Nick Carraway’s narration takes the reader into his confidence; he describes significant experiences in an almost voyeuristic way. Nicks narrative style uses elaborate and very mature vocabulary that gives extra depth and description to his account; drawing the reader further into the story. Additionally Nick’s tone creates a sense of authority and immediacy which encourages the reader to read on.
However Nick’s style is challenging; his sentences can be complex, and his vocabulary can be difficult to understand. This could be due to him being an aspiring writer and wishes to impress the reader with his written style.
Nick is a participant in the novel with his own specific characteristics therefore his narration is not a neutral affair. In reading the Great Gatsby we need to be aware of what he is disclosing about others. The technique of extreme selectivity demands from the reader close attention, since the narrative is one view point. This perspective can greatly affect our reading of the text. The narrator can position us to like or dislike certain characters. For example Tom is “a brute of a man” and Gatsby an inspirational figure.
The first person narrative is limited in perspective, therefore his opinions maybe biased. The reader has to distance there trust from the narrator.
Nick has ambivalent feelings toward Gatsby; he both loves him and is critical of him.
Though Gatsby represents all that Nick holds in contempt, Nick cannot help but think highly of him. He dislikes Gatsby crass and vulgar materialism, but admires him for his dream, his “romantic readiness”, his “extraordinary gift for hope”, and his “gorgeous” personality. Nick uses these adjectives to present us with a character that has a genuine American dream, who believes in the promises of life; and had the amazing ability to thrive on his beliefs and try to obtain what he desired. Gatsby’s personal dream symbolises the larger American dream “the pursuit of happiness”. Gatsby clearly poses a challenge to Nick’s customary ways of thinking about the world, and Nick’s struggle to come to terms with that challenge influences everything in the novel.
Nick makes the distinction between Gatsby whom he loved for his aspiration and the other characters who constitute the “foul dust” that floated in the “wake of his dreams”. This suggests they have “marred” Gatsby’s dream. Nick has such scorn for these “eastern” types that he has left the East and returned to the Mid West. ; Where he is able to reflect upon the past few years. Nick declares, with irony that in going East he briefly became a ‘guide, a path finder, an original settler’.
Nick also introduces us to his family who have been “prominent, well-to-do people”; claiming descent from the dukes of Buccleuch, a wealthy and humble “clan”. That has maintained family tradition by remaining in the “wholesale hardware business”. Although it is ironic that the Carraway’s wealth is based upon cheating similar to how Gatsby obtained his wealth. As if the American dream can only be successful through corruption.
Nick however decides to join the bond business and has the support of his father who agrees to finance him for a year. Nick appears to the reader as a person that wants change and has a new hope of building his own future without being too dependent on his father or the family business. This reflects the American dream of new hope and change.
The American dream arose in the colonial period and developed in the nineteenth century – was based on the assumption that each person, no matter what there origins, could succeed in life on the basis of his or her own skill and effort. The dream was embodied in the ideal of the self made-man.
Having told us about his relationships, Nick now introduces us to the world in which he lived in during the summer of 1922: the world of East Egg and West egg, long island.
“Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay”
Throughout the novel, places and settings epitomize the various aspects of the 1920s American society that F Scott Fitzgerald depicts. The first chapter introduces two of the most important locales, East Egg and West Egg. The two regions are nearly opposite in the values they endorse.
East egg represents the old aristocracy, West Egg the newly rich, the valley of ashes, the moral and social decay of America and New York City, the uninhibited, a moral quest for money and pleasure. Additionally, the East is connected to the moral decay and social cynicism of New York, while the West is connected to more traditional social values and ideas.
There is irony as both eggs are located on the East Coast and further irony arises from the name ‘eggs’, they seem to promise new life, the term implies something that is in the early stages of development and is fertile or fragile. But in fact they are sterile rocks.
The East Egg is associated with the Buchanan’s and the tedium of their inherited social position; East Egg is like a fairy land containing the primary colour of white, and Nick calls it houses “white palaces” that glitter in the sunlight. Its name carries with it connotations of Americans Frontier past.
While the West Egg is associated with Gatsby’s gaudy mansion; and the inner drive behind his self – made fortune. The unworkable intersection of the two eggs in the romance between Gatsby and Daisy will serve as the fault line of catastrophe.
The story opens In East Egg on the night Nick drives over to have dinner with Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Daisy is Nick’s cousin and Tom had been in the same senior society at Yale. Their house is “a white Georgian colonial mansion”, over looking the bay. It is ironic that their house is an imitation of grand houses of Europe. Its appears that America world is not so new but plagiaristic
F. Scott Fitzgerald is developing the novel’s thematic concern with the relationship between the New world and the Old world, European prestige and American money.
The Buchanan’s have spent a year in France, not on war service, but in pursuit of pleasure (p11). F Scott Fitzgerald describes them as wealthy drifters, unsettled and with out direction their social set shares this purposelessness. They are care free and exploit their wealth.
Their way of life establishes a sharp contrast with the schedule of self – discipline drawn up by young James Gatz and displayed with pride by his father following Gatsby death (p.159 chapter 9).
Nick uses descriptions of rich detail which reveal key aspects of characters that Nick provides for our assistance; and dialogue that allows us to review the narrator’s opinion as honest or biased.
We are able to see these signs of characters evident through the language use or the tone of delivery. For example;
“Most powerful ends that ever played football…….a national figure…….who reached …an acute limited excellence at twenty one”
Nicks opinion of Tom conveys a physically powerful and extremely wealthy character; who is an amazing sportsman.
This appears to be an honest perception of tom that supports our first view of when we meet him (p.12). Fitzgerald reveals a very potent man standing in riding cloths with his legs apart on his front porch. He likes his power, and like the emperor of eastern kingdoms, he expects the obedience of his subjects.
It is not only through character status that wealth is symbolised but also through the colour such as “gold”.
Towards the end of page 9 the reader is given a sense of time and a positive idea of how the modern world is progressing, through the metaphor of “growing trees” and the “burst of leaves” creating new life that has potential just like the American Dream.
“Fast movies” (p.9) and the “telephone” (p.12) symbolise the Twentieth –century technological environment. The growth of cinemas, cars, boats is recognised by the twenties as a decade of mass media and mass production in America. The novel raises the issue of individual worth in such a context.
In contrast to this materialistic world, Daisy’s name evokes a delicate flower. The irony here is that her life is conducted in an entirely manufactured environment, distant from the natural world.
The key structure of the chapter is the combination of first person narrative and the gradual revelation of the past.
