F. Scott Fitzgerald penned one of the most recognizable and influential American novels of the Modernist period. The Great Gatsby is characterized by its strict adherence to the Modern writing style and the novel’s conclusion leaves the reader with many questions regarding the actions of its eponymous character. Yet none of this could have been managed without the aid of the novel’s narrator, Nick. Although Gatsby’s character is ultimately the one the novel focuses upon, Nick’s assessment that “Gatsby turned out alright in the end” (Fitzgerald 2) is most assuredly a colored one. The reader cannot and does not know which facts Nick felt were important to his vision Gatsby and those that were omitted because they contradicted it.
Nick first spots Gatsby at a distance near the end of Chapter 1, after returning home from Tom and Daisy’s house. Nick remarks that Gatsby’s movements seemed leisurely as he had “come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens,” yet “he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone – he stretched out his arms…in a curious way” (20). The reader is not immediately clued in to the significance of this moment, nor does Nick expound on the “single green light…that might have been the end of the dock” (21). Only through later revelations is the reader able to comprehend the import of all that Nick sees in those few fleeting moments.
Nick finally meets Gatsby in Chapter 3 at one of his extravagant house parties. Up until this point in the novel, Nick’s (and therefore the reader’s) only source of information about Gatsby is found via rumors from the party goers, many of which do not paint Gatsby in a positive light. When Gatsby finally introduces himself to Nick, his description of Gatsby to the reader reveals that even Nick seems somewhat leery of Gatsby, be it conscious or not. He describes Gatsby as “an elegant roughneck…whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd” and when he questions Jordan about it she replies that “he’s just a man named Gatsby” (48). Claire Stocks writes that:
Gatsby seems to exemplify a particular ideal for Nick, and it is certainly possible to read Gatsby as a kind of doppelganger who embodies all that Nick would like to be…It is possible, then, that Nick identifies with and admires Gatsby and wants to believe in the possibility of a man with little or no inheritance (like Gatsby and himself) becoming wealthy and successful in America. (9)
As the narrative continues Nick confronts more and more evidence that Gatsby is a less than savory individual, yet he refuses to acknowledge to the reader that Gatsby is not the paragon that Nick paints him to be. To the reader “it seems clear…that Nick is not interested in exposing the real Gatsby…As the story progresses, then, Nick's version seems increasingly unreliable as he glosses over lies, erases criticisms of Gatsby and avoids uncomfortable truths” (Stocks 9). This makes it somewhat challenging to the reader to determine the truth of Gatsby and his dealings – is he a man who profited due to errors in moral and ethical judgment, or is he as conniving and licentious as Tom accuses him of being?
Stocks, Claire. "'All men are [not] created equal': F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: Claire Stocks illustrates how the narrator's bias towards this novel's hero is central to the critique of belief in the 'American Dream'." The English Review Feb. 2007: 9+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 Apr. 2010. http://go.galegroup.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CA158832066&v=2.1&u=tall85761&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 1935.
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