The beliefs presented through the story belong to Nick, and the observations are from his eyes and what he perceives. This unique viewpoint in the eyes of Nick gives the reader Nick’s observations, such an observation being that, “His house had never seemed so enormous to me as it did that night when we hunted through the great rooms for cigarettes. We pushed aside curtains that were like pavilions, and felt over innumerable feet of dark wall for electric light switches—once I tumbled with a sort of splash upon the keys of a ghostly piano.” Here, we see Nick’s description of Gatsby’s own house. His description of the home as ‘enormous,’ ‘dark,’ and ‘ghostly’ show the reader unique imagery, and also show an opinion from Nick about his surroundings.
Nick’s impression of Gatsby
Throughout the novel Nick often finds himself standing in awe of Gatsby’s great fortune; his extravagant parties leave him astonished. He watches as couples dance in “eternal graceless circles”, while others run away to corners of the house together
, his house returns to this melancholy and dreary state, reflecting the emptiness in his “ghostly heart” (96). When Nick walks in he notices a change and sudden void. The house “never seemed so enormous” with “curtains like pavilions”,“innumerable feet of dark wall”, and “an inexplicable amount of dust everywhere” (147). All Gatsby really craved was to be loved, much like his house, he was devoid of energy and joy on the inside . Gatsby’s house seems even larger, musty and stale because he is groping around in the dark for companionship he lost long ago.
In this scene, Nick’s initial, cool skepticism toples before his sensual imagination, which as a result leaves the reader’s more balanced impressions at odds with the narrators. The narrators reactions do distance himself from Gatsby which in turn distances the reader from Gatsby. With the story being told through the eyes of Nick Carraway, it is unfair to the readers since they cannot come to their own perception of Gatsby’s
In Scott Fitzgerald's, The Great Gatsby, the reader watches an entire life go by through the eyes of a man named Nick Carraway. Fitzgerald unfolds the complex character of Jay Gatsby through the opinions, ideas, and bias of others, namely Nick. Throughout the novel Nick's opinion of Gatsby is constantly changing, at times Gatsby is all that is good, and at others he is reduced to a man worth nothing more than his long lost dreams. Fitzgerald uses literary elements and devices to create and expose Gatsby's character by Nick's first impression of him, first creating a fog of mystery about Gatsby, and as it clears Fitzgerald reveals the unhappiness and dissatisfaction of Gatsby’s life.
In the novel, Gatsby is adamant about influencing fate and merging Daisy Buchanan's future with his. Gatsby seemed to mistake his loyalty and persistence as his guide back into Daisy Buchanan’s life while in reality, Gatsby had no path back into her life. There were potentially multiple things that Daisy Buchanan might have considered undesirable of him, but Gatsby fails to notice them because of his delusional thinking. There were “nearly seven years during which men and women may be disillusioned by politics and religion and love”, and Gatsby’s lust for wealth, profile, and Daisy Buchanan is a prime example (Allen Doc C). The disillusionment that George Wilson suffers appears in a similar way.
In spite of him being surrounded by people, he still dwells in a constant state of isolation because the significant friend that he is searching for, can only be found in Jesus Christ. All through the book, Gatsby's dreary, solitary life becomes more and more apparent. Specifically, near the end of chapter three; Gatsby’s seclusive lifestyle becomes evident at Nick’s first party. In this bustling and busy atmosphere Nick managed to detect Gatsby's gloomy ambience. He noticed that even during a gleeful song, “no one swooned backward on Gatsby, and no French bob touched Gatsby's shoulder, and no singing quartets were formed with Gatsby’s head for one link”.
" Under the circumstances Nick hardly expects any section of Gatsby's fabulous story to be true..." (Donaldson 161). Gatsby manipulates Nick throughout the novel, causing
Due to the fact that Nick does not know Gatsby’s secrets, Gatsby appears to Nick as a divine figure. Fitzgerald’s use of the word “eternal” indicates Gatsby’s smile as an angelic feature because divine beings live forever. In addition, when Nick first mentions Gatsby at the beginning of the story, he claims that Gatsby is the only person that is exempt from his judgement because of Gatsby’s angelic characteristics. Nick enlightens matters further when he claims that, “only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction-Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life” (2).
Fitzgerald describes Gatsby’s American dream through Nick’s eyes . For example, “ Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enhanced objects had diminished by one.”
In the book the author uses character dialogue to display the views and overall optimistic view of Gatsby, which is important to the understanding of the book to describe what makes Gatsby himself and what others view of him is as a person. In the book when Nick first meets Gatsby he states “He had one of those rare smiles 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 external 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.” This description of Gatsby is what makes him so alluring and interesting
"Life is more successfully looked at from a single window after, all" (9). This quote describes how Nick Carraway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, tells the story. The story is told as if the reader is looking through a single window looking in upon the characters. The audience only sees the thoughts and emotions of Nick. They see what he experiences, which suggests that the whole novel is told in the first person.
III. The “Other” Houses: The Foil of the Main Houses The Buchanan' s home is a foil to Gatsby, it is in their abode that the reader can discern what is distasteful about Gatsby's. Their house, hold in its architecture, everything that exhibits Gatsby mansion as vulgar and counterfeit. For instance, even though their houses exhibits some European attributes, - its french windows, and its Georgian Colonial architecture, it is distinctly American.
Nick is the narrator, and he also participated in and witnessed the occurrence of the story, the process and an end. The description of this dual perspective of widening the reader with the Gates story than this distance, virtually to the entire novel has led to a deep hidden bitterness atmosphere. Fitzgerald in “the Great Gatsby "abandoned the traditional narrative and perspective, use the characters in the novel as the narrator, uses the first-person limited perspective and multiple narrative perspective transformation, they will work perfectly together, the content and the form of the novel reads a refreshing feeling, well embodies the narrative characteristics of the modern novel, excellent artistic effect is obtained. 2. Figures of Speech
