Is Nick a Good Narrator? the Great Gatsby

Is Nick a good Narrator? ESSAY THE GREAT GATSBY! PJD

As the teller of facts for all of his observations, Nick proves to be a reliable narrator for this story. He is unaffected by what goes on around him, despite people bringing him into personal situations. Nick is factual with details. He is as well, a very private person though, and tells us little of himself during the events. In telling us about his growing up years shows us that Nick has learned many admirable things. In Chapter 1 he tells us how he was raised and the advices given him by his father. These included council on how to speak to people in general. As quoted by Nick, his father told him “ ‘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 admits to us here that “In consequence I’m inclined to reserve all judgments”. He did not appear to like being drawn into drama and would avoid it at all cost. “The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality 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 griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought - frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon.” When describing events, Nick seems again unattached. He tells us what people wear, what they say and how they say it, with much emotion. On his own home in the affluent area that he had moved (Chapter 2) “My own house was an eye-sore, but it was a small eye-sore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires - all for eighty dollars a month. When he tells us about Tom he explains (Chapter 2) “His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.” When he introduces Daisy and Jordon for the first time in (Chapter 2) “The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored

Is Nick a good Narrator? ESSAY THE GREAT GATSBY! PJD

balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house.” he then goes on with further detail “The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless and with her chin raised a little as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in. The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression— then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.”The only time we see him express any real emotion is when he realizes that they are all sitting around doing a lot of nothing except to anger and upset each other and that not one person has wished him a ‘Happy Birthday’ that day. He himself, until that moment had forgotten that he turned 30 on that extraordinarily hot day (Chapter 7) “‘No ... I just remembered that today’s my birthday.’ I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous menacing road of a new decade.”

Nick’s privacy is highlighted in events that have taken place in the novel, but not carried forward with any great detail. Though he describes his college year, followed by his time in the army and going to war, he leaves a lot of personal things out. The first couple of things that stand out regarding his personal privacy. He makes friends with a co-worker and after knowing each other a very short time, the two decide to rent a house together in the country. The friend is shipped off to Washington by the firm immediately on renting “a weather beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month”. In that same paragraph, we learn that Nick has a dog with him “at least I had him for a few days until he ran away.” Nor does he talk about having a girlfriend out west or someone that he has befriended at very least, though in Chapter 2 after he meets his cousin Daisy, her husband (and Nick’s former classmate) Tom and their friend Jordan Baker (a

Is Nick a good Narrator? ESSAY THE GREAT GATSBY! PJD

professional golfer). Daisy suddenly says to Nick, as he is leaving “ ‘I forgot to ask you something, and it’s important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West.’ “ Nick wards of the question saying “ ‘It’s libel. I’m too poor.’ “ He then goes on privately that he was aware of this story, but that it was not true. He says “The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come east.” He only refers to the woman at hand as an “old friend”.

Nick spoke with clarity on the events of the summer. He described in detail, the costuming and events, the locations and people. Nick seemed unbiased and disconnected in an unemotional way, until the events of his own birthday. Overall, Nick seemed to have a good grasp of the people and events of that summer, while leaving details of himself to be determined.