Honesty In The Great Gatsby Analysis

Lying is a part of life. From the con-man on the street to the nun in the church, everyone has been dishonest within their lifetime, whether to trick someone or to protect someone. However, The Great Gatsby’s Nick Carraway is not lying when he says that “[he is] one of the few honest people that [he has] even known” (59). Yet, he is still not an honest man. Nick is a narrator expertly tailored to match the story he tells, recounting a world in which everyone he has ever known trades truth and transparency for the shining ideals of cultured living and wealth. He is a dishonest man in a dishonest world. Although he is convinced of this own veracity, Nick’s actions and lack of action suggest something else. He is dishonest with those around him about what he knows and who he truly is. Throughout the book, he withholds pertinent information from the people in his life – most notably, he keeps his silence about Tom’s mistress. Although Daisy is Nick’s cousin and confides in him about her marital strife, Nick never tells her of the affair, despite having firsthand knowledge of it. Similarly, he does not tell Tom of Daisy’s

From the very beginning of the story, he immerses himself into the morally ambiguous culture of Eastern high society, cloaking himself in deceit. He tells no one of his moneyed past and chooses instead to earn his money. He upholds this illusion through maintaining his silence. This is not the only illusion he upholds in this manner; Nick’s omissions and alterations preserve Gatsby’s grandeur as a man and a memory. Over the course of the book, Nick begins as a perfect observer of a deceitful society yet is drawn deeper into it as the book progresses. He becomes more and more a part of the machine. Fitzgerald created him to be the ideal vessel for relaying this story as a participant and an observer, as a mirror and as a catalyst for