parties, he gives the reader a great sense of what that event looks like, and what it might feel like if a person could truly be there. A perfect example of this ingenious imagery and detail is on page 40, “The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual introductions are made on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names. The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a higher key.” That as well as this example, an earlier paragraph also on page 40, “ By seven o’clock the orchestra had arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums” show that Nick is reliable because he is able to identify when the orchestra came, and how many instruments they were, what kind they were, and that he knows that the voices of people change throughout the night is crazy. If that isn’t reliable, what else is?
Another part showing how reliable the narrator is, is how he can name an exact place, at an exact time in the story. A lot of narrators are unable to do so sometimes, many just simply say, “It was near the baseball field”, or “I think around 8”. That is very anecdotal. Nick, whereas, give the reader information such as, “ We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon,” on page 28, and also on page 28, “At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long whit cake of apartment-houses.” More good example of this is on page 3, when he is explaining his life, “I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War.” In order to be reliable, a person must be accurate even in his places, dates, and times. Nick could have easily said, “ I graduated from a school in New York, sometime right before 1917.” Nick wants to be seen as a trustworthy person, and so he gives us exact information.
The final reason as to why Nick, the fine, young narrator, can be trusted when describing his story, is that he doesn’t just tell his own thoughts with accuracy, he can tell other’s as well. The most impressive moment of this is his re-telling of Jordan Baker’s account with Daisy and Gatsby on pages 74-77. He seems to relay it back to the readers just the same as Jordan told it to him. On page 74, Nick gives the reader the first glimpse of Jordan’s story, “The largest of the banners and the largest of the lawns belonged to Daisy Fay’s house. She was just eighteen, two years older than I, and by far the most popular of the young girls in Louisville. She dressed in white, and had a little white roadster, and all day long the telephone tang in her house and excited young officers from Camp Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that night.” To be able to not only tell your story with detail, but also someone else’s shows how reliable and trustworthy a person must be. Nick can describe all of his events with detail, as well as a date and time with ease, as well as explaining another person’s story’s within his own, shows that he is indeed a reliable author and narrator.