Moral Code In The Great Gatsby

“What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story…” The eighth paragraph of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk,The Danger of a Single Story demonstrates how seeing the lives of characters in the novel through only Nick’s eyes affect the feelings of the reader. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is written from a first-person point of view, which generates a single impression of the lives of those in the novel. Fitzgerald fabricated Nick with a moral code, which creates a biased story – Nick believes he is non-judgemental but continues to judge others on what is morally ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Therefore, the reader is left only with a guess at who ,in the story, truly is what Nick says they are. This biased approach places a negative impact on the effectiveness of the novel.

This code allows Nick to display Characters in either a positive or negative light based on his own opinion. For example, Nick admires Gatsby-a gambling bootlegger- and found Jordan-a dishonest woman who has cheated in a golf tournament-distasteful. In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald states, “I’d be damned if I’d go in; I’d had enough of all of them for one day, and suddenly that included Jordan too.”(Fitzgerald 152) Here, Nick is displayed as viewing himself above Jordan. He feels drained from being around her and describes her in a dismissive manner. Fitzgerald states, "You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together."(Fitzgerald 164) This line conveys Nick as having a special-liking toward Gatsby. In these two lines from The Great Gatsby, Nick shows partiality to Gatsby because, even though Gatsby has flaws, due to Nick’s moral code, his flaws are preferred over others, such as