The hero represents a person’s unconscious self, one that eventually manifests into their identity. Furthermore, each hero undergoes a journey, one that takes them through the three rites of passage: separation, initiation, and return. The ideas of Joseph Campbell and psychiatrist Carl Jung combine to create a series of alluring archetypes that have been historically accurate throughout numerous books and movies. The idea of the hero’s journey is present in The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Of Mice and Men. Each of these novels communicates the physical journey in a different way, but the psychology behind each step remains relatively consistent. In The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway successfully completes Joseph Campbell’s idea …show more content…
Sacrificing everything he once knew, he ventures into the unknown and becomes an unconscious version of himself. For Nick Carraway, this is when he meets Jay Gatsby, a man with the power to alter his life forever. Immediately, Nick is affected by the man’s smile, “one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it.” (Fitzgerald 53) This moment signifies Nick’s passage into the unknown, into the corrupt world of materialism. He was no longer just a man of West Egg, he was Gatsby’s bishop in a game of chess, and Daisy was the ultimate prize. Mentally, crossing the threshold is the hero’s commitment to change, and once Nick makes plans to reunite Gatsby and Daisy, he has entered a new …show more content…
They are faced with tests, internal or external, that may or may not end their journey. Nick Carraway’s struggles are closely linked to his morality, something he never wanted to let go of. He is manipulated not only by Gatsby, who offers him “a nice bit of money” (Fitzgerald 88) to arrange the meeting with Daisy, but by the other people he encounters in this unknown world. Nick is surrounded by complete and utter corruption, where people lie and get away with it, and human values are nonexistent. Even Gatsby was a fictitious, invented character, that “sprang from his Platonic conception of himself,” (Fitzgerald 105) using illegal activities to earn his name. Nick was constantly tempted by the materialistic mindset held by his colleagues, and giving in to the falsity of their world would have been painstakingly easy. While the mental temptation was evident, he was also physically tempted by Jordan Baker. She continued to make advances on Nick as the novel progressed, adding to the numerous trials he must complete to pursue the hero’s journey. Ultimately, the East threatens his morality through continuous dishonesty and
The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book and almost universally considered his most impactful work. The novel follows the dialog of Nick Carraway throughout his time in New York, especially focusing on his neighbor, Jay Gatsby, who is trying to enter a relationship with Nick’s married cousin, Daisy Buchanan. Although the work is written from Nick’s point of view, occasionally obscured through influences such as alcohol, his descriptions of Gatsby seem to be mostly genuine and as unaltered from the truth as Nick can make them. Although Gatsby believes his ultimate goal is to create a new future for himself & Daisy, Gatsby is actually constantly trying to relive & change his past, especially in regards to Daisy. It is this unknown internal motivation that dictates much of Gatsby’s decisions &
Boats Against the Current In the final lines of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, there is a stylistic change in the writing, one that is meant not only to echo Jay Gatsby’s experience throughout the book, but also to meld those experiences into that of Fitzgerald’s readers. By doing so, readers are able to relate to and understand why Gatsby continued to chase after the unattainable, one of the most human undertakings that exist. Fitzgerald uses pronoun shifts, changes his general sentence structure, and includes different forms of punctuation to alter the conventional perspectives of The Great Gatsby and to divert readers’ attention to not only Gatsby’s endeavors but also to their own. Throughout the novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald eloquently describes the human desire to achieve something essentially unattainable.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, there is no question that Jay Gatsby, West-Egg nouveau riche and mysterious host of frequent, extravagant parties, is wealthy; nevertheless, few of his guests understand how he became so. Preoccupied with the festivities, other newly-rich party-goers neither know much about their host nor appear interested in finding out. Nick’s sincere request to meet the man who sent him the invitation is met by amused replies that Gatsby does not exist. In large part, this statement is true; for Gatsby hardly exists beyond his guest’s fantasized perceptions of him. Because of Jay Gatsby’s ambiguous past, Rumors prevail as a common theme of conversation among Gatsby’s guests, as they speculate how he acquired such material wealth.
In the novel, The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway is the narrator and also a significant character. He is the gateway to the storyline. Nick Carraway moves to West Egg where he becomes neighbors with Jay Gatsby. Jay Gatsby is the protagonist. The story revolves around Gatsby’s main goal: to reunite with Daisy Buchanan.
This decision has consequences as well. Nick has information that could be useful to police as well as protect Jay, but he prefers to lie. Jordan Baker suspects Nick to be a liar as well. When Nick and Jordan talk a while after the car accident, she tells Nick she believed he was an honest person, but after most of his behavior, she has changed her mind. “‘... I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person.
