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Effectiveness of Narration in The Great Gatsby
The narrator often takes a pivotal role in the development of a story. Narrators are used as a literary device to extract important viewpoints throughout the scenes in a novel. When the “first person narrative” is used, the feelings, knowledge, viewpoint, and bias are revealed correspondingly through the narrator’s experiences. The readers must first understand the narrator’s unique role in order to fully comprehend the essence of the story. In the novel, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the first person narrator Nick Carraway effectively engages the readers through contradictions in his voice, corruptions of people, and relationships between people during the 1920s in America.
Nick presents contradictions in his voice to clarify crucial events in the novel. The reliability of the narrator is questioned through his self-introductory in chapter one, where he states that he is “inclined to reserve all judgments” (19)1, but later contradicts himself by saying “a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth” (19). This specious speech creates a doubt that forces the reader to think and make judgments critically when Nick describes something. Nick goes to a party in New York that is hosted by his friend, Tom Buchanan and his mistress, Myrtle Wilson. Nick feels uncomfortable, “I tried to show my expression that I had played no part in her past” (43), when Myrtle discursively included him in an argument. However, he still feels obligated to stay since he became “entangled in some wild strident argument” (44). Nick attracts the readers’ attention by acting as a perfect example of people’s prosperous desires of wealth and attention in the “Roaring Twenties”. As Nick uses his own biased feelings toward every character in the novel, contradiction between his descriptions and their personalities are shown. After George Wilson, Myrtle’s husband, finds out she is betraying him, he looks extremely sick. According to Nick’s description, he is “so sick that he looked guilty, unforgivably guilty” (111). A contradiction becomes apparent when Nick compares Wilson to Tom, who seems to juxtapose George’s sickness for being “well” (111). These descriptions by the narrator hints to the readers that the reality of this contrast is the opposite, as Tom should have been the sick one because he lacks spiritual and moral values from what he has done. Readers are also led to see the brutal viewpoints in the 1920s of the strong over the weak, and the superiority of the wealthier, Tom, in this acrimonious encounter. In one of Gatsby’s big parties, Nick describes Daisy’s voice as “music in a husky, rhythmic whisper” (99). His profound imagination of Daisy’s voice attracts readers’ attention to its pulchritude features, which is just the opposite of the repugnant reality. This obvious contradiction influences the reader to compare the differences between dream and reality. Through these contradictions presented by Nick, exploitations of people are also exposed.
