Through Nick Carraway as the novel's narrator, Fitzgerald
achieves numerous literary purposes. Here are a few of the most important
ones:
1. In structuring the novel in Nick's retrospective
point of view, mystery and suspense are created. Whatever happened in the summer of 1922
continues to haunt Nick and was responsible for his returning from the East, even though
he had intended to stay and pursue a new career. Also, the mysteries of Gatsby's
character are solved slowly throughout the novel; readers learn the truth about Gatsby
as Nick uncovers it, one piece at a time.
2. Nick functions
in the novel as an "outsider," a Midwesterner who finds himself living among the wealthy
in a culture very foreign to him. He soon becomes drawn into the personal lives of
Gatsby, Jordan, and the Buchanans. He is both observer and participant, but Nick does
not lose his own identity, which is grounded in Midwestern values; instead he becomes a
moral contrast to the others and the voice of morality in the
novel.
3. The novel's major theme is developed through
Nick. His ultimate contempt for Tom and Daisy and his going home to the Midwest express
the novel's condemnation of the corruption of the American Dream as represented by the
moral corruption of the Eastern establishment upper
class.
4. Nick serves as a functional character in the
plot, also. He serves as the means to bring Daisy and Gatsby together. He has a history
with Daisy, he lives next door to Gatsby, and he falls into a relationship with Jordan
Baker, Daisy's friend who was present during Daisy's love affair with Gatsby in
Louisville. Fitzgerald positions Nick in these ways to arrange the reunion between
Gatsby and Daisy and to become a party to their secret summer affair so that he can
relate and interpret Gatsby's feelings for readers.
Nick
Carraway tells the story but also plays a very significant role in it. He is a major
character in developing the plot, structure, conflicts, contrasts, and themes in the
novel.
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