The new perspective he holds about the people around him indicates Nick’s, “transformation.” Once longing to be a part of the East, he states, “Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.” (176). Nick’s “transformation” exemplifies how his journey refined his views about those around him. He also transformed his view about Gatsby, declaring that, “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”
Leah Pope Mrs. Dixon Honors American Literature Class 3B 03/02/17 The Great Gatsby Rhetorical Analysis Essay Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby are polar opposites. Nick is poor while Gatsby is rich, Nick is laid-back while Jay is social and throws extravagant parties every weekend, and Nick is honest and doesn’t hide who he is while nobody truly knows who Gatsby really is or how he got his riches or even what he really does. So, how are the two such close friends?
Nick sees himself in a higher light than others in the book. “Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known”(Fitzgerald 59). While Nick comes from a wealthy background, he finds everyone else to be pretentious. He sees himself as the only person in the story to be authentic and honest. “
“Narrator Nick Carraway tells the story of a summer among the wealthy and privileged; a stockbroker of limited means, Nick socializes with his cousin Daisy and her wealthy husband Tom Buchanan (with whom Nick graduated from Yale); Daisy’s girlhood friend, professional golfer Jordan Baker; and his Long Island neighbor, Jay Gatsby, a host of raucous parties in the fictitious “West Egg.” Nick, Jordan, Gatsby, and Daisy plot to have Daisy leave Tom for Gatsby. The plan is thwarted when Tom’s mistress Myrtle is killed by Gatsby’s car (driven, Nick believes, by Daisy), an event that leads her husband, Tom’s mechanic, George, to murder Gatsby. As narrator, Nick is less focused on this romance plot than on Gatsby himself and what Gatsby can teach him about his own situation. Nick has come East, he tells us at the start of the novel, to learn the bond business; later he indicates that he’s also in New York so that he may enjoy the company of men and to escape the increasing social expectations back in the Midwest, where he is being cajoled to marry.
Nick Carraway’s passive nature leads to the many mishaps in the novel, which stresses the idea that not being evil does not necessarily make someone a good person. Had Carraway been less apathetic, the death of Gatsby and of Myrtle could have been prevented. The issues in the novel are rooted in Carraway’s passive tendencies towards the actions of the people around him. “I’m inclined to reserve all judgements” (1) Nick states at the beginning of the novel, which instantly sets up his passivity.
Jay Gatsby, one of the main characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, is a wealthy man with dubious sources of money; Gatsby is renowned in New York due to the lavish parties he holds every friday in his mansion. These are spectacles that fully embody the wealth and glamour of the roaring twenties, and are narrated through the eyes of another character Nick Carraway, an ambitious 29 year old man that recently moved back to a corrupt new york in a cramped cottage next to Gatsby’s palace. After admiring the careless behaviour of the parties from a distance, Nick gets a personal invitation to Gatsby’s next party, he promptly becomes infatuated by the extravagant and frivolous lifestyle the parties portray, along with the superficial
Recounting heartbreak, betrayal, and deception, F. Scott Fitzgerald paints a bleak picture in the 1920’s novel The Great Gatsby. Nick Carraway, the narrator of the novel, witnesses the many lies others weave in order to achieve their dreams. However, the greatest deception he encounters is the one he lives. Not having a true dream, Nick instead finds purpose by living vicariously through others, and he loses that purpose when they are erased from his life.
Even when Nick interacts with Gatsby for the first time, he comments, “I would have accepted without a question the information that Gatsby sprang from the swamps of Louisiana or from the lower East Side of New York” (Fitzgerald 49).Consequently, Nick emphasizes Gatsby’s belonging to the neighborhoods that were populated by poor and not ethnically superior people highlighting Gatsby’s ignoble past. Even the possession of wealth cannot fix the problem of racial cautiousness and
F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway are among the most prominent exponents of literature of the twentieth century. Forming part of the Lost Generation, these authors not only develop similar themes throughout their works, but heavily influenced each other. The Great Gatsby being Fitzgerald’s magnum opus, serves as a prime illustration of the staples of contemporary literature. In the novel The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald, the author depicts himself through a character, Nick Carraway, conforming to other self depiction common in the Lost Generation, such as Hemingway in the Nick Adams stories. Nick Carraway and Nick Adams represent Fitzgerald and Hemingway, both serving as apertures into Fitzgerald’s and Hemingway’s view of the world.
Jacobo Delara Mr. Horner English II CP September 15 2014 The Great Gatsby The classic American Novel Nick Carraway is man from a wealthy family in Minnesota moving to west egg to learn about the Bond business. Then he gets involved with Mr. Gatsby which then sparks the beginning of the novel.