Nick Narrates In The Great Gatsby

Nick narrates, “...The beginning of his career—when he saw Dan Cody’s yacht drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior. It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon in a torn green jersey and a pair of canvas pants, but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a rowboat...”(Fitzgerald 98) This is the beginning of the rise of Jay Gatsby. James Gatz hailed from North Dakota, and was born into a poor farmer family. After having attended and dropping out of St. Olaf college, he went to Lake Superior and worked as a clam-digger and a salmon-fisher. There he rescues a man on a yacht, Dan Cody, from an oncoming storm. He swims out into Lake Superior and comes out of it superior. Dan Cody’s yacht symbolizes Gatsby’s

.. It was full of money— that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbal's song of it… High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl…”( Fitzgerald 120) Daisy Buchanan is reason Gatsby does what he does. He throws lavish parties in order to get her attention, in order to see her again. Gatsby first fell in love with Daisy as a soldier during WWI. She was everything he wasn't. Daisy was came from old money. Daisy’s wealth is the root of her flaw, a flaw she doesn’t see but our narrator Nick can. Nick is Daisy’s cousin’s, he is also Gatsby’s neighbor. He was Gatsby’s key to finding Daisy. Yet, what Gatsby found is not what he wanted. Daisy is married to an awful, unfaithful man from old money. Gatsby still pursues Daisy and sees her as perfection, as innocent, as flawless. On the outside, Daisy wears white dresses, drives a white roadster, and has white hands and a white face. On the inside, she is corrupted by wealth, and will leave destruction and death in her careless path. Like a king’s daughter, she inherited her wealth. She was old money and Gatsby was new

Gatsby let Daisy drive his yellow car through the Valley of Ash. In this place lived a woman named Myrtle Wilson, whom Daisy's husband Tom was having an affair with. Myrtle was locked in her room by her husband because he found out his wife was having an affair with someone. Finally free, Myrtle runs out into the street after seeing the yellow car. She thought that Tom had come to save her, that he was driving the car like he did earlier that day. Not having time to slow down, Daisy rips through Myrtle, killing her. Daisy would never realize the weight of her actions, yet, she wouldn’t care even if she knew. The yellow car symbolizes cowardness, decay, and