Unreliable Narrator In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

The novel The Great Gatsby authored by F. Scott Fitzgerald came out in 1926. It revolves primarily around the events surrounding Jay Gatsby leading up to his death as well as his love affair with Daisy Buchanan. The story is told out of Nick Carraway’s narrative, who is acquainted to Gatsby and Buchanan. It is difficult not to question Nick’s reliability when discussing the book. In this essay I will study how Nick is an unreliable narrator and how this affects the story as it progresses. One of the first things to indicate Nick unreliability is that he is the story’s sole narrator. We can not expect him to be entirely unbiased; as he is a person he is bound to be subjective and illusory at some point. Though it is proven quickly to us that

When he is not there to account for the events himself he does not hesitate to bring in other people. For example, when he recounts the story of Jay and Daisy it is actually Jordan who told him about it. Jordan who he has previously described as “incurably dishonest” (p. 62) and knows to have cheated in a golf tournament may perhaps not be the best person to source. Nick is also very perceptible to gossip and rumours and embraces them to the extent that he passes it on to the reader. In the beginning of the novel, before he actually meets Jay Gatsby, there is a rumour going around that Gatsby “killed a man once” (p. 47) and later he says that he looked like he “had killed a man” (p. 142). Continuing on the theme of Jay Gatsby; a character that Nick is much biased towards. It’s clear from the beginning that he romanticizes Gatsby and puts everything in his favor. A good example is Nick’s description of Gatsby’s famous smile in chapter

Just as he idealizes Gatsby, he has a predetermined distaste for Tom Buchanan, who he has not met since college and, as previously mentioned, makes crude comments towards him the first time they meet after a long while. Another element to suggest Nick’s distorted perspective is in chapter 2 when he is looking at a picture. Up close it looks like a “hen sitting on a blurred rock” (p. 30) but when he distances himself from it it changes form into “a bonnet, and the countenance of a stout old lady” (p. 30). The message is clear; our narrator has trouble gaining understanding of the whole picture and taking in the outside world. It is apparent that Nick serves as an unreliable narrator. Everything from Nick being its narrator to his infatuation with Gatsby hindering him from seeing clearly was planned by Fitzgerald. So while there is no doubt that Nick’s perspective is distorted the real mystery behind Jay Gatsby remains hidden. He is left in a shroud of abstruseness and uncertainty because when it comes down to the core, all Nick was was an outsider looking