Point Of View In The Great Gatsby

In the article Point of View, Telephones, Doubling, and Vicarious Learning in The Great Gatsby by Paul M. Levitt the ideas of what was occurring in these times are very heavily highlighted. First, we reflect upon the point of view in the novel Legs by William Kennedy, then we learn why we delve deep into this other novel, by learning the parallels between Legs and The Great Gatsby. Although these novels are written by two different authors, they both use first person point of view, to narrate their stories and to create a vivid picture of what they are saying. Not only are both of their stories narrated in the first person point of view, but also, the author of Legs William Kennedy got this idea in writing his story from F. Scott Fitzgerald,

Personally, I think that this point is completely valid and that there is substantial evidence to support it. If you look at Nick, in the beginning, he starts out as an impoverished man but then soon meets Gatsby and begins to look up to him. After this, he starts to develop a kind of Gatsby-like life, he is going to the parties and involving himself with the dramatic life of a 1920s socialite. A point also used by this article was a study that was done by a Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura in which a child followed the lead of an adult and replicated the actions that the adult did. This can be seen in Nick’s personality, because although in the beginning, he did not think like Gatsby nor did he think he wanted to associate with someone like Gatsby, in the end before Gatsby’s death he ends up saying "They're a rotten crowd.... You're worth the whole damn bunch put together" (Fitzgerald 134).

In conclusion, I agree with most all of what this author’s article said. The perspective on the point of view was true in The Great Gatsby. I also agreed with the depiction of the telephone and communication in that time and believed that it highly affected this novel. Lastly, I agreed with this article’s point on vicarious learning and imitation of those who you look up to. However, I disagreed with the take on the doubling of characters, simply because of the way Nick Carraway was depicted as a narrator in this