Discuss Nick Carraway's character. How reliable is he as a narrator? What aspects of his character make him an effective narrator?
Nick Carraway is not only a character in the novel The Great Gatsby, he is also the narrator. This is very important because it makes him a central figure, like Gatsby. He is so involved in the plot that he becomes quite important and significant in the story. The whole novel is told by Nick and in a way he discovers his own development throughout the events of the book. As Nick says of himself, he is "both within and without." This is related to the fact that he is both a character and a narrator in the story. It gives a great success as to how Gatsby's story is told.
Nick is a young man from Minnesota who moves to New York in the spring of 1922 to learn about the "bond business." The bond business refers to Nick's …show more content…
His own moral sense is held back. Nick's ancestry roots in the Middle West are the origin of his moral capacity. The Buchanans, Jordan and mainly Gatsby all lack these traditions. This is shown by the way they transfer in a meaningless way from place to place or party to party. When Nick decides to go back to the Middle East, he is symbolically returning to a world of moral rights and personal tradition. His reason for moving back to the Midwest was to escape the disgust he feels for the people surrounding Gatsby and his life.
Nick greatly admires Gatsby, despite the fact that Gatsby represents everything Nick disrespects about New York. He also says at the end of the novel that he "disapproved of him from beginning to end." This in a way is interesting because he makes no secret of his own reservations. Gatsby evidently possesses a challenge to Nick's usual ways of thinking about the world, and Nick's struggle to come to terms with that challenge changes everything in the