How Is Nick Unreliable In The Great Gatsby

The narrator of The Great Gatsby is Nick Carraway. Nick’s narration is focused on his perceptions of various issues, his deepest opinions, and the thoughts he had recurring during his experiences. The way Nick narrates the story makes Nick biased to Gatsby throughout the story.

Nick is a unreliable narrator because he is biased in his description between Tom and Gatsby. When Nick begins to describe the characters, the way he described Tom was making the reader believe that Tom is arrogant and aggressive. “Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over” (fitzgerald 7). The next character Nick described was Gatsby. Nick favors Gatsby the most out of all the characters. Nick describes Gatsby’s smile for a long time. “he smiled understandingly, much more than understandingly. it was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it” (fitzgerald 48). The quotes support my claim because it shows that nicks favors Gatsby over Tom. Nick spends a lot of time talking about Gatsby’s smile while Tom’s character traits were summed up in a couple of sentences.

Nick is really unreliable in this scene while he was drunk. It would make better sense if Nick described it if he was sober. “i have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon.” (fitzgerald 29) Nick knew that tom cheated on Daisy and he didn’t tell Daisy, which makes nick really unreliable. “i want you to meet my girl” (fitzgerald 24) My quotes support my claim because nick gets easily drunk and while he explains the scene, he only describes it in his drunk state of mind. That's what makes nick a bad unreliable