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How Is Nick Carraway Told In The Great Gatsby

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“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had”” (5).
The opening passage in the book, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, shines a light on the personality of the narrator Nick Carraway. A very similar quote is one Nick Carraway seems to understand, it is this, “Never judge someone without knowing the whole story. You may think you understand, but you don’t” (Anonymous). Nick seems to follow this quote throughout the whole story although at certain point he becomes confused with people’s actions. The Great Gatsby …show more content…

While he longed to find a place in the city, he soon realizes that he is not meant for the city and travels back to his home. In the following passage he explains his home, “That’s my middle-west--- not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns but the thrilling, returning trains of my youth and the street lamps and the sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly thrown by the lighted window on the snow. I am a part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where the dwellings are still called through the decades by a family’s name” (184). This quote shows his love for his home. Even though he left it he truly couldn’t feel at home anywhere else. His final decision was decided when he realized that the city no longer held a sense of magic. The happenings he had witnessed ruined that for him. In the following passage he explains what the city was like for him, “After Gatsby’s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes’ power of correction. So… I decided to come back home” (185). Nick is an accurate representation of the middle-class American people. He went to discover his dream in the big city, only to find out that it was never there and it was all an illusion. He is left with a feeling of emptiness and disappointment. The Great Gatsby is truly about trying to achieve goals that are not truly

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