The great Gatsby - Nick suddenly remembers his thirtieth birthday at a seemingly peculiar point in the novel - Why?

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Anna Paola Soliani 02/05/07

Nick suddenly remembers his thirtieth birthday at a seemingly peculiar point in the novel. Why?

In chapter VII of The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nick, the first person narrator in the novel, suddenly remembers that it is his thirtieth birthday. He, like Gatsby, Tom, and Daisy, the other characters of the novel, came East to get away from his past; now that he has turned thirty, his youth is officially over and he realizes that he may have made a mistake in coming East. This is why he begins a period of reevaluation that leads to his eventual decision to return to the Middle West.

The Great Gatsby is the story of Nick's initiation into life. His trip East gives him the education he needs to grow up. Nick is unlike the other characters of the book; he is not one of

the careless people. "[He is] one of the few honest people [he] has ever known." (60) He has a conscience, and is not selfish; he has decency, which is well demonstrated in the efforts he makes during Gatsby's funeral. His character shows how superficial Daisy and Tom are. He is a detached observer while being involved in the action. Because of these characteristics and because he has "left" youth by turning thirty during the course of the novel, it makes him more credible and can be taken more seriously, as he is not some immature, inexperienced man. Nick's rite of passage concludes in his decision in turning West. "When [he] came back from the East ... [he] felt that [he] wanted the world to be uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; [he] wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart." (2) Before, instead, he ignored the society around him: this is why he was only an observer of the events happening around him. Also, at first Nick didn't like Gatsby as a person because of his mysteriousness and way of doing. After his revelation, Nick says that "Gatsby had turned out all right in the end." (2) So, his turning thirty helps the reader to totally believe in his judgments.
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It is the first reference Nick makes to his own age in the book. As soon as he realizes that he has turned thirty, he has a revelation: Gatsby's dream has disintegrated and that he can't continue to live in the East because that is not his place. This revelation is possible for him to have because he refuses the alcohol offered to him by Tom Buchanan. Alcohol represents the shift from reality to illusion. Since he doesn't take the whiskey, he is objective and clear and realizes that his youth is officially over. "[He] was thirty. Before ...

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