ipl-logo

How Did Nick Carraway Achieve In The Great Gatsby

1179 Words5 Pages

Meaningless Pursuites
In F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel, The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway is a man who, like many in the 1920s, is searching for meaning and purpose in life. Nick leaves his hometown in the Midwest and moves to New York City, hoping to immerse himself in the glamorous world of the wealthy elite. It is there that he meets the charismatic figure Jay Gatsby, who embodies Nick's desires and aspirations for love and wealth. In this essay, we will explore Nick Carraway's dream of finding meaning and purpose in life, how he achieved that dream, and what the author was trying to communicate through Nick's pursuit of his dream. Nick, the narrator of The Great Gatsby, pursues his dream of finding meaning and purpose in life by moving …show more content…

He decides to return to his hometown in the Midwest, recognizing that the true meaning and purpose in life lie in more simple and authentic experiences. For example, Nick realizes that this meaningless mission has destroyed the natural beauty and wonder of the land around him, "I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes - a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder." (Fitzgerald 182) He recognizes that he has become caught up in this pursuit, but that it ultimately leads to emptiness and a loss of meaning. This realization is a key turning point for Nick's character and sets him on a path of self-reflection and contemplation. Additionally, Nick realizes that the extravagant and artificial lifestyle of the East, centered around wealth and status, is ultimately hollow and unfulfilling and decides to return to his hometown in the Midwest. "I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all - Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life." (Fitzgerald 177) In contrast, he sees the Midwest as a place of authenticity and simplicity, where people lead meaningful lives based on genuine connections and relationships. This realization marks a significant shift in Nick's perspective and values and signals his rejection of the superficial and empty world

Show More
Related

How Does Nick Carraway Create Tension In The Great Gatsby

820 Words | 4 Pages

A young man named Nick Carraway who is immensely impressionable and taken advantage of narrates the Great Gatsby. Throughout the book, you learn that Nick is a follower. Nick follows Tom Buchanan, Jordan Baker, and Jay Gatsby around like a lost dog. He is obviously obliviously impressionable and lost within himself. For Nicholas to improve himself and his lifestyle he should do all of the following things: make boundaries, build his self-confidence and esteem, find out who his real friends are, and not let other people take advantage of him.

Read More

How Does Nick Carraway Mature In The Great Gatsby

1133 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, although the title of the story bears the name of Gatsby, we hear the story from Nick Carraway, making him the most important character in the story, through his growth, his beliefs and opinions, and his relationships. F. Scott Fitzgerald puts Nick Carraway in the center of the story, rather than Gatsby, through Nick’s narration of the story. Nick grows to understand the people around him more, and grows in his narration. Because he is constantly around people, he comes to understand them more and he comes to ‘mature’ over the course of the story. When we first are introduced to Nick, we see some advice that he got from his father a long time ago.

Read More

Nick Carraway Routine In The Great Gatsby

785 Words | 4 Pages

Nick seems not to be oblivious to his sadness, although he lacks knowledge about the cause of the emotion, for he admits that dinner alone at the Yale Club is, “for some reason [,]…the gloomiest event of [his] day” (62). After dinner, Nick studies in the library, which he considers a quiet and “good place to work”, although he does mention that “there generally a few rioters”, which contradict Nick’s purpose for studying there, because if Nick really didn’t want to be disturbed he would go home (62). After studying for about an hour, “if the night [is] mellow” Nick restlessly “strolls around” the avenues and although among many, he still “[feels] a haunting loneliness” and can “[feel] it in others”(62). However, Fitzgerald relates Nick’s loneliness to that of “young clerks”, who “wast[e] the most poignant moments of night and life” “loitering” and waiting around for people to come and provide work for them, which parallels Nick’s own method of wasting time and waiting for people to provide him with something to

Read More

Examples Of Diction In The Great Gatsby

716 Words | 3 Pages

Fitzgerald writes, “After Gatsby’s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes’ power of correction” (188). He uses negative connotated diction such as the words “haunted” and “distorted”. Nick reflects over his experience in the East, feeling a sense of despair and sorrow as a result of the events and his interactions with the cast of characters. By choosing to pursue the American Dream, he ultimately got entangled with the other characters and unfortunately Gatsby. With Gatsby’s demise, the American Dream perished along with him, eliminating the possibility of happiness and success for everyone who was involved with him.

Read More

West Egg In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

708 Words | 3 Pages

Nick’s American Dream was the opposite of Gatsby’s; he always strived to see and do new things every day, constantly reaching for the future, while Gatsby only wanted to relive his past with Daisy. Once Nick feels like there is nothing left for him to discover in New York, he moves back west to rediscover the lost excitement after Gatsby’s death. Nick also believed that Gatsby was foolish in his American Dream because it was unattainable. Nick uses imagery to illustrate the appeal of West Egg before Gatsby’s death, describing the illusions of “those gleaming, dazzling parties”, stating that he could “still hear the music and the laughter, faint and incessant” (Fitzgerald 179).

