- Provide a background description of Nick Caraway. Use the ‘w’ questions to help you cover the main points ( who, what, where, when ) and think about what information someone might need to be able to understand his role in the story.
Nick is a young man aged 29 who, after being educated at Yale and Fighting in World War 1 goes to New York City to learn the bond business. Nick often serves as a person who one shares a secret or private matter, trusting them not to repeat it to others. Nick tells the story from his perspective. Nick has a connection with all of the characters which makes him the best person to narrate the story out of the characters in the book.
2. “I am inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and made me the victim of not a few veteran bores.”- Chapter One
Nick is saying that he refuses to give an opinion until he knows more. Nicks expressing himself to the reader as a thoughtful and reliable narrator, he has talked with some very interesting people and some very boring people that he wouldn’t have talked to if he judged them more quickly. This means that Nick as a person is quite reserved, open and accepting.
When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. “ – Chapter One
Nick wants everyone to be on the same page with morals and he wants people to actually stick to it and obey the morals they’ve all agreed to live by. He’s had an experience he didn’t really like. Once he returned home to the Mid-West he didn’t really like the East and no longer wanted to know what people were really like. He was convinced that everyone he met back East didn’t stick to their morals and he needed to return to an environment where morality was an important part of life.
“…wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.”- Chapter One
Nick is saying that he feels like a checkered piece from a game of Chess that Tom is moving around. This is telling us that people find it easy to direct him to what they want him to do, Nicks a pushover. He lets other people control him and his actions.
I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” – Chapter Two
Nicks a participant and a observer in a scene he doesn’t really belong in. Nick is attracted to the excessive larger than life experience of unlimited money and at the same time, he doesn’t like the immorality and superficiality of the scene.
Most of the time I worked…I knew the other clerks and young bond salesmen by their first names…I even had a short affair with a girl who lived in Jersey City and worked in the accounting department, but her brother began throwing mean looks in my direction…” – Chapter Three
Nicks quite career driven, he’s not super comfortable financially, he seems friendly with his colleagues. He cares what other people think because of the brother throwing mean looks in his direction.
I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.”– Chapter Three
Nick thinks quite a lot of himself. He seems a bit cocky.
“They’re a rotten crowd…You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together!’ I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him because I disapproved of him from beginning to end.”- Chapter Eight
Nick is getting tired of Gatsby because he’s just like Tom and Daisy and after all the commotion of Myrtle getting hit, Nick is sick of it.
“I shook hands with him. It seemed silly not to for I felt suddenly as though I was talking to a child.”- Chapter Nine
He talks about Tom as though he’s a child, he shakes hands with Tom. This is showing that Nick just kind of goes whatever, leave it at that and moves on. Nicks trying to go for no conflict.
“I sat there brooding on the old unknown world…” –Chapter Nine
This shows that Nicks a very thoughtful guy.
Finally, consider how Nick changes throughout the story. He is not the same young man that he starts out as. Describe how Nick comes across as a different person towards the end of the story as opposed to the beginning. Explain the possible reasons for this change.
Nick goes in believing he’s very moral. At the start of the book, Nick says how he’s going to keep an open mind and not judge anyone before he’s got to know them. At the end of the book, Nick ends up having judged everyone and looses his morals.