Nick Carraway In The Great Gatsby

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Nick Carraway has a very important role in The Great Gatsby, and he is a unique character with a purpose. Nick is the narrator of the story, and while he’s a character, he hasn’t advanced the plot very much so far. He comes from a different background than other characters in the story, because he comes from new money (his family or he himself earned his wealth) and the Midwest, while other characters like Gatsby and the Buchanans come from old money (they have always been rich). So, Nick feels out of place among the other characters, especially those from East Egg, who come from old money. This is important for his narration, because like he feels out of place with the people in the story, he’s also detached from the story and doesn’t influence…show more content…
Nick says he is “one of the few honest people [he] has ever known,” and while he has been honest, we can see that he is flawed. For example, he says in chapter one that he is “inclined to reserve all judgements,” but he also says that Gatsby “[represents] everything for which [Nick] has unaffected scorn,” (Page 2), which means that Gatsby stands for everything that Nick hates, so Nick clearly isn’t actually free from making judgements about people even though he tries to be. He genuinely believes that it’s best to not judge others, but he doesn’t always live up to that belief. For someone who is so against dishonesty, he doesn’t really seem to care that much, because after he realized that Jordan was “incurably dishonest,” he quickly dismissed it because of his infatuation with her – “It made no difference to me. Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply—I was casually sorry, and then I forgot” (Page 58). We can see that Nick has a desire to be virtuous, and while he has his strengths, he is also a hypocrite. His dishonesty and hypocrisy has been relatively unproblematic so far, but it could have consequences for the rest of the
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