Read More

Who Is Nick Carroway Selfish In The Great Gatsby

721 Words | 3 Pages

Society has given birth to several great individuals who pursue great dreams. These individuals rely heavily on their personalities and accomplishments to be considered great. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby finds great amounts of money and success following his own desired journey rooting from nothing. Daisy Buchanan, the love of his dreams, is Gatsby’s main goal for pushing through life, willing to go to any lengths to gain her love back. Nick Carroway, a close friend to Gatsby, analyzes how Gatsby portrays his personality and actions through close observation.

Read More

The Great Gatsby Rhetorical Analysis

293 Words | 2 Pages

Acclaimed writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald, in his novel’s resolution, The Great Gatsby portrays Nick’s closure of the most dramatic chapter in his life with Jay Gatsby’s death. Fitzgerald’s purpose is to highlight Gatsby’s absence and Nick’s grieving to acceptance attitude. He utilizes detailed imagery and a chronological organization to create an attitude of grieving to resignation in Nick and indicate the audience the impact that Gatsby had on his life. Fitzgerald opens his description of Nick’s attitude by narrating how significant was Gatsby for him. He portrays Gatsby’s impact by establishing that Nick had to stay in New York to not “hear the music and the laughter” of the “gleaming, dazzling parties of his [Gatsby]” (187).

Read More

Examples Of Greed In The Great Gatsby

527 Words | 3 Pages

“Gatsby goes to spectacular lengths to try to achieve what Nick Carraway calls “his incorruptible dream” (Sutton1). Gatsby’s moral decline through his life shows his failed attempt at the American dream. “The collapse of Gatsby’s attempt to win Daisy proves that dreams, money, and blind faith in life’s possibilities, are not enough for a man to reach his goals”

Read More

Nick Carraway's Deception In The Great Gatsby

1201 Words | 5 Pages

Nick had attempted to escape from this lifestyle but because he was unable to make a complete decision in the beginning, he kept living it through the Buchanans; they were Nick’s window to the past. He witnesses Tom’s affair being “insisted upon wherever he was known” (21) without shame, and Daisy “[turn] out the light” (117) in her relationship with Gatsby, as it it never happened. A quiet bystander, never interfering, he experiences their life of ignorance, one with no repercussions, the one he had. Unwilling to remove himself from them, he instead complies to their wants, their decisions that create a sense of accomplishment. Doing nothing to change and move on from his past, Nick makes his choice to move to the east pointless.

Read More

What Are Nick Carraway's Motives For The American Dream

1053 Words | 5 Pages

The place that Nick wants to be in his life that he will qualify as his version of the American dream is to be where Gatsby is. He looks up to Gatsby and wants what he has, and feels that he is already losing time to get there. Nick fears that he will never get to where he wants to be and that he

Read More

Research Paper On The Great Gatsby

897 Words | 4 Pages

A “rare [smile] with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced – or seemed to face – the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.” (Fitzgerald 48). Nick’s American Dream seems to become just like Gatsby and to live his life.

Read More

Persuasive Essay On The Great Gatsby

431 Words | 2 Pages

“The Great Gatsby” from the outside seem like another twisted love story with a happy ending but as the book goes on it show its true color of a fail dream. Nick Carraway is the narrator of this timeless classic where he narrates of his life with Gatsby. On the ending pages, Nick summarizes how through Gatsby futile chasing it showed how no matter what's happened he is prepared to keep going and Nick’s insight is showing what people back then believes in: “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning—so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back carelessly into the past” (Fitzgerald 180).

Read More

Great Gatsby Essay

547 Words | 3 Pages

The Great Gatsby is a powerful classic novel written in the 1920s by talented and marvellous writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. This story has a powerful message, as it is about the lives of two characters, Nick Carraway, and Jay Gatsby, both who in the end lose, despite them both being “worth the whole bunch,” in the words of Nick. They both lose at the end of the novel. The ending of the heartbreaking novel has resonated with me, and stayed by my side, in a way that I believe it will never leave. Jay Gatsby, a business tycoon, a fraud, and a criminal, had one goal in mind, to make enough money to win over the one woman he has ever loved.

Read More

The Great Gatsby Passage Analysis

951 Words | 4 Pages

In the last passage of The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the reader gains insight into Gatsby’s life through the reflections of Nick Carraway. These reflections provide a summary of Gatsby’s life and also parallel the main themes in the novel. Through Fitzgerald’s use of diction and descriptions, he criticizes the American dream for transformation of new world America from an untainted frontier to a corrupted industrialized society. In the novel, Fitzgerald never mentions the phase “American Dream,” however the idea is significant to the story.

Read More

Literary Analysis Of The Great Gatsby

1218 Words | 5 Pages

The Great Gatsby Literary Analysis “They were careless people…” says Nick Carraway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby. In a story depicting the 1920s during a time of prosperity, growth, and the emergence of the America as a major global power, this statement may seem to be contrary. But in reality, Nick Carraway’s description of his friends and the people he knew, was not only true, but is an indication of those who were striving for the American dream. F. Scott Fitzgerald suggests that the American Dream is foolish, the people who pursue it are immoral and reckless, and this pursuit is futile. First, F. Scott Fitzgerald proposes that the American dream is foolish.

Read More

More about How Did Nick Carraway Achieve In The Great Gatsby

Related Topics

Open Document