Nick Is A Turd
Yes, I said it. Nick is a turd. I asked you last week about his "reliability" as a narrator--an unfair questions for reasons I have often recently enumerated. Mostly, we trust people. We trust appearances. We go with the flow. We HAVE to! We couldn't get along very well in the world if we were constantly questioning motives and hidden agendas at every turn, now, could we? In literature, though, we must.
But I digress.
Nick Carraway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby, the semi-wealthy, well-born midwesterner with ridiculously wealthy friends, is a turd. He is not a turd in the sense that Tom Sawyer is a turd--a delusional romantic. Nick is a guy who is, at this point of the book, self-delusional. There is hope, though. Nick starts to become the man he says he is towards the end of the book, but it takes great tragedy and a few deaths to make that happen.
Look at what he says about himself as we start the book. His father tells him to "remember" that not everyone in the world has all the "advantages" he's had. On the surface, this is rather bland and benign, but pull the thread on that sweater at what ravels out is a belief in his own superiority over those around him. He states that he "reserves judgment," which means that he doesn't judge on appearances and waits for the facts to shade in. THEN, he says, in the same paragraph, regarding the fact that people "confess" things to him that he frequently feigns "sleep when [he] realize[s] by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon." In other words, he does NOT reserve judgment. He DOES judge by appearance.
I would also say he is an unspeakable coward.
As he leaves the Buchanan mansion after that first party, Tom and Daisy say, "We heard you were engaged to a girl out West."
Apart from missing the action of war and wanting to get rich in the bond business, then, Nick had another motivation for moving to New York: running away.
"Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn't even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come east. You can't stop going with an old friend on account of rumors and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumored into marriage."
This is one of those little paragraphs which kind of slides under one's attention in the midst of Jordan's love of trouble and irresistible indifference, Tom's mistress calling during dinner, and Daisy flirting with Nick, but he says a lot in just a few words.
We know (through a later utterance) that Nick is 29 years old. He's of a marriageable age, then, and he states here that he's been "going with" some girl for quite some time, long enough that people think they should probably get married.
Nick doesn't want to marry her; Nick has three options.
1. Just go ahead and get married.
2. Welcome this girl to Dumpsville.
3. Run away.
He chooses option three. Not only that, he continues writing her letters and signing them "Love, Nick." He also complains later in the book that she sweats over her upper lip when she plays tennis.
He's not only a coward, he's shallow.
His cowardice is on full display in chapter two when he goes along with Tom and his mistress Myrtle to their "love shack" in New York City and hangs out as they do their "we're having an affair" business--even though he has ample opportunity to leave.
As I have said, though, he does somewhat redeem himself by the end. So keep reading.
But I digress.
Nick Carraway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby, the semi-wealthy, well-born midwesterner with ridiculously wealthy friends, is a turd. He is not a turd in the sense that Tom Sawyer is a turd--a delusional romantic. Nick is a guy who is, at this point of the book, self-delusional. There is hope, though. Nick starts to become the man he says he is towards the end of the book, but it takes great tragedy and a few deaths to make that happen.
Look at what he says about himself as we start the book. His father tells him to "remember" that not everyone in the world has all the "advantages" he's had. On the surface, this is rather bland and benign, but pull the thread on that sweater at what ravels out is a belief in his own superiority over those around him. He states that he "reserves judgment," which means that he doesn't judge on appearances and waits for the facts to shade in. THEN, he says, in the same paragraph, regarding the fact that people "confess" things to him that he frequently feigns "sleep when [he] realize[s] by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon." In other words, he does NOT reserve judgment. He DOES judge by appearance.
I would also say he is an unspeakable coward.
As he leaves the Buchanan mansion after that first party, Tom and Daisy say, "We heard you were engaged to a girl out West."
Apart from missing the action of war and wanting to get rich in the bond business, then, Nick had another motivation for moving to New York: running away.
"Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn't even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come east. You can't stop going with an old friend on account of rumors and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumored into marriage."
This is one of those little paragraphs which kind of slides under one's attention in the midst of Jordan's love of trouble and irresistible indifference, Tom's mistress calling during dinner, and Daisy flirting with Nick, but he says a lot in just a few words.
We know (through a later utterance) that Nick is 29 years old. He's of a marriageable age, then, and he states here that he's been "going with" some girl for quite some time, long enough that people think they should probably get married.
Nick doesn't want to marry her; Nick has three options.
1. Just go ahead and get married.
2. Welcome this girl to Dumpsville.
3. Run away.
He chooses option three. Not only that, he continues writing her letters and signing them "Love, Nick." He also complains later in the book that she sweats over her upper lip when she plays tennis.
He's not only a coward, he's shallow.
His cowardice is on full display in chapter two when he goes along with Tom and his mistress Myrtle to their "love shack" in New York City and hangs out as they do their "we're having an affair" business--even though he has ample opportunity to leave.
As I have said, though, he does somewhat redeem himself by the end. So keep reading.
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