Nick Carraway

• Maxwell Perkins: 'You adopted exactly the right method of telling it that by employing a narrator who is more of a spectator than an actor, this puts the reader upon a point of observation on a higher level than that of which the characters stand and at a distance that gives perspective. in no other way because your irony has been so immensely effective'
• Nick Carraway as narrator

  • Very complex character - lots of opinions, prejudices, aims, inclinations
  • Comes across as the last barer of traditional values, politeness and morals before the Jazz Age
  • Opinions are clearly class based
  • Degree of self awareness at his privilege, but also represents how well he identifies with the characters
  • Reliable, through the fact that he judges from his own experiences (which are relevant to the time period)
  • Acts as an observant, reserved participant in the events
  • At times he is factual and neutral yet then he becomes very poetic and emotional in his descriptions
• Nick realises Gatsby is a shameless social climber


  Yet he narrates to honour Gatsby for the adversity he had to endure to simply achieve his dreams
• Nick's perspective is evaluative: Gatsby is great, the society he is in ruined him
• When Nick confidently gives directions to a traveller to West Egg

  He was no longer lonely. He was a guide, a pathfinder, and an original settler
• Nick has difficulty sustaining relationships with women
• Nick spends a lot of nights wandering around Manhattan, feeling a haunting loneliness sometimes, and feeling it in others
• Amid Myrtle Wilson's party in Chapter 2, Nick identifies with a solitary walker outside, feeling within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life