Role Of Nick Carraway In The Great Gatsby

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Nick Carraway, the protagonist in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, often functions as the guardian of the inconspicuous curtain between fantasy and reality, leaving his readers to test the validity and accuracy of his character in several situations. Delving into Nick’s complex character, it can be easily deduced that Nick withholds certain aspects of the story to shroud the reality in a cloak of mystery; however, he is also hasty in jumping to conclusions, thus emphasizing his unreliability. To begin, Nick embodies a unique role in The Great Gatsby because he is both a narrator and participant which inclines him to tell incomplete stories. For example, “Nick’s first meeting with Gatsby mixes reality with fantasy-- for Nick as well as …show more content…

To begin with, even though Nick claims to reserve explicit judgement on the characters, he still has a controlling voice which plays a major role throughout the novel. The most seductive voice in the novel, is not Daisy Buchanan’s, “it is Nick Carraway’s, whose voice is mesmerizing, like Gatsby’s con-man smile” (Lockridge 180). Lockridge emphasizes Nick’s dominant and enthralling voice to captivate and leave a significant impact on the reader as the events throughout The Great Gatsby unfold. Additionally, because Carraway has such a compelling voice, the readers are forced to take his existence into account. Not only does Nick serve as a vessel that Fitzgerald uses to narrate the story, but also is placed amidst the climactic plot-- “where he is and where he stands is as important to the story’s import as Gatsby… like Marlow, Carraway provides a moral center” (Eble 40). Nick’s mesmerizing voice and physical presence in the book urges readers to examine his presence in peculiar ways. This is another indication of how Fitzgerald manipulated scenes and excerpts of the novel to get the effects he wanted. To conclude, with the use of Nick’s unreliability due to his lack of self-constraint, the reader is forced to differentiate between reality and fantasy as Nick Carraway provides not only a

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