Nick Carraway tells the story of The Great Gatsby, and also plays an honorable and trustful character in the novel. Throughout the story, developes and adjusts to life on the East Coast to better fit in the intellectual, rich and snobby East and West Eggs of Long Island. As a narrator, Nick is an observer and analyzes all the people he meets, always learning more about his new home and its population.
He gives many long descriptive passages referring to these, and thanks to his honesty he provides an analysis unparalleled to that of any another possible narrator. He may not be the main character of the story, but he manages to bring the two main characters of the novel together, and represents the missing link between the obsessive Jay Gatsby and the pretty yet vain Daisy Buchanan. “Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn’t even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come east (p. 24)”.
Nick arrives on Long Island from the Midwest, and being a bit out of his element as an innocent, traditional and conservative type of person from a typical Midwestern lifestyle, he stays informed but uninvolved at first in order to analyze the people he comes across. He builds confidence and responsibility amidst his peers, does not become selfish, and begins to involve himself with the main characters in a positive way. He aspires to somewhat arrange the conflicts going on without showing his opinion to them and while keeping his honorable integrity.
His thoughts and opinions are kept to himself, and this is effective because no character develops a hatred towards him at all, and the reader gets to know everything without someone in the story getting offended. Our narrator develops a more tolerant, mature, and human personality and becomes more comfortable and important throughout the novel. Despite living in a horribly corrupt society full of careless rich people, he does not turn out like his acquaintances and the corruption fails to influence his middle-class personality. For example, Daisy Buchanan was born into corruption and it shows through her immorality and superficiality.
As for her husband Tom, Nick is a total opposite of him for Tom isn’t responsible, he is conceited, filthy rich, dishonest, and careless. Nick does tolerate them though, and this tolerance leads to a relationship with Jordan Baker, who has social status very similar to that of Daisy’s. He does not give many details of the relationship however, which is another sign of his admirable humbleness.
He has this relationship at the same time that Gatsby and Daisy are having an affair, and we do not learn much of this either, which perhaps is due to Nick’s immense respect for Gatsby. I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd (p. 53)”. Gatsby may be strong, adolescent-like, vulgar and a bit intimidating just like Tom, but Nick admires him for his elegance, unselfishness, eloquence and ambition. Nick is something of a role model in this novel. Among the main characters, he is the only one who is honest. He is the outsider, and all the people he associates with are corrupted and immoral. Even Gatsby whom he has respect for is often a teenager at heart who is madly obsessed with Daisy.
For example, after Myrtle Wilson’s death, Gatsby pays no mind to Myrtle’s dead body, yet he worries about the minor injuries Daisy might have sustained in the accident. Nick is the lone character with any real values or responsibilities as well as the lone character to make any progress from a personality standpoint in the story. “This is the valley of ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where the ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air (p. 3)”. Having Nick as a narrator works very well for several reasons. He is an outsider to this world of corruption, this “valley of ashes”, thus he is perfect (especially towards the beginning of the story) for an analysis of the new terrain, and could give the reader a better description of the setting and characters than any other kind of narrator (omniscient for example).
In addition to this, Nick tells us little or nothing concerning everyday things and other redundant or unimportant events occurring during the story, and he chooses to concentrate more on giving profound descriptions and portraits and using elaborate vocabulary in his monologues in order to reate some sort of ambiance. Jay Gatsby had a dream that had obsessed him even before the story began: Daisy Buchanan. His life is nearly devoted to wooing her. He begins the story innocent as well, but Daisy does not leave his mind once during his presence in the novel. There is an important bond that eventually forms, and Daisy and Gatsby have an affair.
This bond, ironically enough, could not have been possible had it not been for the new guy in town. Nick enables this affair to work, manages to satisfy Gatsby’s dream, and therefore he accomplishes omething very important for a character that is also a narrator and a newcomer at the same time. Nick’s role in the story following this is greatly increased, and his importance in the plot becomes greater than anyone else’s with the exception of Jay Gatsby. By the time Nick Carraway escapes the idiocy of the East Coast in order to avoid a possible destruction of himself, he has made a huge impact on the story of The Great Gatsby.
He made a dream come true, and bettered himself considerably. Through his development during the novel, he becomes the most intelligent character of the story, unique and full of responsibility. Amidst his fellow East and West Eggers, he is the only one who turns out to have any real values or morals. Nick as a narrator is very effective for his descriptive style of analyzing people and places is solid and he describes the necessary and intriguing parts of the story while omitting useless or redundant occurrences . Nick is the model citizen in The Great Gatsby.
